Joy Luck Club. Kweilin

           In “The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan, Suyuan Woo tells Jing-Mei “June” Woo, her daughter, the Kweilin story. However, each time she retells her story, the ending seems to change. From a happy ending, it slowly changes into one full of mysteries and many unanswered questions. One version was about how the formed a club in Kweilin although many people were suffering. They would play and have “feasts” while laughing and enjoying the happiness trying to forget the painful time they are enduring at the moment. It then change into about how Suyuan used the money to buy one thing and exchanged it with others and so on. The third ending was the journey to another place in order to escape death because she knew her fate being an officer's wife. She journeyed to Chungking and during her trip, she slowly abandon her stuff which was too heavy for her to hold.

          She changes the story she tells her daughter due to two reasons: trust and a lesson. As a child, June Woo isn't capable of understanding such a complicated a dark story. Telling her would be meaningless so Suyuan made it a happy ending when June was still young. The older June gets, the more Suyuan can trust her daughter into understanding such deep stuff so the ending will change to match the level of June. The deep secrets will slowly be revealed each time she retells the same story. Moreover, she did it to teach June a lesson. When June tried to ask for something, Suyuan said, “Why do you think you are missing something you never had?”(Tan 25). Suyuan told the darker side of her story in order to teach her daughter that she should value stuff and to not be greedy for more stuff. When June sulked in silence when she couldn't get what she wanted, telling this story allows Suyuan to indirectly tell her message to June about possession and greed without directly saying it. Many stories do have morals even if it is very unrealistic. Suyuan was probably trying to teach her daughter things and trusts her daughter to understand them.