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Book 2, Chapter 19
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
A few weeks later, the family receives a letter from Noa, explaining the he’s withdrawn from Waseda and begun a new life in a different city. He asks his family not to look for him and promises to continue to send them money and to repay Hansu as he’s able.
For Noa, cutting himself off from the life he’s known and starting over feels like the only way to deal with the intolerable tension between his old identity as Isak’s son, his real identity as Hansu’s son, and the longing to be “simply human” he’s always wanted.
Themes
Sunja goes to Hansu’s mansion and asks Hansu’s wife, in broken Japanese, if she can speak to Hansu. Sunja cries, prepared to swallow her pride and beg Hansu to help her locate Noa. Hansu’s wife thinks Sunja is a beggar and sends for a Korean garden boy to translate, but the boy doesn’t know Hansu’s whereabouts, either. He feels sorry for Sunja, who reminds him of his mother, and follows her to the train station to ask where she lives.
Sunja has never sought out Hansu so directly and plaintively before, but the disappearance of Noa—the child whose welfare has governed so many of her choices and struggles—is devastating for her, stripping away all her pride. She will do anything to get him back.
Themes
