The women of the Joy Luck Club were selected because they all had faced tragedies in their lives. Outline these tragedies. Which woman do you find to be the most tragic character, and why?

        At the age of four An-mei Hsu, with her little brother went to live with their grandmother, Popo, and her family because An-mei’s mother became a concubine of Wu Tsing. The second wife of Wu Tsing, invited An-mei’s mother to play mahjong in Wu Tsing’s house where Wu Tsing raped her. She was forced to marry him to save what little remained of her reputation. An-mei’s mother was considered a “ghost”. In those days, “a ghost was anything [that] was forbidden to talk about”. Therefore, An-mei was not allowed to speak of her mother’s name. Although, this could be considered as a tragedy, An-mei also faced other tragedies. When An-mei was four years old, An-mei’s mother had come to beg Popo for her daughter. An-mei cried out for her mother and a bowl of boiling soup spilled over her neck. “This was the kind of pain so terrible that a little child should never remember it”. Popo and the rest of the family chased her mother away. However, An-mei never accused her mother because she left, because she knew that her mother “married with Wu-Tsing to exchange one unhappiness to another”. When An-mei was nine, she went to live with her mother at Wu Tsing’s house. However, two days before the lunar New Year, An-mei’s mother committed suicide. Before, she died she told An-mei that ‘she was killing her weak spirit to make An-mei’s spirit stronger’. Wu-Tsing, wanting to avoid a ‘vengeful spirit’, promised her spirit that he would raise An-mei and her mother’s son Syaudi as his “honored children”.

Lindo Jong was promised in a marriage to Huang Tyanyu at the age of two; her mother began referring her as Huang Taitai’s daughter. When Lindo was twelve, she went to live with Tyan-yu’s family after a flood damaged her family’s house. She "sacrificed [her] life to keep [her] parent’s promise”. At sixteen, she was married but the marriage was not a happy one. On the day of her marriage, until ‘she saw the wind causing people to run and shout outside her window’. She then realized that she was “also strong like the wind”. Although, she wanted to keep her promise to her parents, she wanted to get out of the marriage. Lindo told Taitai that she had dreamed that matchmaker’s servant had allowed Tyan-yu’s end of the candle to go out. She stated that the ancestors declared that Tyan-yu would die if he stayed in the marriage. The matchmaker’s servant confessed the secret about the candle, and the marriage between Tyan-yu and Lindo ended.

        When Ying-ying was sixteen, ‘a coarse, rude man began to show interest’ in marrying her. Because of her silence, she ended up marrying him. She became pregnant, and when she was well into her pregnancy, her husband left her for an opera singer. In her ‘rage and hurt’, she aborted her unborn children as an act of revenge. Ying-ying was born in the year of the tiger. The tiger has two sides; ‘the golden side is fierce, and the black side is cunning’. Ying-ying chose the black side of her spirit after her marriage fell apart; therefore, she started waiting patiently for things to come. In a way she became passive. For example, she lived for ten years with her relatives, before finding a job. When, she married with Clifford St. Clair; she became almost a ghost when she ‘abandoned both sides of the Tiger spirit’. She was ashamed that her daughter Lena-who was also born in the year of the Tiger- has no spirit either.      

        I think Suyuan Woo is the most tragic character in the Joy Luck Club. When she immigrated to America, she wrote letters to her old friends to find out about her lost daughters. When she received the letter telling her that her daughters were reached, she had passed away which meant that she was never going to be able to fulfill her “long cherished wish” herself. Also, unlike others Suyuan did not try to forget about her past tragedy because she was keen to find her lost babies. I think Suyuan suffered the worst tragedy and that is why the story revolves around her. Although, Suyuan lost her “innocence”, she did not lose hope. Even though, she immigrated to America, she still had hope of finding her daughters. This shows that she was able to stand up against her past (tragedies). And I think this why she was strong throughout her life, unlike other mothers.