In The Joy Luck Club, what literary devices are used in the "Four Directions" chapter?

When Waverly's mother specifies that her soup at the restaurant must be served very hot, Waverly says that "it was by her tongue's expert estimate 'not even lukewarm.'" Of course, one's tongue is not actually capable of being an expert or making an estimate, but the tongue works together with one's brain to respond to heat or cold; the whole self is needed to perform this action. Therefore, Waverly uses synecdoche—when one substitutes a part for the whole—to describe her mother's response. It makes Waverly sound rather wry and ironic, as though she is mocking her mother a bit.

Waverly also uses a metaphor—a comparison of two unalike things where one is said to be another—when she describes a telephone that her daughter and her fiancé took apart as "disemboweled." A phone does not actually have bowels, but people do, and this comparison helps to establish the mood of the chapter, as Waverly is feeling uncertain and fearful of her mother's response to her news. This is also an example of personification, or ascribing humanlike qualities in inhuman things.

As the first chapter where Waverly is introduced to us demonstrates, one key aspect of Waverly and her relationship with her mother is the chess game that acts as a powerful symbol of the conflict between them as Waverly grows up and tries to find her independence and break free from her mother's hold over her. This helps us to understand the way in which chess playing acts as a powerful metaphor throughout her narrative. Consider the following example from the chapter you have identified:

And she was the queen, able to move in all directions, relentless in her pursuit, always able to find my weakest spots. 

Waverly here uses this metaphor to describe how she feels persecuted and pursued by her mother, and how she also feels curiously vulnerable, as if she were a pawn being pursued by a chess piece that is much more powerful and mobile than herself. 

What literary devices are used in "Rice Husband" in The Joy Luck Club?

Consider the following simile and its importance as we are told about how Lena receives her mother's prediction as a child that the man she marries will have one pockmark on his face for each grain of rice that she leaves unfinished in her bowl during dinner:

So I picked up that cold bowl of rice and scraped the last few grains into my mouth, then smiled at my mother, confident my future husband would not be Arnold but someone whose face was as smooth as the porcelain in my now clean bowl. 

Arnold was a neighbouhood boy who had a marked face and who also bullied Lena. She therefore finished up her bowl of cold rice to ensure that she would not have to marry him. The simile in this quote compares the face of Lena's future husband, as prophesied by her mother, to the smoothness of the porceilain of Lena's bowl. This is a story that Lena recalls as she nervously awaits the arrival of her mother to meet her husband as an adult. 

What are some literary devices used in the chapter "Without Wood" of The Joy Luck Club?

One of the chief literary devices that is used in this chapter, and indeed gives the chapter its name, is the way in which Rose's mother compares her daughter to a tree that is "without wood." Note what she says to her daughter and the kind of advice that she gives her, and the simile that she uses to give this advice:

She said that I was without wood. Born without wood so that I listened to too many people. She knew this, because once she had been the same way. "A girl is like a young tree," she said. "You must stand tall and listen to your mother."

Note the way in which the simile is used to introduce how girls should behave and also this comparison is one that is continued through the chapter as Rose's mother wants her daughter to act like a tree and to gain the "wood" that her character so clearly lacks at the moment. "Standing tall" as a tree becomes particularly important in Rose's developing character, therefore. 

What literary techniques are used in The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan?

As with most novels, there are a lot of literary techniques at work in this story. I'll start you off by discussing just a few of the author's main strategies.

First, the author, Amy Tan, employs symbolism to get her point across. In The Joy Luck Club, the book The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates discusses all the dangerous things that can happen to children. One could say this book symbolizes a mother's love and her desire to protect her children. It could also symbolize the ways in which mothers constantly worry about their children. Another symbol is the Joy Luck Club itself, which is a weekly meeting between women that symbolizes the importance of community and mutual support.

Second, Tan draws heavily on allegory, which is similar to symbolism in that it uses one thing to represent another thing. Allegories are stories that are meant to be interpreted to reveal their hidden meanings. Tan provides several allegories throughout this novel to explain larger concepts. For example, the fourth part of the novel features an allegory about the Queen Mother of the Western Skies, who realizes she passed down the wrong kind of wisdom to her daughter. Thus, this allegory discusses the ways in which mothers don't always know everything, and the ways that mothers can sometimes hurt their children by passing their own biases on to them, both of which are important themes in this book.

Finally, Tan writes the story using a nonlinear narrative, which means she skips around, moving forward and backward in time. She also weaves together several different characters' points of view. The literary techniques of nonlinear narratives and multiple voices woven together are important to the story's overall meaning; Tan uses these techniques partly to show us how it takes many different voices and perspectives to tell a complete story.