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The Joy Luck Club. Literary Techniques. Metaphor. “And when my brother shouted that Auntie was a talking chicken without a head , she pushed my brother against the gate and spat on his face” (Tan 44).
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The Joy Luck Club Literary Techniques
Metaphor • “And when my brother shouted that Auntie was a talking chicken without a head, she pushed my brother against the gate and spat on his face” (Tan 44). • The respect to your elderlies and family members is very significant to the book. Auntie is very strict on the children and has high expectations.
simile • “I tried to keep very still, but my heart felt like crickets scratching to get out of a cage” (Tan 22). • Family is a very important theme in the book. At this point, An-mei sees her mother and old memories come flooding back to her.
personification • “And then the clouds would move just a little and the hills would suddenly become monstrous elephants marching slowly toward me!” (Tan 21). • At this point, the hills and peaks are imagined as objects coming to life.
onomatopoeia • “Outside I could hear the bombing. Boom! Boom!” (Tan 22). • Life was very difficult during the time period of this book. Living in a time of war came along with several hardships.
alliteration • “In those days, before my mother told me her Kweilin story, I imagined Joy Luck was a shameful Chinese custom, like the secret gathering of the Ku Klux Klan or the tom-tom dances of TV Indians preparing for war” (Tan 28). • The Joy Luck Club brought pleasure to the women while they lived in a horrible town. It provided a break from all the negativity,
hyperbole • “I thought up Joy Luck on a summer night that was so hot even the moths fainted to the ground, their wings were so heavy with the damp heat” (Tan 23). • Joy Luck means exactly what it is called. The club brings joy and happiness to the women.
irony • “I was crying and I was afraid she would tell Huang Taitai. So I gave a big smile and shouted, 'What a lucky girl I am. I'm going to have the best life‘” (Tan 50). • The crying needed to be covered up before trouble happened. A fake and cheesy response was given to do so.
foreshadowing • “’What use for?’” asks my mother, jiggling the table with her hand. ‘You put something else on top, everything fall down. Chunwangchihan" (Tan 178). • Amy Tan was foreshadowing the collapse of Lena and Harold’s marriage. Everything was falling down, just like their marriage.
simile • “She backed out of the room, stunned, as if she were blowing away like a small brown leaf, thin, brittle, lifeless” (Tan 153). • Suyuan Woo was very hurt when her daughter said she wished she was never born. She became upset and defeated.
personification • “The chess board seemed to hold elaborate secrets waiting to be untangled. The chess men were more powerful than Old Li’s magic herbs that cured ancestral curses” (Tan 93). • Things were building up. The existing tension needed yo be alleviated.