The Single Swan Feather With Mothers' Hope
The Joy Luck Club is a film based on the best selling novel by Amy Tan of the same name. This movie tells about the conflicts and love between four Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-raised daughters. These mothers acquainted themselves with each other by playing mahjong. They became closed friends for their similar experiences and they called themselves the Joy Luck Club.
The story shows us quite a few topics: the misunderstanding of love between the mothers and the daughters, the clash between the generations and cultures, and the struggle for the women to fight for equity. Now I am going to show you my understanding of them, emphasizing on the first topic. In many cases, we and those we love are easy to hurt each other because of the misunderstanding of love. Let’s take June and her mother Suyuan as an example. After being humiliated by a lack of talent for writing at the dinner, June had a quarrel with her mother. She told her mother that she had always been sorry for being so disappointing and her failure in living up to her mother’s expectation made her feel like a real loser. Her mother explained that she had never expected anything of June but only hoped best for her. From Suyuan’s view,it’s not wrong to hope. However,the daughter held an opposite opinion.
She said,
Every time you hoped for something I couldn't deliver, it hurt. It hurt me, Mommy.And no matter what you hope for...I'll never be more than what I am.And you never see that!What I really am.”
It’s obvious that June had taken her mother’s hope for her as burden rather than love.Daughters may do everything to please their mothers just because they love them .Each time when they fail to satisfy their mothers,they will feel really frustrated.Unfortunately,the power they have over their children are always neglected by the mothers.They are more willing to regard their hopes as love. The misunderstanding of love is not only because of their differences in generation and cultural background, which only serves as a carrier here, but simply because that they are mothers and daughters—there’s something essential in matters with the mother-daughter relationship, but even the misunderstanding of love, after all, is still a type of love.
At the very beginning of the movie, it tells a story about an old woman who bought a swan for a foolish sum and brought it to America.But when she arrived in the new country,the immigration officials pulled the swan away from her,leaving the woman only one swan feather for a memory. For a long time now, the woman had wanted to give her daughter the single swan feather and tell her, "This feather may look worthless...but it comes from afar and carries with it...all my good intentions." The short story is a metaphor for the hope these four mothers had when they immigrated to America--that their daughters would be graceful,dignified and noble ladies just like swans. Meanwhile,the single swan feather symbolizes mothers’ hopes for their daughters of finding their own identity. June tried in the end to live up to her mother’s hopes and expectations,and finally went to China to meet her twin sisters.When she met them,she brought them their mother’s hope and eventually found the best of herself. Viewing from the whole film, the title, the Joy Luck Club may also be the old generation’s hope of better life for the next generation ,just as the single swan feather,which carries all mothers’ best-cherished hopes for their daughters.
