Cultural Conflicts And Compromise:Interpretation Of The Joy Luck Club From The Perspective Of Defamiliarization

Mother-daughter relationships and cultural conflicts and compromise are always heated topics in Amy Tan’s works. The Joy Luck Club as a representative of her works highlights these themes. From the perspective of defamiliarization, this thesis intends to interpret how the art of defamiliarization perfectly reflects cultural conflicts and compromise from three levels:language, form and content.This thesis initially through the analysis of the defamiliarized languages explores the cultural conflicts resulting from the differences of two languages. Besides, the analysis of defamiliarized forms (mah-jong structure, perspective ’I’ and multiple-narrators) demonstrates that mothers and daughters as the representatives of eastern and western cultures respectively yearn for the other’s understanding. Finally, the thesis illustrates the defamiliarized images of mothers and daughters and how the defamiliarized images bridge generational and cultural conflicts.Through the analysis above, this thesis points out that the differences between two languages are the barriers between mothers and daughters and result in the conflicts between two cultures; Defamiliarized forms show that mothers and daughters long for each other’s understandings and finally because of the defamiliarized images of mothers and daughters, two cultures reach to compromise. In the end, the author of this thesis hopes that this thesis will provide a new perspective for the interpretation of literary works dealing with cultural or ethnic conflicts.