Joy Luck Club Onion Peel

In The Joy Luck Club, something prevalent throughout the movie is sacrifice.  Especially the mothers.  The mothers constantly sacrifice their own lives and desires in order to better the lives of their children, or to set an example for them to follow.  For example, An-mei’s mother sacrifices pain and flesh from her arm to honor her own mother, Popo. It is as though the pain is nothing compared to her obligation to her mother. An-mei Hsu's mother also sacrifices her body to Wu Tsing so that she can have at least some status instead of becoming a beggar. She does this so that An-mei can look up to her. Her suicide, while seemingly selfish, is the ultimate sacrifice she can make for An-mei. By killing herself, she is showing An-mei that being a second-rate concubine, used and disgraced, is no way to live. In dying, she gives An-mei the strength to carve her own path in life, and to not follow one like hers.  In China, Ying-Ying St. Clair was married to Lin-Xiao with a baby boy until Lin-Xiao abuses her and abandons her for an opera singer. Overcome by her depression, Ying-Ying accidentally drowns her baby son in the bathtub, she lost "the thing that mattered the most."  Many years later when Ying-Ying goes to America and remarries, she see that her daughter Lena is unhappy with her marriage, Ying-Ying reasserts herself by knocking over a table in the bedroom and causing the vase to fall from the table and break. Lena goes to her mother and admits her unhappiness. Ying-Ying replies that Lena should leave and not come back until Harold gives her what she wants.  She says this as she herself was in a bad marriage, causing lots of trauma and sadness for her.  She does not want Lena to go through the same thing (of not having love for her husband and constantly doing things the way he wants).  The mothers in the movie not only make a great sacrifice in leaving China in hopes of finding a better life for their daughters, but also make great sacrifice in trying to make them better people and have them lead better lives.