In the novel The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan portrays the effects of childhood events on the roles and attitudes of the present lives each character faces. In particular, Lena St. Clair felt limited by her mother as she protected her from the dangers of the outside world. As a result, when Lena was faced with problems, she was unable to react and saw evil in everything she saw. Furthermore, the constant conflict resulting from male superiority in Ying-Ying's marriage and her communication problems with her husband have influenced Lena's current behavior. Instead of expressing her concerns, Lena lets her husband make important decisions. Influenced by her childhood experiences and her parents' marriage problems, Lena inherits a passive role in her relationship with Harold. As a child, Lena was always kept away from strangers by her mother, fueling her curiosity and imagination. To prevent the “bad man” from placing children with Lena, her mother had barricaded the basement door and told her not to enter. However, Lena's curiosity finally allowed her to open the door, but she fell into a dark abyss. When she is saved by her mother, she says: “…after that I began to see terrible things. I saw these things with my Chinese eyes, the part of me that I inherited from my mother." (103) Lena completely neglected the warnings presented to her by an authority figure, her mother. Her mother constantly reminded her of terrible events that could happen, but Lena felt that she was so separated from the world she lived in that she became very curious. She wanted to see the world veiled by her mother's restrictions, and also face the danger she had always been kept away from. As a result, she has suffered the consequences of seeing everything... middle of paper... of not eating the ice cream he brings home every Friday night." (162) This shows that even as an adult, Lena still needs a guide on where to go in his life. Without his mother's visit, he might never have thought about how unfair their spending system was. It also shows how there are communication problems between them ice cream because Lena never shared her story with him as a child Lena not she tells Harold that she hates ice cream because she believes she deserves this punishment for "killing" Arnold when she was a child. Through the terrifying events she experienced as a child and her parents' communication problems, she begins to realize how her mother tried. to protect her from the mistakes she's made. Lena doesn't really accept it at first, but eventually finds that she should try to do better.