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Imagery
Definition of Irony
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this seems like a loose definition... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how... read full definition
Part 1, Chapter 3: The Red Candle
Explanation and Analysis—The Lucky Servant:
Stories become Lindo Jong’s saving grace, as she convinces Huang Taitai of their doomed marriage. For the household servant, it is a stroke of great fortune and, for the reader, it provides a particularly comic instance of dramatic irony. Overjoyed at the news, the family servant dedicates herself to pious tribute in the months and years thereafter:
I heard later she was so struck with this miracle of marrying Tyan-yu she became a very religious person who ordered servants to sweep the ancestors’ graves not just once a year, but once a day.
Having been granted inside knowledge, the reader sees through all this. In fact, the servant girl’s sudden good luck is not so much the work of Heaven as it is a mischievous 12-year-old girl. Neither the instructions for her marriage to Tyan-yu nor the prophecies of his death are the least bit true: Lindo has simply strung together an elaborate, fictionalized account of a nightmare in an attempt to end the marriage. According to Lindo, staying in the marriage would set off a “cycle of destruction” and lead to Tyan-yu’s death. She makes fools of her mother-in-law and the bride-to-be, who misinterpret her dream as the work of divine forces rather than the desperately clever ruse it is. Lindo Jong gets a breath of freedom—and a good laugh—out of this rare release.
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Part 4, Chapter 3: Double Face
Explanation and Analysis—McDonald's:
Lindo Jong’s arrival to America allows readers to see the country through a new lens. The Joy Luck Club’s light satire draws upon the immigrant perspective as it finds humor in America’s quirks and flaws. Through pointed observations, Lindo shows the strangeness and irony of American mainstream culture. Her trip to the Cathay House in Part 4, Chapter 3, for instance, is a bafflingly comic experience in itself:
The Cathay House had a sign that said ‘Chinese Food,’ so only Americans went there before it was torn down. Now it is a McDonald's restaurant with a big Chinese sign that says mai dong lou—‘wheat,’ ‘east,’ ‘building.’ All nonsense. Why are you attracted only to Chinese nonsense?
Like the novel’s other satiric moments, Tan’s satire is subtle. Lindo notes the irony that only Americans eat “Chinese Food,” taking a jab at the country’s pathetic attempts at ethnic cuisine. The noted senselessness of the Chinese translation of “McDonald’s” works in similar fashion. By pointing out the “nonsense” of the Chinese characters, Lindo invites a wry smile as she criticizes a culture of globalization and mass consumerism. The Bank of America that faces St. Mary’s, after all, is the real church where “American people worship.”
The same goes for the country’s puritanical parading. Lindo’s mentor advises her to declare before the immigration authorities that she comes to “study religion” for “God’s sake,” a detail that seems to make fun of American religiosity and slightly xenophobic suspicions at once. Along with the absence of any “lasting shame”—tenants sue landlords, meritocracy uplifts the underprivileged, Catholic churches provide—America’s customs and values seem so different from the ones she had known. Lindo’s satire memorably distills the immigrant experience by capturing the surprises, promises, and flaws of her new home.
Related Themes:
