Summary of The Bonesetter’s Daugter

Chapter 1
Introduction

The Bonesetter’s Daugter is a fiction story written by Amy Tan, she was born in Oakland, California, on February 19, 1952. She is a famous Chinese American woman writer in American literary. She extanded her gratitude for her dear friend and editor, the late, great Faith Sale, to her writing teacher and mentor, Molly giles, and also for all who have the help, kindness, and protection of the novel.
The novel published in 2001 and it is Amy Tan's fourth novel. There are three parts which consists some chapters in every part in this novel which told about many things, how the past shapes the present, how family and cultural history influence the direction of the future. And also about the importance of language and memory, the relationship of words and perception and experience. Most of all, about mothers and daughters.
There are two major stories in this novel. The first is about Ruth, a Chinese-American woman living in San Francisco. She worries that her elderly mother, Lu Ling, is gradually becoming more and more demented. Lu Ling seems increasingly forgetful, and makes bizarre comments about her family and her own past. The second major story is that of Lu Ling herself, as written for Ruth, her daughter. Several years earlier, Lu Ling had written out her life story in China. Ruth arranges to have the document translated, and learns the truth about her mother's life in China. There is friction because Ruth does not understand her mother. Her mother is from China and after moving to America held on to a lot of her Chinese Culture. LuLing has been in the United States for almost 50 years yet doesn't speak or understand English that well. LuLing is also secretive of her past. All these situations lead to a very strained relationship that leave both Ruth and LuLing feeling unappreciated and misunderstood by one another.




Chapter2
Point of view

Point of view comes in three varietiens,which the english scholars have handily numbered for your convinience :
First-person view
In a first-person narrative the story is relayed by a narrator who is also a character within the story, so that the narrator reveals the plot by referring to this viewpoint character as "I”,”me”,”my”,and “mine" (or, when plural, "we"). Oftentimes, the first-person narrative is used as a way to directly convey the deeply internal, otherwise unspoken thoughts of the narrator. Frequently, the narrator's story revolves around him-/herself as the protagonist and allows this protagonist/narrator character's inner thoughts to be conveyed openly to the audience, even if not to any of the other characters. It also allows that character to be further developed through his/her own style in telling the story. First-person narrations may be told like third-person ones, with a person experiencing the story without being aware that they are actually conveying their experiences to an audience; on the other hand, the narrator may be conscious of telling the story to a given audience, perhaps at a given place and time, for a given reason. In extreme cases, the first-person narration may be told as a story within a story, with the narrator appearing as a character in the story. The first-person narrator also may or may not be the focal character.
Second-person view
Probably the rarest mode in literature (though quite common in song lyrics) is the second-person narrative mode, in which the narrator refers to one of the characters as "you", therefore making the audience member feel as if he or she is a character within the story. Another common place to see this is in preschool television shows in which characters will tell the audience to follow them, or ask the audience questions. Second-person narrative mode is often paired with the first-person narrative mode in which the narrator makes emotional comparisons between the thoughts, actions, and feelings of "you" versus "I". Often the narrator is also a character in his or her story, in which case it would technically still be employing the first-person narrative mode; an example of this form is A Song of Stone by Iain Banks.
In letters and greeting cards, the second-person narrative mode is often used in a non-fictional atmosphere.
Third-person view
Third-person narration provides the greatest flexibility to the author and thus is the most commonly used narrative mode in literature. In the third-person narrative mode, each and every character is referred to by the narrator as "he", "she", "it", or "they", but never as "I" or "we" (first-person), or "you" (second-person). In third-person narrative, it is necessary that the narrator be merely an unspecified entity or uninvolved person that conveys the story, but not a character of any kind within the story being told. Third-person singular (he/she) is overwhelmingly the most common type of third-person narrative, although there have been successful uses of the third-person plural (they), as in Maxine Swann's short story "Flower Children". Even more common, however, is to see singular and plural used together in one story, at different times, depending upon the number of people being referred to at a given moment in the plot. Sometimes in third-person narratives, a character would refer to himself in the third-person e.g., "(Character name) would like to come with you".[citation needed]
The third-person modes are usually categorized along two axes. The first is the subjectivity/objectivity axis, with "subjective" narration describing one or more character's feelings and thoughts, while "objective" narration does not describe the feelings or thoughts of any characters. The second axis is between "omniscient" and "limited", a distinction that refers to the knowledge available to the narrator. An omniscient narrator has omniscient knowledge of time, people, places and events; a limited narrator, in contrast, may know absolutely everything about a single character and every piece of knowledge in that character's mind, but it is "limited" to that character—that is, it cannot describe things unknown to the focal character.
In the Bonesetter’s Daugter novel,the writer using more than one point of view.
The first she is using first person point of view,we can analyst from using “i,me or my” to tell about story
For example
I suppose most people want to write their own book  (page 29)
I used to be in communication.the I stared freelance editing,and a few years ago I took on more full-scale book collaboration......(page 28)
“I made my face and heart a stone wall. “Yes”. I lied. Precious Auntie sighed, relieved. This was the first time she had believed a lie of mine.(page:198)
“I instantly revived from the listlessness of the heat and my hunger.”(page:199)
 I hope so,because i was just about to call the police to get a restraining order (page 52)
I hope you will still forgive me.please knowthat my life has been miserable ever since you left me.that is why i ask you to take my life,but to spare my doughter if the curse cannot be changed ( page 80)

And other point of view that narrator use to tell about story is third person point of view because we can find the narrator use “she” to tell about main character.
Hadn’t she told her mother fu-fu had died?she must have have or ard had.(page 62)
She was nearly yanked from this life and on har way to the yellow springs...(page 75)
Mouth! ”her mother cried,tracing over the square.”that’s the character for’mouth’she stared at ruth.(page 80)
“She thought everyone must secretly do the same, but no one talked openly about it except her mother.”(page:112)
“Buth as Ruth reached for the old towels, she found she could not get rid of them any more than her mother could.’(page: 139)





Chapter3
Plot
Plot is a literary term defined as the events that make up a story, particularly as they relate to one another in a pattern, in a sequence, through cause and effect, or by coincidence. One is generally interested in how well this pattern of events accomplishes some artistic or emotional effect. An intricate, complicated plot is called an imbroglio, but even the simplest statements of plot may include multiple inferences, as in traditional ballads.
The plot from the novel The Bonesetter’s Daughter is flashback in the begin of story
For example
“For the past eighty years, always starting on August twelfth, Ruth Young lost her voice.”(page:9)
“During the peak of the Perseids, around August 12th, hundreds of ‘shooting’ or ‘falling’ stars streak the sky every hour.”(page:9)
Then, in the middle story the narator retell about Ruth in the last time when she was in kindergarten.
 For example:
“The next day, Ruth was playing in the schoolyard. Her mother was on the other side of the yard, monitoring other kids.”(page:71)
“At the end of the day, Ruth’s mother went to her classroom to pick her up. Miss Sondegard took LuLing aside, and Ruth had to act as though she were not listening.”(page:75)

and other pages the story back to normal.
The next morning,baby uncle came back with three stemfuls of lychees for precious auntie as a gift of appreciation.(page 175)
Baby uncle went to fortune teller in the mouth of the mountain,an old lady with a face more wrinkled than her palm(page 176)

Chapter4
Theme
In contemporary literary studies, a theme is the central topic, subject, or concept addressed in a story, not to be confused with whatever message, moral, or commentary it may send or be interpreted as sending regarding said concept (i.e., its inferred "thesis"). While the term "theme" was for a period used to reference "message" or "moral," literary critics now rarely employ it in this fashion,[citation needed] namely due to the confusion it causes regarding the common denotation of theme: "[t]he subject of discourse, discussion, conversation, meditation, or composition; a topic. One historic problem with the previous usage was that readers would frequently conflate "subject" and "theme" as similar concepts, a confusion that the new terminology helps prevent in both scholarship and the classroom. Thus, according to recent scholarship and pedagogy, identifying a story's theme—for example, "death"—does not inherently involve identifying the story's thesis or claims about "death's" definitions, properties, values, or significance. Like morals or messages, themes often explore historically common or cross-culturally recognizable ideas and are almost always implied rather than stated explicitly. Along with plot, character, setting, and style, theme is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction.
The Mother-Daughter Bond

           Ruth’s bond to her demented, depressed, and isolated mother overcame the dictates of pragmatic culture and she finally succeeded where LuLing failed: showing her love to her mother as a daughter before her time was up.
“Ruth felt a twinge in her chest. It quickly grew into an ache. She wanted to embrace her mother, shield her, and at the same time wanted her mother to cradle her, to assure her that she was okay, that she had not had a stroke or worse. That was how her mother had always been, difficult, oppressive, and odd. And in exactly that way, LuLing had loved her. Ruth knew that, felt it. No one could have loved her more. Better perhaps, but not more.”(page 59).
Even from across the big room, Ruth could see that LuLing was beaming at her with motherly adoration. This gave Ruth heart pangs, made her both happy and sad to see her mother on this special day. (page 90)

Chapter5
Conclusion

The Bonesetter’s Daugter is a fiction story written by Amy Tan, she was born in Oakland, California, on February 19, 1952. She is a famous Chinese American woman writer in American literary.this novel using two types of point of view to tell this novel.the first narrator use first person point of view.we can analyst from “i or my to tell main character” and narrator use third person point of view because writer use “she and her”to tell about main character.beside that The Bonesetter’s Daugter using flashback technique as the plot because the writer begun to tell the story on August twelfth and then she jumps to write the situation when she was in kindergarten. And the theme in this novel is about the Mother and daughter bond.

REFERENCES :

•    Tan, Amy. 2001. The Bonesetter’s Daughter. New York : The Ballantine Publishing Group.
•    Klarer, Mario. 2004 . An Introduction To Literary Studies. Second Edition : London and Nev . Routledge.