Joy Luck Club Post #3

   While reading this section of The Joy Luck Club, I found that many of the characters are easy to relate  to, especially being a teenage girl in high school. Throughout the course of the day, teenagers overcome numerous obstacles and still manage to keep a smile on their face. Lena St. Clair and her husband have some obvious problems in their marriage, but they smile to cover it up. "None of our friends could ever believe we fight over something as stupid as fleas, but they would also never believe that our problems are much, much deeper than that, so deep I don't even know where bottom is," (163). Their marriage is barely hanging on by a thread, but to everyone else they appear to be happy and in love. That was easy to relate to, because I usually find myself smiling to conceal any obstacles that I find myself trying to overcome daily. Another point in the book that many people in America, girls especially, could relate to is when Lena finds herself skipping meals to be thin to be "fashionably anorexic like all the other thirteen-year-old girls who were dieting and finding other ways to suffer as teenagers," (166). Many endure endless pressures to be thinner, more fit, and to just look better in general which can even drive some to stop eating all together as it did to Lena. Lena St. Clair was a very relatable character as she talks about many of the struggles that she gets through everyday.