MovieChat Forums > The Joy Luck Club (1993) Discussion > the mother's suicide

the mother's suicide

posted 15 years ago by Sassy-34
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I haven't seen this movie in a while but a friend mentioned it recently and I was thinking about the scene with the mother who had committed suicide by eating the little cakes that had opium in them. I never did understand in that scene why it was said that her death had given the daughter power because she killed herself at a specific time (during a holiday time or something?). Why would the timing of her suicide be advantageous for the daughter and how come the daughter and her brother became the special/favored children after their mother committed suicide? I didn't understand that part.

[–] LoseIt 15 years ago

It's a Chinese culture difference where most believe strongly in the supernatural and believe in before life and after life. I was raised in Asia, and we do not believe that our spirits are gone when we die. It's not to say that we believe in ghosts, but that spirits float with the living if they believe they have unfinished duties or they seek revenge. Especially at that time, people were incredibly superstitious. Her husband didn't want her spirit to come back and haunt him or ask for payback, so decided to favor her daughter as kind of a trade, I suppose. Even the meanest, greediest person would want to avoid angering the dead.

The supersticious traditions are spread all over the movie. June finds the twin sisters to finish her mother's unfinished duties, so she can finally rest easily as a spirit. And you can see an even more dramatic case with the huang family so easily manipulated by a dream. Dreams are looked at as important messages from spirits, or they always simply have symbolical meaning to your life. We have actually dream analyzers in Asia.

[–] Sassy-34 15 years ago

Thank you! That's very interesting :) I had always wondered about that part of the story.