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Better Them Than Us (1942)
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Belonging, Bigotry, and Identity
Silence vs. Communication
Family Dynamics and Inheritance
Memory
Love and Self-Sacrifice
Summary
Analysis
Henry walks wanders away from the train station, listening to a “record player somewhere blar[ing] ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ [in] harsh contrast to the Japanese melancholy and quiet sadness.” Henry finds Sheldon on a bus bench. When Henry indicates that he can’t bear to go home, Sheldon tells him to follow him. The two make their way to a theater in Nihonmachi, directly across from Kobe Park. “What are we doing here?” Henry asks, as Sheldon takes out his saxophone. “We’re living,” Sheldon says.
The record playing “Stars and Stripes Forever” contrasts sharply with Sheldon’s music. The former seems to insist that nonwhite Americans are not truly Americans, and that they are therefore unwelcome. The latter acknowledges and affirms the suffering that is taking place, and insists that “living”—in Sheldon’s words—will keep on happening in marginalized communities, even as atrocities are perpetuated.
Themes
Henry listens to Sheldon play, and thinks of Keiko. Henry thinks that Sheldon is playing “for no one, but at the same time […] playing for everyone.” After a while, Henry leaves, returning to Chinatown. He takes off his button and puts it in his pocket, stopping to buy his mother a starfire lily on his way home.
By purchasing a starfire lily for his mother, it seems that Henry is cleaving to his mother’s love, which has become even more important now that Keiko is gone. It is also possible that Henry is trying to mirror Sheldon’s music by asserting a right to life and beauty even in the face of pain and suffering.
Themes
