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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Pachinko, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Survival and Family
Imperialism, Resistance, and Compromise
Identity, Blood, and Contamination
Love, Motherhood, and Women’s Choices
Summary
Analysis
One day two working-class Korean men appear at the door, flashing a document and saying that Yoseb is late on a payment. With interest, the payment is far more money than the women have at home. Kyunghee is intimidated, but Sunja thinks the men resemble the lodgers back home, and she speaks to them calmly, telling them to come back in three hours.
Sunja’s working-class background allows her to see this situation differently than Kyunghee does; while Kyunghee finds the strangers frightening, Sunja deals with them as if they’re a couple of cranky boarders from the boardinghouse.
Themes
Sunja and Kyunghee go to a Korean pawnbroker’s office. Sunja gives the pawnbroker Hansu’s gold watch and negotiates for a good price, remembering what Hoonie had taught her in the market. Kyunghee marvels at Sunja’s calm demeanor, and the men in the office have never seen a woman speak with such boldness before. Finally they agree to buy the watch for the price Sunja wants.
Sunja’s father had taught her to negotiate in the marketplace, and this allows Sunja to remain calm and not to be intimidated out of getting the price she wants for the watch. She’s also more than willing to let go of Hansu’s gift for the sake of helping her family; the fact that she’s letting go of this piece of Hansu suggests that, by now, Sunja’s loyalty lies with her husband, not her past lover.
Themes
Later, equipped with the money from the pawned watch, Sunja and Kyunghee go to the moneylender’s office to repay the debt. The moneylender is a professionally dressed Korean, and his office looks respectable. When the man cancels their debt, the women learn that Yoseb took out the loan in order to pay for Sunja’s and Isak’s passage to Japan.
Sunja doesn’t realize it now, but the moneylender’s professional veneer hides connections with Japan’s criminal underbelly—and with Hansu—which means that, ironically, selling the watch isn’t the severance of Sunja’s bond with Hansu after all.
Themes
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