Waverly Jong: Four Directions and Rose Hsu Jordan: Without Wood; The Joy Luck Club- Amy Tan; apostrophe

     In these two chapters there is a common theme involved; Waverly and Rose, with their mothers, both come to a deeper understanding of each other.  Another similarity between the chapters is an apostrophe which is a figure of speech dealing with something abstract.  Waverly's friend Marlene told Waverly to just tell her mom to shut up, so she could live her life.  Waverly's response was this,

" 'Well, I don't know if it's explicitly stated in the law, but you can't ever tell a Chinese mother to shut up.  You could be charged as an accessory to your own murder.' "

This is an apostrophe; Waverly refers to something abstract.  In this case she is referring to part of the Chinese culture, in which, one does not silence a mother.  A stronger apostrophe can be found in Rose's story.  Rose talks of an old Chinese legend, of how when she was young her mother would tell her to go to where Old Mr. Chou is (dreams).   She describes a time in her adulthood when she had a nightmare like this,

"In the dark, I couldn't see Old Mr. Chou, but he said he would find me, and when he did, he would squish me into the ground."

Throughout her life Rose had the wrong idea about Old Mr. Chou.  She thought of him as an evil person and not the friendly one that he really is supposed to be.  Old Mr. Chou is a strong apostrophe; he is an abstract person, imaginary, and does not really exist.  This is like in today's society imaginary friends.  Imaginary friends are like apostrophes, abstract people, they don't really exist.