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Letters (1943)
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
Two years have passed; Henry is now 15. Walking home from the post office one day, Henry runs into Chaz Preston. Henry realizes that he is taller than Chaz now, and that the former bully looks “small and weak.” Chaz says that his father, Mr. Preston, is still buying up buildings in the former Japantown. “When your girlfriend gets back from that concentration camp she’s holed up in, she’s not going to have anything to come home to,” Chaz says.
Chaz continues to be a racist, noxious character, but Henry has gained a tremendous amount of perspective. To Henry, Chaz has become “more pathetic and annoying than menacing.” This is partially to do with the fact that Chaz is now less of a physical threat to Henry, but it also suggests that racist venom fundamentally comes from a place of weakness rather than strength or superiority.
Themes
Chaz walks away, and Henry reflects on the past two years. He’s continued writing to Keiko, but he only receives intermittent replies. The same girl still works at the post office; one day she tells him, “She must be very special to you, Henry. You’ve never given up on her, have you?” Henry has considered trying to visit Keiko again, but has decided against it. The United States is winning the war, and he hopes Keiko will be home soon.
Henry has continued to love Keiko and to believe in his love for her despite his doubts. Henry’s continued interaction with the girl from the post office (who will turn out to be his future wife, Ethel) is also noteworthy, as a large part of the reason Ethel falls in love with Henry is because of the love he demonstrates he’s capable of, through his commitment to Keiko.
Themes
At home, Henry’s mother now regards him as the man of the house. Henry’s father has had another stroke, and is still not speaking to Henry, though Henry sometimes has one-sided conversations with him. He does so today, telling his father that he ran into Chaz Preston. He asks his father if he thinks Mr. Preston will try to buy the Panama Hotel. Henry’s father gives “a crooked smile,” and Henry intuits that the hotel will, indeed, soon be sold. He feels saddened thinking that when Keiko comes home, there won’t be any “of the places she had drawn in her sketchbook” waiting for her.
This passage highlights the important role that physical locations can play in memory. Clearly, Henry has ascribed some of the physical places he shared with Keiko with emotional significance; this is evident in his desire for Keiko to be able to return to these physical locations as a way of re-grounding herself and reclaiming a sense of normalcy. The fact that Henry specifically imparts such importance to the Panama Hotel (though he and Keiko have spent more time together in, say, Kobe Park) also serves to highlight the specific significance of that building as a place that bridges two different cultural worlds, as Henry and Keiko’s very relationship does.
Themes
