NSL Assignment

1. JOY LUCK CLUB
AN-MEI HSU: MAGPIES
Kaleigh Wellhofer and Hannah Teicher

2. PLOT AND SETTING
• An-Mei is disappointed that her daughter, Rose, is watching her
marriage fall apart without any attempt to fix it. An-Mei looks back to
her mother’s marriage, comparing the way she too had watched her
relationships crumble into nothing. The story begins, during the year
of 1923, in the village where An-Mei’s grandmother lives. However,
the story ends the city of Tientsin.

3. ISSUES AND STRUGGLES
• An-Mei must decide whether to abandon
her family or to miss out on the opportunity to
build a relationship with her mother
• An-Mei’s mother was raped by Wu-Tsing and
agreed to become his fourth wife in order to
avoid a bad reputation for being intimate
with another man
• An-mei’s mother has a son with Wu-Tsing, but
the the second wife claims him as her own
• An-Mei’s mother commits suicide by
poisoning herself
• After the death of her mother, Wu-Tsing
promises to raise An-mei as his own

4. An-Mei’s An-Mei’s mother is Wu-Tsing’s fourth wife only because
Mother + she didn’t want to seem desperate when word got out
that she had been intimate with Wu-Tsing. The
Wu Tsing An-Mei’s
relationship is awkward and resentful. An-Mei’s mother
Mother
and Popo had not
spoken to each
other for years. The
The relationship between An-Mei and her mother relationship is
An-Mei was distant at first, but it was gradually getting closer hateful and angry,
+ up until the point where An-Mei’s mother commits in fact the
Mother suicide. relationship was to
the point where it
was practically
An-Mei’s mother portrays the second wife as fake, after non-existent
An-Mei’s all she is the person who helped trick An-Mei’s mother Popo
Mother + into sleeping at Wu-Tsing’s house, which then lead to
Second Wu-Tsing raping her. Second wife desperately wants to
Wife be better than An-Mei’s mother, therefore causing their
relationship to be tense and competitive.

5. NEW INSIGHTS ON CHARACTERS
• Although Popo believed that she had found new love and disgraced
her deceased husband, An-Mei’s mother didn’t abandon An-Mei
and her brother because she didn’t want to be with them; she was
raped and felt like she had no choice other than to marry Wu-Tsing.
• The Second Wife was not as kind as she had seemed when she gave
An-Mei a pearl necklace; she had been faking suicide to get more
money from Wu-Tsing. Also, her baby boy, Syaudi, is actually An-Mei’s
mother’s baby with Wu-Tsing.

6. SYMBOLS
• Second Wife’s Pearl Necklace- Although it looked like a pearl
necklace on the outside, it was actually fake and just made from
glass beads. The pearl necklace is a symbol, because it outlines a
metaphor; although people may seem genuine on the outside,
that doesn’t always mean that the aren’t fake on the inside.
• Coo Coo Clock- The clock displayed two women serving a man
with soup and music. An-Mei said that she eventually learned to
block out that annoying clock, like other meaningless things calling
to her. The clock is a symbol of An-Mei learning to block out the
Chinese traditions of women serving men to make them happy.