Point of View

As with the other stories in The Joy Luck Club, "Rules of the Game" is narrated from the perspective of one of the main characters. In this case, Waverly Jong gives her point of view about the part of her childhood where she became a chess champion. Waverly narrates the story from her childhood perspective, and does not refer to anything that happened to her as an adult as a result of the events in the story, or give her adult perspective about the events—as some adult narrators do when talking about their childhoods.

Waverly recalls exactly how she felt at each stage of the story. In the beginning, when she is more in touch with her Chinese heritage, she notes that her "bowl was always full," and that her meals began "with a soup full of mysterious things that I didn't want to...