Joy Luck Club

          In the beginning of the book, there is one page that is irrelevant to the characters in the book, but relates to what seems to happen in the whole story.  It is about a Chinese woman who buys a swan at a vendor.  She bring it all the way to the United States, but the customs officers take it away from her and she is left with only one swan feather.  She then has a daughter, who swallowed "more Coca-Cola than sorrow".  She waits until she give her daughter that single swan feather and tell her that "This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions" in perfect American-English.  However, the page never tells about whether or not she ever got around to it.
          My mom thinks that the swan symbolizes that lady's hopes for a new life.  She has all these hopes about her new life, her new country, herself, and her children, and that swan symbolizes them all.  When she is left with that one feather, the act of giving it to her daughter represents that her hopes have been realized through her daughter and through her new country.  I think that the swan also symbolizes the lady's hopes for a new life, but I think that those hopes were disappointed.  Her daughter ended up becoming shallow and didn't understand what her mom had gone through in World War II, and how she had had to immigrate to America.  I don't believe that she ever gave that feather to her daughter.  I think that she waited and waited, but it never happened.