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
After helping his mother with the laundry, Henry sits down to talk to his father. Henry tells him that he will go to China on one condition: as a senior member of several “downtown associations,” Henry’s father must use his influence to prevent the sale of the Panama Hotel. Henry’s father thanks him, and Henry replies that he’s made the choice for Keiko, not for his father. He plans to start over in China, and he hopes that “if that old hotel [is] still around, Nihonmachi [can] start over too.”
Despite his maturation as a character, Henry shows in this passage that he still has a child’s naïveté in thinking that Nihonmachi will be able to revive itself, or that the Japanese American families who survive internment will ever really be able to “start over.” Still, his attempt to preserve something of Keiko’s pre-internment life by saving the hotel from demolition shows how deeply Henry wants Keiko to feel like she still belongs.
Themes
The following day, Henry mails one final letter to Keiko, whom he hasn’t heard from in six months. In the letter, he wishes her farewell, but also says that if she is home in March, one month from now, he will meet her on the steps of the Panama Hotel. Henry tells the girl at the post office that this is the last time he’ll see her because he is going to China to finish his schooling. As he leaves the post office, he thinks he “detect[s] more than a hint of sadness in the young clerk’s face.”
Henry demonstrates his belief that letting go is sometimes better than fighting. This mindset about love is something that Sheldon, and later Marty and Samantha, work hard to challenge in Henry. Eventually, in a manner that parallels his efforts to communicate his feelings more clearly, Henry will have to break through this mindset in order to reconnect with Keiko.
Themes
It is now March, the date Henry specified in his letter, and Henry is waiting for Keiko on the steps of the Panama Hotel. Henry thinks of this as “one last noble gesture, so when he board[s] the ship, he [can] leave knowing he’d given it his all.” Suddenly, Henry hears the sounds of a woman’s heels, and he looks up. For a moment, he sees Keiko’s face, but then he realizes the face before him is Chinese, not Japanese. It is the young woman from the post office.
Henry is still very clearly in love with Keiko, and his desire to enact “one last noble gesture” shows that he has learned the importance of acting on his feelings, even when he has trouble verbalizing them. It’s hard to blame Henry for feeling exhausted given that he’s been waiting for Keiko for years. Still, it seems likely that Sheldon would remind Henry that hope is hard but worthwhile work.
Themes
The girl from the post office hands Henry his final letter. She says it was returned unopened and marked “Return to Sender,” meaning Keiko is no longer at Camp Minidoka. Henry notices that the letter is open now, and the clerk apologizes, admitting that she read it herself. “I hated the thought of you sitting here, waiting for someone who was never going to come,” she says. She also hands Henry a bouquet of starfire lilies, saying she’s seen him buying them at the market. “I guess I figured they were your favorite,” she says, “and maybe someone should give you some for a change.” Henry thanks the girl, and realizes he doesn’t even know her name. She introduces herself as Ethel Chen.
The reveal of Ethel’s identity shows how intricately connected Henry’s love for Ethel is with his love for Keiko. Ethel loves Henry (at least in part) for his loyalty to Keiko; Henry loves and feels grateful to Ethel for showing loyalty to him, even as his heart was breaking over Keiko’s seeming abandonment. The appearance of starfire lilies in this passage confirms that, like the love Henry and his mother share, the love between Ethel and Henry is imperfect, but still a force of beauty and strength.
Themes
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