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Chapter 4
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Leavers, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Cultural Identity and Belonging
Migration, Change, and Happiness
Racism, Cultural Insensitivity, and Implicit Bias
Self-Deception and Rationalization
Parenthood, Support, and Expectations
Summary
Analysis
Ten years later, Daniel Wilkinson is taller and heavier than he was when he was Deming Guo. “Ridgeborough had made Daniel an expert at juggling selves; he used to see Deming and think himself into Daniel, a slideshow perpetually alternating between the same two slides,” Ko writes. Sometimes Daniel thinks about what his life would have been like if Polly had never left, and he fantasizes about Deming carrying out an alternative existence. Shortly after bombing onstage at the loft party, Daniel responds to Michael’s email, saying, “you’ve got the right guy. what’s up?”
It's worth noting that Daniel is now “an expert at juggling selves,” since this suggests that a person can have multiple cultural identities. Unable to reconcile his Chinese self with his new American self, he divides his identity into two halves. Since he’s been living for ten years in a white-majority suburb, though, he feels disconnected from Deming Guo, ultimately proving the extent to which a person’s environment affects the way he or she identifies.
Themes
That evening, Daniel thinks about Jim Hennings’s upcoming birthday party, where he’ll have to see Angel for the first time since they had a falling out. Ko explains that Daniel started playing poker for fun in high school and realized he was talented. During his sophomore year at SUNY Potsdam, he started playing online poker, learning that he could recognize “patterns” in the way weak players bet. The next year, he met Kyle, another student who played for large sums online. Seeing Kyle’s success, Deming started betting more money. The more he made, the more he played, and he once didn’t leave his room for days at a time because he was too engrossed in gambling. He even built his online account up to $80,000, but he never withdrew it, instead funneling it all back into poker.
In this section, Ko outlines how a person gets hooked on gambling. Little by little, Daniel’s betting becomes increasingly serious. Rather than betting large sums of money right away, he plays for fun in high school. This leads to online poker, where the stakes are most likely higher than the games he played against friends in high school. From here, he begins playing with significant amounts of money, having gradually worked his way up to this point. By spotlighting this step-by-step progression, Ko calls attention to how easy it is to develop risky habits.
Themes
Narrating Daniel’s blossoming gambling addiction, Ko explains that he takes out a loan to pay his college tuition (since his poor grades disqualify him from receiving financial aid). The next day, he spends the entire amount on online poker. Hoping to rebound from this, he asks friends for money, eventually borrowing $2,000 from Kyle and assuring him that he’ll pay him back in two weeks. However, the more games he loses, the worse he gets at playing, and he’s only able to give Kyle back $200. As such, Kyle and two of his muscular friends start visiting his room on a daily basis and badgering him to repay his debt. Soon enough, he’s $10,000 “in the hole.” Around this time, he starts talking to Angel on the phone. Going to college in Iowa, she’s saving up to study abroad in Nepal, but she agrees to lend him $10,000.
It's apparent that Daniel’s gambling habit has interfered with his rationality. Rather than using money responsibly, he continues to make risky bets. But his descent into debt doesn’t happen all at once, but little by little. Given that he’s already lost his loan money and the amount he borrowed from Kyle, it’s not hard to see that he’ll probably lose Angel’s money, too. However, he doesn’t stop to recognize this pattern of self-destructive behavior, instead focusing only on the present, which is exactly how he justifies continuing to play poker even though doing so is obviously a bad idea.
Themes
Daniel plans to use Angel’s money to repay Kyle, at which point he’ll take out another loan and give back Angel her $10,000. However, his credit is so bad that the bank denies his request for a second loan, so he tries to make back the money by playing poker. Before long, he has lost all Angel’s money, and though he promises to “make it up to her,” she’s furious. “You mess everything up,” she says. “Don’t call me again.” Furious, she tells Peter and Kay about his gambling problem (though not about the $10,000), and they force him to come home and attend Gamblers Anonymous.
Once again, readers see how unwilling Daniel is to recognize the overarching narrative of his gambling addiction. Instead of admitting that playing poker only leads him into more debt, he fixates on the possibility of winning just one big hand so he can pay back Angel and Kyle. In doing so, he refuses to acknowledge the fact that he’s making reckless choices.
Themes
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Thinking about what it’ll be like to see Angel again after their falling out, Daniel remembers the long conversations they used to have on the phone, when he admitted to her that he feels like a disappointment to his parents. She also confided in him, telling him about the time she tried to overdose on sleeping pills and Jim and Elaine sent her to a therapist. Remembering these conversations, Daniel takes out his phone and texts her, “you going to your dad’s party Saturday?” He then turns his attention to the statement of purpose, trying to come up with a good reason for why he would want to attend Carlough College.
