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For each chapter in How to Read Literature Like a Professor, find at least one specific connection to The Joy Luck Club. Try to include a chapter or page number from The Joy Luck Club, and make an effort to keep from duplicating connections.

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Foster stresses that food is often used to explore character relationships, and in the swan parable, the mother states that her daughter "swallows more Coca-Cola than sorrow" (17). Coca-Cola is a very American product, and this food/drink reference illustrates the divide between the Chinese mother and the American-born daughter.

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In this chapter of How To Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster says that water typically symbolizes one of three things; baptism, rebirth, or death. In The Joy Luck Club, Ying-Ying St. Clair tells a story from her childhood about a time she fell off of her family’s boat into the lake and almost drowned. She says, “... even though I was found that night... I never believed my family found the same girl” (82). This implies a rebirth of sorts took place when she was in the water that night, proving one of Foster’s points.

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In this chapter in The Joy Luck Club, when Rose and Ted first get together they start a garden together. When their relationship first starts off, everything is good between the two. Just as their garden is growing nicely. As their relationship goes on and Rose and Ted start growing apart, the garden starts to over grow. The garden symbolizes the relationship between Ted and Rose from the beginning of their relationship all the way to the ending of it.

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Foster mentions that “whenever people eat or drink together, it’s communion”. (page 8)  People sit and eat with each other for many various reason. In the Joy Luck Club, Suyaun Woo has “communion” with herself and three other women. On page 23 it’s mentioned how they treated themselves with the food they had prepared. This represents the ideal of community that the club created with one another by creating a “feast” and sharing with each other, bringing peace to themselves and the club.

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In the chapter magpies, the pearls that An-Mei gets from second wife is a symbol. In this chapter, An-Mei leaves her family home to go live with her mother, who was shamed by her family because she is a concubine. While they are there, An-Mei meets second wife and second wife gives An-Mei a pearl necklace and says “Such a pretty girl needs something to put the light on her face“. (260) After second wife leaves, An-Mei’s mother takes the pearls and crushes them under her foot, showing they are fake. This symbol represents that you shouldn’t be blinded by materialistic things, because they are not always genuine. It shows not to lose yourself or your character to something false.

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In this chapter it talks about the land and how it looked after a flood. How it was a valley and her parents house were further down in the valley and house was ruined. I feel like this represent how her family was held up in the world how they had a low reputation then her husband family. And how it represents a complete rebirth into a new life.

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In How To Read Literature Like A Professor, he talks about how the meals between characters symbolizes their relationships. In The Joy Luck Club, we see the relationship between Jing Mei Woo and Waverly Jong. During the crab meal shared between the two families it is revealed to us how both girls always seemed to live their lives like a competition with the other. Between bashing on one another and bragging it becomes quite clear how the girls feel about one another.

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In this chapter, Foster says that any act of communion you share with someone is basically saying, “I want to be with you, you want to be with me, let us share thus experience” (9). Then in The Joy Luck Club, Waverly takes her mother out to lunch at Four Directions and they both share a meal. This lunch perfectly describes her and her mother’s relationship. Waverly’s mother critiques her hair when they first meet, then later complains saying, “there are not many good things on the menu”. Then at several points Waverly thinks to herself that her mom could, “just shut up”. I really believe this scene is a perfect set up for the book. The entire book works through these mothers and daughters struggle in their relationships with one another, yet are able to put disagreements aside and still share acts of communion to show their love for another.

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In this chapter of The Joy Luck Club Rose is watching her younger brother Bing at the ocean. He falls off a cliff into the ocean. Her parents search for hours on end looking for Bing. Rose describes how she sees her parents as being a ‘new person’ after the loss of Bing. In this sense the water represents a rebirth of her parents.

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Ying-Ying tells a story she faintly remembers from her childhood About when her family had gone on a boat to eat. She had been told to sit still but had gotten curious and ended up in a mess, ending up in the water, where she had almost drowned, luckily, some strangers saved her and talked to her for a bit, eventually leaving her to find her family. Ying-Ying never remembered how she found them, but she does remember that after this day she was never the same. Likewise, the author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor shows that almost every time a character in a book gets wet, it’s a sign of baptism and a change will come out of that most of the time.

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In this chapter Ying-Ying falls into the water, and in How to Read Literature it says that water could mean death or rebirth. And in the chapter in The Joy Luck Club called The Moon Lady you can she that her initially falling into the water was her death, but in my option her coming up was not the rebirth. The rebirth in my opinion came after the Moon Lady show on the beach. Where she went to ask the moon lady for her wish only to see that The Moon Lady was fake. Ying-Ying then went on to say she would never be the same again after that experience.

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One specific example would be the red candle Chapter 3. This is a symbol for the conjoining of two people to have a happy and successful marriage. By the lighting of each it represents the two people beginning a new life together and if it burns through the night then their marriage will last. Lindo didn't want to be forced into marriage with this man but as was custom in her culture so she wasn’t allowed to speak up about how she felt. Instead she showed how she felt through the action of blowing out the candle to show that they aren’t meant to be together.

