In the first section of The Joy Luck Club the main character's mother told a story all through out the main character's childhood, but the story was constantly changing. It had evolved from using a worthless thousand-yuan to by herself a cup or rice, the it turned into a por of porridge, then later into two pigs feet, then to six eggs, then the six eggs turned into six chicken.
After and argument between the main character and her mother over a radio transmitter she told the "real" story. This version was darker than the main character had ever heard before and it was completely different than anything she had ever come to know. The mother told her how the Japanese had come, but before they reached the area where she was staying she escaped with a wheel-barrow, two bags-one with clothes and the other with food-, and her children, twin girls. She told her daughter how the journey took many months and and her hands grew so wary that the bags left deep grooves in her palms, making them bleed and become so slippery that she could no longer hold the bags. The wheel-barrow had also broken so she had to rely solely on herself to carry everything. Slowly she started to let things go, first one bag, then the next, then her children. She arrived with only the three silk dresses she carried on her body. She also informed her daughter that the man she was going to see was not her father and the children she left behind were not her.
I think that the reason she changes the story so often was because she was so traumatized by the experience that she kept fantasizing that what she faced was different than it was. She could have also been lying and trying to make her daughter feel bad about wanting a radio transmitter and missing something that she had never had, especially when she had lost so much already.
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