Four Directions

Focusing on: Four Directions

The Truth

I was entertained and sometimes bewildered by Lindo Jong's strong and sharp remarks. Despite her harshness, I was somehow able to completely understand why she said such things and what she was trying to say. Her words were real, the truth. This was especially emphasized in the scene in which Lindo was complaining out loud in the restaurant. Though some may think she was absolutely crazy, she was actually just stating harsh facts out loud. She was exposing the truth, blurting out statements that totally made sense, even if it was in an unusual and rude way. I believe that this chapter expressed the fact that "the truth hurts." Another major reaction that I had towards this chapter was annoyance. I felt this way not only towards this chapter, but towards every chapter that dealt with the adult lives of the second generation daughters. In contrast to their mothers' strong-bound marriages, their marriages seemed careless, weak, and powered by emotions, money, etc. For example, while Lindo was in a life or death situation when she ran away from her tragic arranged marriage with Tyan-yu, her daughter, Waverly was in the process of doubting her second marriage, because she started seeing flaws in Rich. Divorces seemed to be a normal, reasonable way to settle problems for the daughters, while it was an unimaginable, unheard of solution to the mothers... One scene that really made me laugh was when Waverly describes her mother as being, "an old woman, a wok for her armor, a knitting needle for her sword, getting a little crabby as she waited patiently for her daughter to invite her in." My view of Lindo became slightly deformed after I read this, because it made me imagine her as being defenseless,cute in comparison to hot headed, thin.

One adjective to describe the relationship between Waverly and Shoshana is "invinsible". Even though Waverly was determined to get an abortion, she was unable to when see learned that premature babies had translucent fingers that were "clinging for life, grasping for a chance." Despite her boredom and hates toward her first husband, Marvin, Waverly was able to love and adore Shosana unconditionally because her feelings, "for [Shoshana] were inviolable."

One writing technique that Amy Tan uses in this chapter is hyperbole. An example of this is shown on p.197, when she says, "And he proceeded to pour a riverful of the salty black stuff on the platter..." Her use of hyperbole exagerrated the fact that he poured a lot of soy sauce on his plate. She also used hyperbole to emphasize the importance of this scene, which expressed that telling a proud Chinese woman that her cooking was missing something, was an unseen and horrifying thing to do.

One thing that I learned about the Chinese culture in this chapter is that it is polite to pretend that you are lacking something, and that as the second person, you have to compliment that person and pretend that what that person is saying about themself is wrong. An example of this was shown in the scene in which Rich came over to Lindo's house and said, " 'You know, all it needs is a little soy sauce,' " in response to her Chinese humbleness-filled comments of, " 'Ai! This dish not salty enough, no flavor.' " Rich was the only one who did not know what he had done wrong, suggesting that this kind of process was common only in the Chinese culture.