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In this chapter of The Joy Luck Club, we are walked through Waverly Jong’s history with chess- but more importantly, how her mother contributed to it. Waverly and her mother, Lindo, get into a big fight that leads to Waverly thinking she can manipulate Lindo by not playing chess anymore. However, it doesn’t work, and Waverly never plays again. Through her thought process, she describes this situation as if it were a chess game saying things like “... I would have to make a stronger move” and “... she had devised this strategy” (171-172). Even in the chapter Rules of the Game, after a different fight with her mother she says things like “opposite me was my opening... she wore a triumphant smile” and “I’d my eyes and pondered my next move” (100-101). As Foster says in Is it a Symbol, anything can be a symbol. In this case, chess symbolizes their relationship.

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In this chapter of The Joy Luck Club Jing-Mei is going off to China to meet her mother’s two other daughters, the first two she had to leave behind. While traveling Jing-Mei says that she feels as though she is changing, that as soon as she passes the border, she starts to notice tiny details that are different about herself. Jin-Mei says that she is becoming Chinese. The geography with this chapter is showing how that Jin-Mei is completing a full journey and that because of this, she is becoming a more traditional version of being Chinese.

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Jing mei Woo’s first story took place in a horrible time and place. It shows how things were compared to where the end up. In this chapter she says, “In china everyone dreamed of Kwielin, before I even saw it.” But after she arrives their she is very disappointed about what she thought it would be. She thought of at as hope, but it wasn’t.

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Thomas foster, in How to read literature like a professor, he talks about how some things can have multiple meanings and lots of things can be symbols. In The Joy Luck Club, Lena St. Clair’s mother asks her why she has to pay for the ice cream her husband bought even though she doesn’t like ice cream. The ice cream is a symbol of how much their marriage is more like a business deal then an actual marriage. Her husband didn’t even know she didn’t like ice cream until that day even after being married for so long.

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In this chapter, Lena St. Clair’s mother was in a bad mental direction, which was portrayed in her life by the way she kept moving things in her house around so the setup felt better. The author in How to Read Literature Like a Professor, he elaborates on the fact that every direction a character is sent, even a symbolic one, means something in their life. The change in the geography of Lena’s home was a reflection of the many ways her mind was heading.

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A symbol can be anything..
In the chapter “Rice Husband” Lena talks about a black vase on a table in her guest room where her mother is staying. To me this vase and weak table represents Lena and her marriage. Towards the end of the chapter the table collapses and the vase breaks, as Lena approaches her mother in the room her mother says “fallen down” and Lena replies with “it doesn’t matter...I knew it would happen”. Her mother then ask “Then why you don’t stop it?” Why didn’t Lena stop the vase? Why did she just let it break? This is a symbol for Lenas marriage, she knows it’s an unhealthy or unstable relationship but she still continues to allow it to be as is until she eventually blows up and gets into an argument with Harold right before the vase breaks. Her marriage is the vase that was on a unstable table, and eventually it’s going to come crashing down unless she stops it.

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When Waverly was planning on going to China for her Honeymoon, she worries that they will thinks she’s “One of them”. (287) But, Lindo tells her that the people will know she does not belong as soon as she arrives. The chapter bout geography plays into this because the people there carry themselves a certain way, have a special culture, and have their own manners that a person would not know well enough, unless they grew up learning about them in that specific place. The nature of the country shapes the people who are there, so they can tell when someone was not raised the Same way that they were.

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In this chapter, Foster talks all about symbolism and a reader’s interpretation of a symbol. One symbol in Joy Luck Club is Lena’s Vase, which is mentioned in the story of “Rice Husband.” Lena St. Clair places this vase on the edge of a table, which definitely is not a safe place and the vase is in danger of falling over and shattering to pieces. I think this is a brilliant metaphor or symbol for her marriage. Her marriage could very well be over and in pieces. She mentions that her husband built the unstable table that she places the vase upon. Could this also be a symbol of his lack of caring and support in the marriage?

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In this chapter Jing-Mei is asked to replace her mother as the fourth corner in Mah Jong. It is Jing-Mei and her aunts eating soup while also playing the game. And through this their showing the relationships between one another

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Another example of this would be in Chapter 9, Rice Husband. In this chapter it is focused a lot on the idea that not finishing the rice bowl would lead to marrying a bad man. These comments at the dinner table show their relationship. The mother tells a story or believes that if something isn't done in a certain way then a bad effect will come from this. This shows how her mother parenting style.

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Geography matters because different places on the globe have different cultures that you have to apply to and that can apply to you. For example when jing-mei goes back to china she goes back to her Chinese self.

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Some of the events that happen to the characters in joy luck club are supposed to be symbols for the future of the book, some are not, but when you are analyzing the book you want to know what is a symbol to learn more about the character.