“Before I wrote The Joy Luck Club,” Tan said in an interview, “my mother told me, ‘I might die soon. And if I die, what will you remember?”‘ Tan’s answer appears on the book’s dedication page, emphasizing the novel’s adherence to truth. How much of the story is real? “All […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Jing-mei Woo: The Joy Luck ClubSummary and Analysis Indian Camp
Summary One night, Dr. Adams is summoned to help an American Indian woman who has been in painful labor for two days. The doctor takes his young son, Nick, and his brother, George, to the American Indian camp on the other side of a northern Michigan lake. There, the doctor […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Indian CampSummary and Analysis Sonnet 2
Summary Sonnet 2 continues the argument and plea from Sonnet 1, this time through the imagery of military, winter, and commerce. Time again is the great enemy, besieging the youth’s brow, digging trenches — wrinkles — in his face, and ravaging his good looks. Beauty is conceived of as a […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 2Summary and Analysis Part I: Feathers from a Thousand Li Away
A brief parable introduces one of the novel’s primary themes: transformation. An old woman remembers purchasing an unusual “swan” in a Shanghai market; the swan had originally been a duck, but it stretched its neck so long — trying to become a goose — that it eventually looked exactly like […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part I: Feathers from a Thousand Li AwayCharacter List
“Indian Camp” Dr. Adams A general practitioner and emergency surgeon who lives near a lake on the northern peninsula of Michigan. Using makeshift surgical instruments, he delivers a baby boy to an American Indian woman who has been in excruciating labor for two days. Uncle George Dr. Adams’ brother; he […]
Read more Character ListSummary and Analysis Sonnet 1
Summary Shakespeare begins his sonnets by introducing four of his most important themes — immortality, time, procreation, and selfishness — which are interrelated in this first sonnet both thematically and through the use of images associated with business or commerce. The sonnet’s first four lines relate all of these important […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 1Character List
The Mothers Suyuan Woo The central event in Suyuan’s life is the loss of her twin baby daughters. In a desperate attempt to save her babies from the Japanese troops advancing through China, Suyuan leaves them by the side of the road. Soon after, she meets her second husband, Canning […]
Read more Character ListAbout Hemingway’s Short Stories
The selection of stories in this volume is based on the stories found in high-school and college literature anthologies that ranked them as not only the best of Hemingway’s short story output but also as the ones taught most frequently in high-school and college American Literature courses, as well as […]
Read more About Hemingway’s Short StoriesAbout Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Introduction to Shakespeare’s Sonnets A sonnet is a 14-line poem that rhymes in a particular pattern. In Shakespeare’s sonnets, the rhyme pattern is abab cdcd efef gg, with the final couplet used to summarize the previous 12 lines or present a surprise ending. The rhythmic pattern of the sonnets is […]
Read more About Shakespeare’s SonnetsAbout The Joy Luck Club
It was not until the 1976 publication of Maxine Hong Kingston’s mystical memoir of her San Francisco childhood, The Woman Warrior, that Asian-American writers broke into mainstream American literature. Even so, ten more years had to pass until another Asian-American writer achieved fame and fortune. The Joy Luck Club, Amy […]
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