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Book 3, Chapter 18
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
Solomon visits Hana in the hospital. She looks shockingly different, scabbed and skeletal. Even now, she flirts with Solomon, telling him she would have married him, but it’s good that she didn’t, because she ruins everything. Solomon still loves Hana and feels angry at the Japanese attitude that suffering is simply to be endured.
Solomon finds out that Hana is dying in the hospital, apparently of AIDS. He is surprised how much he still feels for her and wishes he could fix everything. Having spent so much time in America and Western-influenced environments, he’s inclined to think things are fixable, and Japanese attitudes seem frustratingly stoic and resigned to him.
Themes
At work, Solomon can’t concentrate. He wonders what would have happened if Hana had never run away. Suddenly Kazu comes into his office and tells him, “She’s dead.” Solomon is confused at first, thinking he’s talking about Hana. Then he realizes Kazu’s talking about the old lady who didn’t want to sell her property. She died of unknown causes within a few days of selling to Goro. The client has canceled the transaction, and Kazu says he has to fire Solomon.
Hana was Solomon’s first love, and he can’t help wondering how things might have turned out differently if they hadn’t gone their separate ways. The death of the old lady, which looks very suspicious even if completely coincidental, is a surprise, and his firing is a total shock, especially compared to his recent encouraging interactions with Kazu.
Themes
Solomon says that Kazu has no proof of any wrongdoing and that Goro has always been generous toward elderly people. Kazu warns Solomon not to tell him anything else, and that his client “wasn’t looking for a run-in with the yaks” (yakuza). The transaction, Kazu declares, is “contaminated.”
Solomon can’t square Kazu’s implications with the generous person he’s always known Goro to be. He can’t believe that Goro would be involved in an old lady’s death, and in a way, it doesn’t matter what really happened—it looks too suspicious for the client to go forward.
Themes
Kazu tells Solomon that he isn’t being discriminated against, “something that Koreans tend to believe”; he says he has always been known for his preference for working with Koreans. He just doesn’t agree with Solomon’s father’s tactics. As the Human Resources workers escort Solomon out of the building, he keeps thinking about Hana.
No matter what really happened with the elderly seller, the outcome is that Solomon is now made to feel that as the Korean, he’s the “bad blood,” the contaminant, in the group. It’s something he’s never really experienced before, and there is nothing he can do about it. As he leaves his office for the last time, his mind goes straight to Hana instead of to Phoebe, suggesting where his deepest affections lie.
Themes
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