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Dinner (1986)
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
After dinner, Samantha falls asleep, and Marty and Henry speak on the porch. Marty asks if his grandfather, Henry’s father, or his mom, Ethel, knew about Keiko. Henry says he told his father about Keiko, and his father stopped speaking to him because of it. “But what about Mom?” Marty presses. Henry says that he’s “not sure what [Marty’s] mom knew” because they “didn’t talk about it.”
This passage makes clear that Henry has been using his father’s tactic of non-communication since before Marty was even born. Though Ethel seems to have accepted Henry’s unwillingness to discuss his past, Marty’s relationship to his father has clearly been complicated by the fact that Marty has no idea what his father has lived through.
Themes
Henry reflects on his marriage to Ethel: “He had been a loyal and dedicated husband, but he would walk blocks out of his way to avoid the Panama Hotel and the memory of Keiko.” Henry tells Marty that he should keep Keiko’s sketchbook; he’s satisfied with keeping just the Oscar Holden record. Still, he can’t help thinking that the record is now just “two halves that will never play again.”
Though Henry has begun to feel openly curious about Keiko’s fate, and has made progress in expressing himself to Marty and Samantha, he is still not ready to fully confront his past by searching for Keiko. His fear that the broken record will never play again seems to imply that he is worried his love for Keiko will not be reciprocated in the way it used to be, were he able to contact her now.
Themes
