Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club revolves around the story of four Chinese immigrants and the complex relationships they have with their daughters. Throughout the novel, Tan develops the dual cultures these people face: Chinese and American. More than anything, this is a tale about balancing two different identities and the way that plays out in relationships. A prime focus of these themes is in the chapter, “The Voice from the Wall,” where Amy Tan uses metaphors and symbolism to stress the need for greater mutual expression in balanced relationships.
One of the first metaphors that Tan uses is the ghost, which shows how abandoning cultural identity can have lasting impacts. In this chapter, the identity comes in the form of Ying-Ying’s history with her other husband in China. However, she is constantly silenced by her new American husband who often puts “words in her mouth” (106). Ying-Ying accepts her new life in America and tries to forget about her past, complying with her new life and her new partner. Tan represents the nagging persistence of this old identity in the form of “the dead man [that] came back” (102). Thus, Tan demonstrates how emotional suppression can come back to haunt one in the future. Instead of striking a balance between her two different cultures, Ying-Ying killed her Chinese identity, just as her father killed the old beggar. Instead of expressing her feelings, Ying-Ying became American willingly, with the sweep of a pen. Now, because of this, her family still doesn’t understand her.
Additionally, Tan uses the symbol of a secret basement to express Ying-Ying’s secretive attitude towards sharing her past with Lena. When a young Lena accidentally stumbles upon the secret basement, Ying-Ying warns her to “never open the door again” (103). The evil man hidden in the secret basement is Ying-Ying’s emotional turmoil, and she is trying to hide that from her daughter. Instead of opening to her family members, Ying-Ying attempts to run away as this ghost chased her into a secret dark place. She is trying to “rescue” Lena from these inner terrors (103). Tan uses the basement as a symbol of love, for selflessly protecting loved ones from one’s own hidden terrors. The problem is, the ghost never disappears. Instead, it is left inside the basement to fester, and Ying-Ying is left isolated by her own hand.
Similarly, Tan also uses the symbol of the wall to represent the barriers between isolation and outward expression. On the nights after her mother’s tragic miscarriage, Lena would often find comfort in the fact that the “girl next door had a more unhappy life” (113). The people on the other side are portrayed as angry and violent, and she looks down at their emotional outbursts. Tan explicitly states that Lena believes someone is being killed on the other side. Thus, she implies that Lena fears of having a similar kind of open communication with her own mother. Conversely, Lena and her mother must suffer quietly from the “pain of not being seen” (115). In this way, they are suppressing their ghosts out of fear of damaging their relationship. What’s more, Tan provides the wall in this chapter as a cultural barrier, since Ying Ying is literally a “displaced person” (104). She is a Chinese immigrant in a sea of Americans, and she is almost completely isolated. Ying-Ying literally cannot communicate with her husband since they speak different languages. This cultural barrier is the metaphorical wall to expression and the reason why Ying-Ying let American identity take over her life. This wall is partially responsible for why she is now being chased by the ghosts of her past identity. The problem is, once she started running away from the ghosts, she was too scared to even look on the other side. She began to fear the very expression that could save her. She could only hear the sounds coming through the wall, the sounds of a home she wished she had.
Finally, Tan uses the metaphor of torture to represent the fruitlessness of the painstaking build-up of suppressed thoughts. Slowly, Ying-Ying was devoured “piece by piece, until she disappeared and became a ghost” (103). This torturous build up is the death of a thousand cuts, and torture almost always ends with death. The breaking point came with the miscarriage, and the sudden rush of memories and emotions Ying-Ying had. It is here where it becomes evident why Tan uses ghosts to describe the haunting terrors of the past. In common culture, ghosts have the connotation of having the supernatural ability to go through walls. In this case, Tan is referring to the figurative wall. One day, the door to the figurative basement will burst open. And when that happens, one has no choice but to be pulled to the other side. Soon Ying-Ying finally begins to communicate her past to her daughter and tells her the story of everything. She tells her the whole truth about her culture, and realizes that “after this, there is no worst possible thing” (115). Finally, now that the secrets have been spilt and the door open, Lena realizes why she was wrong. She realizes that sharing emotions with other people is a necessary act of selfishness. She realizes that the pain of suppression will finally “one day stop” (115). She realizes that trying to protect someone from the ghost of the past is a failing effort. It can only lead to a slow torture, a pointless death of a thousand cuts, one not worth the pain. In this way, Tan points out that mutual communication in a relationship is always preferred over hiding one’s darkest secrets. It may be hard to find mutual expression of thoughts and culture. It may be hard to correct the imbalances. But when that expression finally happens, the worst possible thing, the death of a thousand cuts, will end at last. (984)