Daniel and Angel’s friendship emerges once more as one of the only genuine forms of support in Daniel’s life. Angel is the only person he can talk to about feeling “indebted” to his parents, since she presumably has felt the same way. (As a side note, it’s worth mentioning that Ko never specifies why Angel tries to end her own life, nor does she provide enough information about her to help readers understand why she might do such a thing.) On another note, Daniel’s attempt to fill out a convincing statement of purpose represents his attempt to live up to his parents’ expectations even though they don’t necessarily align with what he wants.
Themes
Daniel and Michael make a plan over email to meet at a Starbucks in Manhattan. “Do you prefer Daniel or Deming?” Michael asks upon seeing him. “Daniel, I guess,” Daniel replies. Michael says he attends Columbia and is applying to work on a “genetics research project” at the school, and Daniel says he’s taking time off from college, adding that he plays in Psychic Hearts. “You still in touch with Leon?” Daniel asks, and Michael says that they talk sometimes. Apparently, Leon lives in Fuzhou, is married, and has a daughter. As for Vivian, she lives with her new husband, Timothy. Shortly after Daniel left, Vivian married Timothy, and the family moved to Queens, though now they all live in Brooklyn.
It’s worth keeping in mind that Daniel has had no connection to his previous life for the past ten years. This makes his meeting with Michael rather monumental, as his two cultural identities—Daniel and Deming—suddenly collide. Although seeing Michael might be nice, there’s no denying the fact that this rekindled relationship will conjure up new dilemmas and considerations, like whether or not Daniel wants to be called Deming. As such, meeting up with Michael forces Daniel to once again reevaluate who he is and how he wants to present himself.
Themes
Getting to his point, Michael tells Daniel that he found old documents outlining the details of his placement into foster care. Apparently, Vivian purposefully put him under the care of “social services,” having no intention of retrieving him. Several weeks after giving him up, she went to court and “approved” his placement with Peter and Kay. When Michael tells Daniel this, he apologizes, saying he just wanted to make sure he knew. He also tells Daniel that Vivian believes she “did the best thing” for him, adding that she wants to have him over for dinner. “Are you serious?” Daniel asks. “No fucking way.”
When Michael tells Daniel that Vivian purposefully gave him away, Daniel feels betrayed. Of course, he already felt like he’d been abandoned, but now he knows that Vivian sent him into the foster care system without any plans to reunite with him in the future. It’s unsurprising, then, that he doesn’t want to see her again, clearly resenting her for so willingly putting him in the permanent care of strangers.
Themes
Despite his initial hesitancy, Daniel goes to Vivian and Michael’s house for dinner the following Friday. He’s angry at Vivian, but he can’t help but enjoy being at her house in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which he recognizes as the same neighborhood he was taken to just before Peter and Kay brought him to Ridgeborough. Over dinner, Daniel meets Vivian’s new husband, Timothy, and tries to keep up with the conversation, though his Fuzhounese is quite bad. After the meal, he follows Vivian to the kitchen and helps her clean, eventually asking, “Why did you do it?” When she pretends to not know what he’s talking about, he says, “You made me think my mother abandoned me, that she didn’t want me.” In response, she says, “I didn’t screw up anything. You wouldn’t be in college, otherwise. You wouldn’t be living in Manhattan and playing on your guitar.”
The fact that Daniel goes to Vivian’s house after having so vehemently declined the invitation at first is a sign that he can’t resist the opportunity to reconnect with his past. Though it’s painful to see her, he finds it hard to turn away from Vivian. This is partially because he wants to learn more about what happened to his mother, but his inability to stay away is also an indication of his simple desire to recapture what it felt like to live amongst other Chinese people. In turn, Ko illustrates that—though he has embraced his identity as Daniel Wilkinson—he hasn’t forgotten about his connection to Chinese culture.
Themes
Vivian tells Daniel that if she hadn’t put him in foster care, he would be poor and living in Polly’s old village. “That’s where she is?” he asks, and Vivian immediately shuts down, saying she doesn’t know. “Is she dead?” Daniel presses. Finally, Vivian looks at him and tells him that his mother is alive, which she knows because Leon told her.
Finally, Daniel knows for sure that his mother is alive. However, he still doesn’t know the details surrounding her disappearance, and though this is the first time anyone actually tells him something about what happened, Vivian still doesn’t speak straightforwardly about the situation, instead keeping him—and, in turn, the readers—in suspense.
Themes
Just before Daniel leaves, Michael hugs him and tells him he’ll come to the next Psychic Hearts show. When Vivian says goodbye, she shoves an envelope in his hand. “I paid your mother’s debt,” she says. “When Leon left there was still money owed. Who do you think paid? If I hadn’t paid, you’d be dead by now.” On his way out, Daniel opens the envelope and finds $100 and a piece of paper with a phone number and Leon’s name written on it.
Vivian demonstrates that she cares for Daniel by inviting him over, cooking him dinner, and finally giving him some information about what happened to Polly. However, she also acts as if he—or, at the very least, his mother—owes her, once again advancing the narrative that Daniel has to prove himself worthy of his caretakers’ support.
Themes
