Response to “Double Face”

     When I read the chapter “Double Face” of Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan, one thing came into my mind. Did Waverly really resemble her mother Lindo? In what way she did so? Physically or psychologically? I think after reading this chapter that Waverly resembled her mother physically than psychologically. People around them also found similarity between their faces. Lindo once suddenly noticed that there was a slight difference between their faces that Waverly owned a crooked nose by born, whereas Lindo had the crooked nose only after her accident. The crooked nose of her daughter made her upset as she believed that a crooked nose brought bad luck. The other thing is that there was an obvious mental difference between the Americanized daughter Waverly and the traditional Chinese mother Lindo. Lindo was upset that her daughter Waverly didn’t learn how to behave with parents and understand her own mother. It hurt Lindo when her daughter Waverly was talking with Mr. Rory as if she was not there, but Waverly did not understand it. On the other side, Lindo understood her mother very well. That’s why, when her mother treated her coldly, she didn’t mind. She understood that her mother was helpless in the society as she was a woman. Lindo could understand that her mother loved her very much, whereas Waverly did not understand her mother love. Moreover, she misunderstood that her mother just wanted to show her off, but in real her mother was just proud of her. We see in this chapter that though Lindo was always proud of her daughter, her daughter Waverly felt shame for her mother’s appearance which hurt Lindo so much. In addition, Waverly thought that one thing matched in their faces and that was their “devious face.” She also thought that it helped them to get what they wanted, but Lindo thought that she could not keep her double face in front of her own country people which meant Chinese People.

     I think that Lindo’s thought was right. When people has been lived in a foreign country for many years, their accent, behavior, gesture all becomes changed. That’s why, it is easy for the country people, which country they are from, to recognize whether those people are their people or not. In this case, the double face of a person doesn’t work.

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