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
It is the weekend, and Henry is on his way to meet Marty for lunch in Chinatown. At the restaurant, Marty asks whether something is bothering his dad. After being pressed, Henry confesses that he is planning to head to the Panama Hotel and ask to look around. Marty asks whether Henry is planning to look for “some long-lost jazz record,” but Henry says only that he’s “looking for something.” He assures his son that if he finds “something worth sharing,” he’ll let him know.
Henry demonstrates that he has inherited from his father an unwillingness to communicate what he is feeling. Marty shows some interest in breaking through to his father, but Henry will not realize the extent to which he has replicated his father’s poor patterns of communication until later in the novel, when Marty’s fiancée, Samantha, comes on the scene.
Themes
Henry thinks about when Ethel told him the news of her cancer. She’d said that she hoped her death would bring Henry and Marty closer together. Henry thinks about all there is “to say and ask” his son, but the two men sit through lunch in silence.
Without Ethel as a bridge between him and his son, Henry has become almost incapable of communication. Ethel seems to have mirrored the role Henry’s mother took of liaison between Henry and his father. Similarly, Samantha will ultimately serve as the conduit between Henry and Marty.
Themes
