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Empty Streets (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
In the basement of the Panama Hotel, Henry, Marty, and Samantha sort through items. Henry finds himself annoyed that Marty and Samantha are getting “caught up in the detail of each item they [find], trying to interpret some meaning.” All Henry wants to do is find something of Keiko’s. Soon enough, Marty finds a sketchbook. Looking at a drawing inside, Marty asks: “Dad? Is this you?” Henry realizes that Marty has found Keiko’s sketchbook.
The fact that Marty discovers a sketch of Henry as a boy symbolizes the way in which old memories—and even old versions of one’s self—can resurface even after they have been repressed. Henry has never spoken to Marty of the boy he once was, yet the discovery of Keiko’s sketch suggests that that this boyhood version of Henry has nevertheless been present all along.
Themes
Just then, Samantha shouts that she has found a record. Henry knows before he even looks at it that the record is Oscar Holden’s “Alley Cat Strut.” Henry holds the record, broken in half and “held together by the record label,” and thinks that, “like his father, his marriage, his life,” this record has “arrived a little damaged.” Still, it is “all he’d wanted,” and he finds he doesn’t care one bit “what condition [the record] [is] in.”
This passage shows how Henry has matured as he has grown into adulthood. He is shown to have cultivated his ability to appreciate what he has, even if it is not perfect. Henry demonstrated this ability as a child, especially with regard to his father, but his deep contentment at finding the broken record shows that Henry has only strengthened this ability to take things as they are. Again, the record itself (like Keiko’s sketchbook) symbolizes how memory reasserts itself despite the best attempts to bury it.
Themes
