Family in "A Circle of Children" and "The Joy
Family in "A Circle of Children" and "The Joy Luck Club"
A family gives the feeling of security and belonging, but a crisis within the family can change it forever. A family always goes through some sort of crisis, and it forces each member to realize the painful truths. Two novels, Mary MacCracken’s A Circle of Children and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, deal with families trying to overcome a crisis. Characters in these books experience differences that cause miscommunication, sacrifices for their family, and the transition that unifies and completes their family that was once torn apart.
Differences between family members can lead to miscommunication. In Tan’s book, the barriers between Jing-mei and her mother are primarily caused by cultural differences; her mother is Chinese, while Jing-mei is more Americanized. Jing-mei always feels like her mother wants her to be someone she can not be; she feels her mother never becomes satisfied. Jing-mei does not get good grades in school, and she drops out of college. For Jing-mei, unlike her mother, does not believe she can be anything she wants to be. She believes she can only be herself. She fails to understand that her mother only hopes for the best; she never expects anything from her daughter. Additionally, Jing-mei argues with her friend Waverly at the dinner table. Jing-mei feels her mother betrays her by supporting Waverly. She becomes convinced that her mother has no faith in her, but she does not know that her mother thinks differently. “Only you picked that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this. Everybody want best quality. You think different” (Tan 234). Jing-mei does not understand that her mother knows that she has the best quality heart, even though Jing-mei has not fulfilled all her mother’s hopes. Her mother believes the most important quality one could have is being a good person within.
On the other hand, in The Circle of Children, the emotionally disturbed children in Mary’s class are so different from “average” people, that normal people have trouble understanding the children’s private hells of anger, confusion, hurt, and tragic loneliness. Since the children do not know how to act properly in today’s society, the people around them often reject them. This misunderstanding causes the children to become alienated, so...