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Dramatic Irony
Part 1, Chapter 4: The Moon Lady
Explanation and Analysis—Remembering Foolishness:
Ying-Ying St. Clair begins her first chapter with an admission of forgetfulness: for many years, “I forgot what I wished for,” she explains in Part 1, Chapter 4. One sentence later, she pulls the reader into the past:
But now I remember the wish, and I can recall the details of that entire day, as clearly as I see my daughter and the foolishness of her life.
The flashback summons the narrative back to the summer day in “1918, the year that I was four.” The present-tense reflection dissolves into a richly retrospective account as Ying-Ying recalls a childhood Moon Festival. Buried memories return with a sudden, striking vividness. Ying-Ying lingers over the “tiny embroidered peonies growing from curlicues of gold thread,” the household’s stir of excitement, the water’s “cool comfort” and then the dawning sense of dread. Through flashback, she opens a portal for herself and the reader into the past.
Ying-Ying’s evocative use of flashback is a common technique throughout the novel. Almost every chapter inevitably flits to the past as the women recount humorous childhood episodes, failed marriages, and terrible secrets. The novel’s narrators remember by retracing. Jing-Mei revisits her piano lessons with Old Chong, and Rose returns to Devil’s Slide. An-Mei replays the slow trip to Tientjin while Ying-Ying admits that she killed her firstborn child. They populate the novel with shocking disclosures and newly released secrets.
In taking the reader through time, flashbacks contribute to the novel’s impulse towards fantasy. It supplements the stories of bad husbands and elemental imbalances by building a sense of dreaminess within the accounts themselves. Additionally, they demonstrate history’s firm grip over the characters. The past, Tan suggests, continues to inform the present.
Related Themes:
