Summarizer

Beginning-131 (Thuy) Pearl and her mother, Winnie, is a Chinese mother and daughter. They do not get along very well and frequently clashed. Aunt Helen wishes for them reveal the secrets they both hold and jumps at the opportunity to force them together at her son’s marriage and Grand Aunt Du’s funeral when they are both in the same place. Aunt Helen believes that she is about to die soon due to a brain tumor and wants to clear herself of secrets before she dies. She threatens Pearl to share with her mother that she has multiple sclerosis, a disease that could leave her crippled or she would tell Winnie herself. Pearl, on the other hand, does not want her mother to rant about her disease forever which makes her reluctant to tell. At Grand Aunt Du’s funeral, Pearl starts crying much to everyone’s surprise, but her mother knew that she was crying for her father who had died long ago because she was unable to cry then. On her departure back home, she is given the Kitchen God’s altar, Grand Aunt Du gift to her. After Winnie had dinner with Aunt Helen, Aunt Helen wants her to tell Pearl the secrets of the past she has kept hidden, or Aunt Helen would do it herself. Winnie is afraid Aunt Helen would mix up the story and exaggerate. Her past involved a man named Lin that she could have married, but instead married a bad man, Helen is not her sister-in-law, the luck of her friends, and the tragedies of her family. Winnie comes home and she begins to clean her house thoroughly to forget. As she goes through Pearl’s things, she decides to tell her, and calls Pearl to her house. She begins the story about her own mother, whose mysterious disappearance left her confused and lonely.

Pearl and her mother are definitely not the best of friends, but through Aunt Helen they began sharing what they have kept from one another. The breaking point in their relationship had been the death of her father, when her mother believed Pearl had been an uncaring daughter because she had not cried. “Because right then I realized I was wrong. Right away I wanted to call Pearl and tell her, ‘Now I know. You were sad. You were crying, if not outside, then inside. You loved your daddy’” (Tan 97). Winnie had tried to force Pearl to cry not knowing that she had been crying all along and that made her see her daughter as a bad daughter causing misunderstandings to build up. Now that she knows this, she wants to tell Pearl and talk with her, heart-to-heart. Also because of Winnie’s mother suddenly leaving her without an answer, she is trying to be a good mother to Pearl and guide her because she never had guidance from her own mother. “It is the same pain I have had for many years. It comes from keeping everything inside, waiting until it is too late. I think my mother had gave me this fault, the same kind of pain. She left me before she could tell me why she was leaving” (Tan 102). She did not want to leave without an explanation or hurt her daughter in anyway. She tries to teach her, hoping that her life would be full of good luck, but this comes off to Pearl as nagging and pushing her only further away from her mother.

132-201 (Johnny Dennis) Over the next few chapters, Winnie relates to her life in China before the Communists dominated. She grew up in a rich family. She grew up with her spoiled cousin, a girl named Peanut. As a child, she "was not neglected, Peanut just got better of everything," because she was the youngest in the family(Tan 192). Against her family's wishes, she marries Wen Fu, when they wanted her to marry Lin, whom she had known for a very long time. She tells people Helen was her sister-in-law, when in reality she was not. Her half-brother married someone else, and he died before the war started.

202-296 (Kate) The character of Gan plays an important role in these chapters because of what he represents. First of all, he is the first man for whom Winnie has been able to have tender feelings. She was not//in love// with him, though he was in love with her. Nevertheless, it was a relationship that could have developed into love and one that serves as a foil for Winnie's relationship with Wen Fu. Gan is a foil for Wen Fu in that Gan is the "good man," while Wen Fu is the "bad man." Amy Tan has been criticized for her lack of male character development, while Gan is sanctified, and there seems to be no in-between. Whereas, the women in the novel are full characters capable of a range of emotions, as illustrated by Winnie's confession about wanting Wen Fu to die in battle. And, as is also evidenced by the relationship between Helen and Winnie, women can develop a relationship that is true to life and far from perfect. They have an almost familial tie that binds, so much so that their lie (that Helen is her sister/sister-in-law) is almost true. And yet, there are constant tensions between the two, which are difficult to reconcile. Another element that Gan brings to the book is that of prophecy and luck. Gan believes that the ghost he has seen has told him the truth, which is that he will die before reaching the age of twenty-four and that he will suffer nine bad fates before that death. This prophecy does in fact come true and this "spiritualism," for lack of a better word, permeates throughout the novel. In fact, Pearl remembers a time when she had thought she saw a ghost and instead of her mother comforting her, her mother said: "Where?" Again, Tan is bringing her Chinese culture and background into the novel and mixing it with her American experiences and her English language.The subject of food, which exists throughout the novel, also surfaces in this section. Winnie uses her own dowry money to feed her husband and his pilot friends, and she chooses the foods she will serve them with care—she chooses "lucky" foods. Many of the moments in which food is shared are happy moments in the lives of the characters. In fact, Gan's friendship with Winnie develops as a result of these dinners. Food unties and brings love. And yet, at every dinner there are less and less soldiers sharing this food. And, many of them eat as if it may be their last meal. And so this joy is mixed with fear, and the nutrients and pleasure that food brings are mixed with the anxiety of loss.

297-398 (Thuy) The team of people are slowly moving towards their destination, Kunming. On their arrival, they found a house and try to live to the fullest, with the thought it might be the last day. WeiWei was quite big with her baby at nine months. However,one day while she was doing her sewing, she dropped a pair of scissors which fell and stuck to the ground. It is considered bad luck to drop scissors. Her baby baby died shortly after and she was afraid of using scissors again. Once she decided to use scissors once again, she went to the market for a new pair. While there, she tips the table holding the scissors at the market and all the scissors fell. That day she found out that her husband is in the hospital due to an accident and then a few days later, she finds out there is a possibility he could be fired for taking the army jeep without permission. Since Wen Fu has been in the hospital, he has become increasingly cruel to her. One night he struck and humiliated her in front of guests, while everyone just watched. He now brings other women home, not ashamed at all. By now WeiWei has another baby girl. She was a smart child, but faced Wen Fu's anger one day. She was crying and he slapped multiple times for her to stop and after that she never seemed to be the same again. After a while Yiku, the baby girl, was awfully sick. WeiWei tries to tell the doctor who was with Wen Fu, but Wen Fu brushed her aside, claiming that she was exaggerating. Later that day, Yiku died. WeiWei has another baby, this time a boy. When she comes home from the hospital, she sees a strange woman and meets Aunt Du. She soon gets along with this woman although she is the latest interest of Wen Fu. She, soon, was driven away. WeiWei and Helen were at the market one day when Japanese bombs were dropped and they ran towards the nearest gate. This, too, became daily routine. One day, WeiWei decides to take Danru, the baby boy, and run away. She does this with the help of Helen and Aunt Du, but is found by her husband because of Helen. When he finds her, she is faced with the worst treatment.

This part of the story seems to be about trust and her will power to fight, but only to fall back again. She is always saying "Poor Danru. He trusted me" (Tan 398). She believes that her children trusts her to protect them from the cruelty of her husband. She has not always been able to do this, letting Yiku die and trying to take Danru away only to be found. She feels as if she betrayed her children, but at the same time believed they have went on to a better place than the live she gave them. Always many times, she tries to stand up to her husband and try to make him stop. "When Wen Fu came home that night, I showed him my anger for the first time" (Tan 330). She hopes that he would see what he has done is wrong, but instead he gets angry. "Hit me, I still won't change!" (Tan 331). Although he threatens her, she tries to be steady in her point. She tries to protect her children and tries to improver her situation and hopes her husband sees things in her view. She fails in this, but lost something even worse, she gave in to Wen Fu.