In The Joy Luck Club there are many repeating stories. I believe this is because they are all the daughters of their mothers. They were raised a certain way and though they retaliated it was still how they were brought up, those ways are ingrained into their beings and there is nothing they can do to change it.
In every story of The Joy Luck Club there is a point where each woman breaks away from tradition. Whether it was getting out of an arrange marriage or not wanting to play the piano. The cycles actually go back further than just the generations told, in Scar An-Mei Hsu's mother went to live with a man as his concubine. This was clearly not tradition because she was disowned from her family leaving her daughter to be raised by her Grandmother. Another example is in Half and Half Rose Hsu Jordan is at UC Berkeley and has fallen in love with Ted, and is an American. Like her Grandmother, (An-Mei's mother) she fell in love with a man that wasn't respected in their society.
Marrying men who are not very good individuals seems to be another trend through out this book. In almost every marriage the man has either been a bad man, really annoying, or the woman is not attracted to him. In Red Candle Lindo Jong is forced to marry a man that is a horrible husband, not only because of the family he came from, how spoiled he was, or the fact he was just ugly, they also did not have any attraction to each other. Same with Rice Husband where Lena St. Clair marries a man who she thought she loved but in the end he was a because he was a nuisance and had be completely fair with money and make sure it was even down to the penny. Overall none of the women expressed happy marriages through out the book.
Everywhere you go there are traditions and cycles of some sort. Whether it is a family tradition or a woman's menstruation cycle, The Joy Luck Club just shows more of the everyday cycles that most look over.
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