Cycles in the Joy Luck Club

In "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tam, it includes interesting stories from four different families. Within the book, there are cycles. Some noticeable cycles are the changes where the mother and daughter tells the stories and how the stories connect with one another in some way. Well, I feel that one of the most important cycles in the book is about the connections between stories. The main example that I would be providing is the chess game story.

The chess game story first begins in Rules of the Game on page 89 and ends at page 101. In this section of the book, it first introduces Waverly Jong. It talks about her rise to fame. She begins first as a minor player in the streets. As time progresses, Waverly begins to study chess and began to beat others. She begins entering tournaments and began winning. Waverly began getting what she had wanted from her parents. As time progresses, her mother, Lindo Jong, begins to brag about her daughter in public. Soon, Waverly runs away but comes back when she was tired. In the end of that chapter, her family ignores her and she doesn't know what to do. Here, Waverly earns respect from her family by being a success but her family expresses it in a way that Waverly isn't comfortable with. As a result, she through her support away until there wasn't any left.

The chess story of Waverly Jong continues with Four Directions which comes later in the book. In this section, it continues the chess game story from the beginning in brief statements and focuses what happened after she quit. After quitting, she tried to scare her mother to beg her to come back to playing chess. Knowing that her plan failed, Waverly began to play chess again but the mother says that she could not just come play chess whenever she wanted to. While she continued playing chess, she began to lose and her confidence fell. When she was beat by a boy whom she had defeated a long time ago, Waverly quit. After knowing that her plan had failed, she wanted to gain back her mother's support. She didn't want to feel separated from her family furthermore. Nevertheless, after hearing her mother's statement about how she couldn't become who that she was before, she began to lose confidence and quit because she knew that playing chess couldn't change the past. The damage has been done and cannot be reversed.