According to Fay Weldon, a good writer doesn't always need to end his story with a joyful flourish to satisfy his reader. “The writers, I believe, who get the best and most lasting response from readers are the writers who offer a happy ending through moral development. By happy ending, I don't mean mere lucky events – a wedding or a last-minute wedding. from death – but a sort of spiritual reevaluation or moral reconciliation, even with oneself, even at the moment of death." Both Moby Dick and The Joy Luck Club leave a lasting impression on the reader because, although the resolution of each novel is not necessarily a happy one, a spiritual reevaluation or moral reconciliation is achieved in the end. In Moby Dick, Captain Ahab faces death as moral penance, and in the Joy Luck Club, Jing-Mei Woo finds a spiritual resolution by fulfilling her mother's fate. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Captain Ahab, the leader of the Pequod whaling expedition, was named after an Israelite king who worshiped idols and brought upon himself the wrath of God. There is no small connection between Ahab and his namesake: Ahab, similar to the ancient king, makes an idol of the whale Moby Dick. His desire for revenge on the creature that gave him an ivory leg turns into a powerful and all-consuming obsession. The first time he addresses his crew, he informs them that their research is not commercial: they are deciding to kill the White Whale. "Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we don't hunt Moby Dick to the death!" (165) From this point on, Ahab, like “a mad madness,” (166) relentlessly pursues the whale: “he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that one passion.” (210) He does not heed the warnings of others and is full of arrogance, or, as Ishmael calls it, "fatal pride." Not only is Ahab filled with great arrogance as he makes himself a tyrant on his ship - "There is a God who is Lord of the earth, and a Captain who is Lord of the Pequod," he says (471) - but he pays no heed to any of the divine signals to desist from his crazy search. He receives many signs from heaven urging him to surrender, but he ignores each one and scolds the man who begs him to take note. "God is against you, old man!" (501) says one of his men. “All the good angels [are] assailing you with warnings: What more would you want?” (552) But Ahab will not be admonished. He is determined to capture Moby Dick, who he sees as a representation of evil. And, indeed, the whale is depicted as a malignant, inscrutable, seemingly omnipotent force, but this is no excuse for the arrogance and cruelty exercised by Ahab. At one point, the captain of a passing ship begs him to help him search for his lost son, but Ahab coldly refuses. “I won't,” he says, “even now I'm wasting my time.” (523) Ahab really seems like a madman. Ahab's story, at times, seems to run quite parallel to the story of Jonah, told earlier in the novel in a sermon by Father Mapple. Jonah does not heed God's words and flees from him, similar to how Ahab flees to the sea in pursuit of Moby Dick, regardless of all warnings. Unlike Jonah, however, Ahab does not repent. He too is defeated by the whale, but God does not free him as he does with Jonah. If Ahab had shown humility or heeded the warnings he was given, he may still have survived his encounter with Moby Dick. But he is not at all humble: "I never saw him kneel," Stubb says of Ahab. (229) Because of Ahab's arrogance and his crazy, all-consuming passionin hunting down Moby Dick who causes him to lose all sense of identity and even humanity, he finds himself facing divine punishment. He meets his death by the one thing he sought to destroy, the great whale. While this is not a happy ending to the story, it is still a resolution of the conflict and leaves the reader satisfied. Captain Ahab ultimately earns what he deserves: his arrogance and recklessness lead to his just punishment. His death and the whale's victory both serve as a kind of moral and spiritual reconciliation with history. The fact that his death occurred after a three-day journey is also significant: it can be compared to the three days during which Jesus traveled from the crucifixion to the resurrection, or found his spiritual retribution. Ahab's punishment, at the end of the three days, is not resurrection, but death. The Joy Luck Club is quite a different story from Moby Dick, but it also ends in spiritual reconciliation. Throughout the novel, the main conflict is the lack of understanding between Chinese mothers who were born and raised in China and experienced great pain, and their daughters raised in America who never experienced real suffering. This theme is summarized at the beginning of the first book, "Feathers from a Thousand Li Away," which opens with a short story about a Chinese mother coming to America. He buys a swan and sails across the ocean, dreaming of the better life he will provide for his daughter. "No one will despise her... And down there she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow!" (3) The woman intends to give her daughter the swan as a symbol of her hopes, but the swan is taken away from her and she is left with only a feather. The mother wants to give the feather to her daughter, but fears that her daughter will not understand its meaning: she grew up "swallowing more Coca-Cola than sadness." (3) This story highlights the theme that runs through the entire novel: the gap in understanding between mothers and daughters and the daughters' inability to understand their mothers' pasts. In all the stories told by the mothers, Suyuan Woo, An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair, the emphasis is on the honor and respect each of them had for their mothers. An-Mei describes a scene she witnessed when she was young, when her exiled mother returned home to the deathbed of An-Mei's grandmother. An-Mei's mother cut a piece of meat from her arm to put in her grandmother's soup, in an attempt to cure her mother with an ancient Chinese tradition. “This is how a daughter honors her mother,” An-Mei says. (41) "This is how I learned to love my mother. How I saw my true nature in her. What was beneath my skin. Inside my bones." (40)This is the kind of love, honor and respect that Chinese mothers expected in their relationships with their daughters. But because their daughters were born and raised in America, a gap has grown between them. Not only did they speak different languages, but they lived completely different lives and had completely different understandings. The women in the novel must struggle to understand each other. “We are lost, she and I, invisible and unseen, unheard and unheard, unknown to others,” Ying-Ying says of her relationship with her daughter Lena. (64) The daughters' inability to understand their mothers' pasts becomes clear when Waverly makes the mistake of telling her mother that she is from Taiwan. “I'm not from Taiwan!... I was born in China, in Taiyuan,” Waverly's mother says. (203) This literal misunderstanding is symbolic of a much larger rift between mothers and daughters: How can daughters, who grew up speaking perfect American English and swallowing Coca-Cola, know the pain of having to kill their own child? Of being forced to leave your family and marry another? Of having your mother sacrifice.