The Color Purple Vs. the Joy Luck Club

The Color Purple is a biased, unbalanced view into the life of black women during the early to mid-nineteen hundreds. While it is obvious that a woman who in her own right is racist, chauvinist, and ignorant to the way that the world really works wrote the novel, it has been requested that the class write a paper on the story. Whilst this writer does not agree with this novel or anything that Alice Walker thinks or feels, obligingly this paper is been written. The Color Purple and the Joy Luck Club had many similarities, the most notably the presence of weak, ill bred, and quite frankly embarrassing male characters.

The most obvious example of one of these unfortunate male characters is of course Albert from the Color Purple. Throughout the novel, Albert is portrayed as an abusive agitator whose main concerns are money, sex, and making sure things are in their “place”.

“Dear God, Harpo ast his daddy why he beat me. Mr. ________ say, Cause she my wife.” (Walker, 23)

Only the most ignorant of men, even if they believed this would make that reply, fueling the fire that this author feels to have Alice Walker burned at the stake. Especially considering that Alice herself admitted that she does not think fondly of the male race. Albert, throughout the book, is in no way portrayed as a good man until the very end when his whole world comes crumbling down because Celie finally stood up for herself and left with Shug. This writer feels that this is indirectly saying that men are weak and can not function in life without a “strong Woman” to guide them. I will add personally that a woman does not make a man, actions and attitude make a man. That being said, Albert is not a good man, but he realizes this and changes his ways towards the end of the story which I feel deserves him a great deal of respect.

Having slandered Alice Walker like that, this writer cannot overlook the fact that Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club does not convey a flattering view on men. While all of her male characters are minors ones at best, each one conveys a different distinct shortcoming. Harold, Lena’s husband, is completely oblivious to his wife’s feelings making him self-centered. After viewing the list of expenses on the refrigerator Lena’s mother and her had a discussion about it;

“Why do you do this?”

My mother has a wounded tone in her voice […]

“So we can eliminate false dependacies…be equals…love without obligation…” But these are words she can never understand. So instead I tell my mother this: “I don’t really know. It’s something we started before we got married. And for some reason we never stopped.” (Tan 177)

It is clear from the tone of the discussion that the idea hurts Lena inside, especially since she makes less than Harold. Amy Tan wrote it this way so that the reader would pity Lean and see Harold as a money grubbing bastard.

Rich is the second example of a weak male character in The Joy Luck Club, and his main flaw is gross ignorance. His new live in girlfriend is Waverly. An entire section of the book is dedicated to the first meeting between Rich and Waverly’s mother and father. During the entire section, Rich makes one blunder after another. He brought a lovely bottle of red wine for dinner, not knowing that the Chinese do not stereotypically drink wine. He fumbled with the chopsticks, took huge portions and refused seconds, and regrettably added a hefty amount of soy sauce to all of the food. In possibly the biggest blunder of the night not only did he call “Lindo and Tin Jong by their first names but he butchered them calling them Linda and Tim. At the end of the night his ignorance came into play again;

I