Objects of the Study

22

CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY

This chapter contains three parts. They are objects of the study, approach of the study, and method of the study. The objects of the study concern the novels analyzed namely The Bonesetter’s Daughter and The Joy Luck Club. The approach of the study deals with the approach used in analyzing these two novels. The method of the study presents the steps in doing this research.

A. Objects of the Study

The objects of the study are The Bonesetter’s Daughter and The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan. The Bonesetters Daughter, published in 2001, is Amy Tans fourth novel. It consists of 403 pages. This novel deals with the relationship between an American-born Chinese woman and her immigrant mother. The Bonesetters Daughter is divided into two major stories. The first part of the novel tells about Ruth, a Chinese-American woman living in San Francisco. LuLing, her mother, seems to be increasingly forgetful, and often makes bizarre comments about her family and her own past. Ruth has “neglected” her mother for a moment because she thinks that her mother was so different even in their perception about life. Ruth feels that they cannot go along as mother and daughter. In many things they do not understand each other and Ruth herself cannot understand her mother and how she thinks. However, in the end of the first story, Ruth tries to understand her mother, to know more the background of her mother and why her mother becomes so strange. She becomes aware because of her mother’s sickness and she feels that she loves her mother. The second part of the novel is about LuLing herself, as written for Ruth. Several years earlier, LuLing had written out her life story in Chinese. She told about her experiences and all things she experienced in Chinese language. Ruth arranges to have the document translated into English and learns the truth about her mothers life in China. World War II in this novel split between the “then” of 1930s and 1940s China and the “now” of 1990s San Francisco. The second novel, The Joy Luck Club, published in 1989 as the first novel of Amy Tan, consists of sixteen interlocking stories. It consists of 332 pages. It is about the lives of four Chinese immigrant women and their four American-born daughters. The stories told in this novel revolve around the Joy Luck Club mah jong games group women and their daughters. There are Suyuan Woo and Jing- mei Woo, Lindo Jong and Waverly Jong, An Mei Hsu and Rose Hsu Jordan, and Ying-ying St. Clair and Lena St. Clair. One series of stories focuses on Suyuan Woo, who comes to America in 1947. She had lost her family, including her twin daughters, during war. She does not know that her daughters were rescued. She is remarried and settles in San Francisco. She has a daughter, Jing-mei June and starts a Joy Luck Club similar to the one in China with three other women. The four form strong friendship. Actually in 1949, the four women immigrants meet at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco and agree to continue to meet to play mah jong. They call their mah jong group the Joy Luck Club. Each of the four Chinese women has her own view of the world based on her experiences in China and wants to share that vision with her daughter. As she grows up, Jing-mei and her mother often struggle to understand each other. Not only Jing-mei but all of the daughters Waverly, Rose, and Lena try to understand and appreciate their mothers pasts, adapt to the American way of life, and win their mothers acceptance. Jing-mei and her mother never completely resolve their differences and problems, and Suyuan dies unexpectedly. At the next meeting of the Joy Luck Club, her mother’s friends tell Jing-mei that Suyuan’s twin daughters have been found. They give her a check so she can visit them. As the novel ends, she meets her twin sisters in Shanghai. This novel also describes how the relationship between the mothers Suyuan, An Mei Hsu, Lindo, and Ying-ying with their mother. It tells their past experience about family especially with their moms. Most of them have bad experience and bad example of family, which could be the cause of the bad relationship between them and their daughter.

B. Approach of the Study