... located. They want Jing- Mei to go and meet them, for it would answer Suyuan's dream. This opening chapter is very significant, for it explains the meaning of the book's title and introduces several of the themes. Jing-Mei explains how her mother, Suyuan, started the first Joy Luck ... women who belong meet together to play mahjong, gossip, share their oriental culture, and support one another. Key themes are also established in this chapter. The first is the pain caused by lack of communication. Jing-Mei and her mother, Suyuan, often have difficulty communicating. Being very traditional...

• Word Count: 6459
• Approx Pages: 26
• Grade Level: High School

... detail, first as a mother giving birth and then as a ghost begging for scraps. The most interesting and imaginative stylistic techniques of the chapter are Kingston's metaphors, such as the round cakes and doorways meant to represent the "circle" or "roundness" of Chinese life "the ... complimentary descriptions are all, we presume, given to Moon Orchid by her sister, Brave Orchid. Indeed, Brave Orchid spends much of the chapter criticizing her own children for being impolite and for not respecting or understanding Chinese customs. Brave Orchid is equally critical of both her own ... K...

• Word Count: 6134
• Approx Pages: 25

... effectiveness? Why? 8 8. What patterns have you discovered in the text (plot development, characterization)? ...8-9 9. What surprised you about the book? Why? .. 10. What confuses you about the book or makes you wonder? .. Part 1 1. After reading the opening chapter of Angela's Ashes, I felt that the book that the author had gone through a lot of things in his childhood, from moving to Ireland from New York. On ... family. " nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire-(McCourt 11). The first chap...

• Word Count: 2588
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: High School

... its limits, and as youthful ideals finally find fruition. Angela's ashes do not actually feature in the film, although they do in the book. The ashes are the remains of a coal fire, since expired, in the family kitchen. Angela, the mother, after years of disappointments ... parental homeland, the oldest child of a father whose background in "the North" engenders continual suspicion, and a mother (Angela of the book's title) who had never known her father and whose own mother is as miserly with her affections as with offers of economic assistance. The ... this a great country altogethe...

• Word Count: 3537
• Approx Pages: 14
• Grade Level: High School

... that where the Bosket family's existence began is around the same time that violence was at an all-time high as well as slavery. So the book starts off in South Carolina in the Edgefield County where the American Revolution just ended. Whites and blacks are not getting along due to slavery. The ... peons but then in 1867 the Southern states were forced to give African Americans to vote (Butterfield, F., 2008). Also in the beginning stages of this chapter the whites began to become enraged due to the fact that blacks were given the right to vote and there were more blacks in the population...

• Word Count: 3198
• Approx Pages: 13
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School