The “persona” narratives from the book – “Mending Wall,” “After Apple-Picking,” and “The Wood-Pile” – also strive for inclusiveness although they are spoken throughout by a voice we are tempted to call “Frost.” This voice has no particular back-country identity, nor is it obsessed or limited in its point of view; it seems rather to be exploring nature, other people, ideas, ways of saying things, for the sheer entertainment they can provide. Unlike poems such as “Home Burial” and “A Servant to Servants,” which are inclined toward the tragic or the pathetic, nothing “terrible” happens in the personal narratives, nor does some ominous secret lie behind them. In “The Wood-Pile,” for example, almost nothing happens at all; its story, its achieved idea or wisdom, the whole air with which it carries itself, is quite unmemorable. A man out walking in a frozen swamp decides to turn back, then decides instead to go farther and see what will happen. He notes a bird in front of him and spends some time musing on what the bird must be thinking, then sees it settle behind a pile of wood. The pile is described so as to bring out the fact that it has been around for some time. With a reflection about whoever it was who left it there, “far from a useful fireplace,” the poem concludes. And the reader looks up from the text, wonders if he has missed something, perhaps goes back and reads it again to see if he can catch some meaning which has eluded him. But “The Wood-Pile” remains stubbornly unyielding to any attempt at ransacking it for a meaning not evidently on the surface.
This surface is a busy one, as when the speaker meets the bird:
A small bird flew be…
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…essing it, when he has no audience to be bullied or flattered, when he is free, and speech takes one form and no other.” Despite the presence of back-country characters and scenes in this “book of people,” it is as a book of sentence sounds that it most truly exists, as a triumphant vindication of the poetic theory Frost had designed, and as a monument to how much could be accomplished by trusting to the rendering of speech. At the end of “Home Burial,” the wife lashes out at her husband in exasperation: “You – oh, you think the talk is all . . .” But for the composer of these poems, the talk is all, whether that of his imagined characters or of himself speaking aloud.
Works Cited
Frost, Robert. “Mending Wall.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature.
Ed. Julia Reidhead. 5th ed. 2 vols. New York: Norton, 1998.
Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered.
Comparing Chinese Culture in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club and Kitchen God’s Wife
Chinese Culture Exposed in Joy Luck Club and Kitchen God’s Wife
Traditional Chinese customs are described in great detail in Amy Tan’s books. This rich culture adds interesting and mesmerizing detail to the intricate stories of both The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife.
Traditions are apparent throughout all of the stories in The Joy Luck Club. One of the first instances is in the story from Ying-Ying St. Clair entitled “The Moon Lady.” Ying-Ying is describing the Festival of the Moon Lady, a festival dedicated to the lady who lives on the moon and once a year comes down to earth to grant your secret wish–something you want but cannot ask. This excerpt describes proper traditional dress (ornate clothing saved for special occasions), delicious foods such as rabbits feet and mooncakes (saved for special occasions), fireworks, and family gathered all together. This is one of the most richly detailed and culturally authentic stories in the novel.
The other story that strikes the reader as containing vivid culture and tradition is Lindo Jong’s “The Red Candle.” This story, like Winnie Louie’s, describes in great detail the customs of arranged marriages. Lindo Jong begins by talking about the village matchmaker coming to her housewhen she was two years old. The matchmaker, Huang Taitai, looked her over and said, “An earth horse for an earth sheep. This is the best marriage combination.” Lindo says that Huang Taitai looked right through her and saw that she would be a perfect wife–a strong, hard, good worker, eager to please her elders in their old age. Lindo describes what happened next:
This is how I became betrothed to Huang Taitai’s son, who I later discovered was just a baby, o…
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…s not considered a sufficient departure for the deceased.
Traditional Chinese customs are described in great detail in Amy Tan’s books. This rich culture adds interesting and mesmerizing detail to the intricate stories of both The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife.
Works Cited
Conrad, Tammy S. “Creating an Asian-American Mythology: Storytelling in Amy Tan’s Fiction”. Tammy S. Conrad’s Thesis. 1998.
Available: <http://english.ttu.edu/faculty/conrad/thesis.html.
Huntley, E.D. Amy Tan: A Critical Companion. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1998
Tan, Amy. The Kitchen God’s Wife. New York, Ballantine Books, 1991.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Vintage Contemporaries. New York: A Division of Random House, Inc. 1993.
Wu, Shelley. “What is Chinese Astrology” Available: http://www.chineseastrology.com/wu/whatis.html