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Sketchbook (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
Henry, Marty, and Samantha have stopped at the Uwajimaya grocery store so Samantha can buy ingredients to cook a Chinese dinner. Waiting in the parking lot, Marty apologizes that Henry had to find the record he’s been searching for in such poor condition. “I’d rather have found something broken,” Henry replies, “than have it lost to me forever.”
Henry’s reaction to finding the record seems to reflect his sustained feelings about Keiko. Though Henry has not seen or spoken to Keiko in years, it seems he would be as grateful to have her restored to him—even if their relationship is now broken—as he was to have rediscovered the record.
Themes
Marty asks if Henry will explain the box of the Okabes’ things, which Palmyra Pettison had let Henry borrow. Henry explains that the sketchbook belonged to his best friend, whom Marty assumes was a boy. When Henry tells Marty his best friend’s name was Keiko, Marty asks in surprise if Keiko was Henry’s girlfriend. “I mean, weren’t you practically in an arranged marriage?” he asks. “That’s how you made it sound whenever you mentioned how you and mom met.” “When I married your mother,” Henry says, “I never looked back.”
This passage highlights how skewed a picture Marty has of his father, due largely to how little Henry has communicated with his son about his own upbringing. (As the reader will learn later, Henry’s marriage to Ethel bears no resemblance whatsoever to an arranged marriage.) Furthermore, Henry’s claim that he “never looked back” after he married Ethel is only partially true. He did love Ethel sincerely, but he also never forgot Keiko.
Themes
Henry admits that he wanted to find the Oscar Holden record as “a dying wish for a long-lost brother.” Marty is baffled. “One,” he says, “you’re an only child, and two, you just said you’d never sell that record, no matter what shape it was in.” Before Henry can explain, Samantha returns from the store and announces she’ll be cooking two of Henry’s favorite dishes for dinner. She also says she bought green-tea ice cream for dessert. Henry is amused that Samantha doesn’t know the ice cream is Japanese. It doesn’t matter, he thinks, because “perfection isn’t what families are all about.”
Like his reaction to discovering the record, Henry’s reaction to Samantha’s ice cream faux-pas shows that he has learned to appreciate love more over time—even when it isn’t as perfect as the love he once shared with Keiko. Though he has copied his father’s behavior in some ways, Henry seems to have discarded his father’s rigidity in favor of accepting his family for what it is, even if it is not what he’d envisioned.
Themes
