Cyclical Elemants in the Joy Luck Club

     Cyclical elements constantly occur around us. From the revolutions of day and night to the changes of the seasons, many events often repeat themselves. In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, cyclical elements also appear. Both the beginning and ending of the novel focuses on the same story - on "Kweilin" - and, within the story, particularly on a picture.
     The beginning of the novel starts with a story narrated by Jing-Mei Woo, daughter of Suyuan Woo, and within that narration is a flashback to when Suyuan tells Jing-Mei about how she gave up on things that mattered to her as she was escaping Kweilin to Chungking:

     "[...] By the time I arrived in Chungking I had lost everything except for three fancy silk dresses which I wore one on top of the other."
     "What do you mean by 'everything'?" I gasped at the end. I was stunned to realize the story had been true all alone. "What happened to the babies?"
     She didn't even pause to think. She simply said in a way that made it clear there was no more story: "Your father in not my first husband. You are not those babies." (Tan 26).

Even when Jing-Mei asks, Suyuan does not give her daughter the details and information she wants to know about the story. However, the novel later reveals that Suyuan had abandoned her twin daughters during her escape because she was no longer able to survive if she remain with them. She leaves them with money, jewelry, and a picture of her wedding.
     Then, the novel ends with another picture taken during the reunion of Jing-Mei and her sisters:

The flash of the Polaroid goes off and my father hands me the snapshot...Togerther we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished wish. (Tan 288).

Even though Suyuan abandoned her daughters for her own survival, she, in the end, still wished to see the twins. Together, the three of them can find details that reveal similaries they share with their mother and the picture captures that fact.
     The purpose of the cycle in the "Kweilin story" and the picture is that the story allows the reader to end with an extention of the story they first started out reading and the picture implies that even though people can give up and lose or abandon everything they have, they eventually re-obtain what they previously had.