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
That night, Yoseb is enraged and ashamed that the women went to the moneylender and repaid his debt for him. Privately, he wonders where Sunja could have gotten such an expensive watch and wonders if he should have allowed her into his home. He leaves the house in anger. Meanwhile, Sunja begins to have labor pains.
To Yoseb, having his wife and sister-in-law repay his debt feels emasculating, as if it’s proof that he isn’t capable of providing for his own family. Sunja’s ownership of such an expensive watch also raises his suspicions, since it isn’t something that an ordinary peasant girl would normally own. It makes him suspect that there’s more to Sunja’s story than he knows.
Themes
When Isak gets home, Sunja tells him that her mother had given her the gold watch. Isak takes this at face value and promises to explain to Yoseb, although he seems unsure. Then Sunja’s water breaks. After a brief, ordinary labor, Sunja gives birth to a strong son. She cries for her own mother, Yangjin, all the while.
Isak doesn’t know where the watch has come from, either, but he takes responsibility for the situation. Sunja gives birth to her and Hansu’s son that night, just as the issues surrounding the watch have come to a head—suggesting that Hansu’s presence in Sunja’s life will linger.
Themes
Yoseb comes home the next morning, having spent the night in a bar fretting over his responsibilities to his family. When Isak speaks to him, Yoseb weeps and forgives him and Sunja. As the brothers walk to church, Isak asks him, as head of the family, to name the newborn. Yoseb names his nephew Noa—“because he obeyed and did what the Lord asked […] because he believed when it was impossible to do so.”
Yoseb feels he is under unbearable pressure to support not only himself and Kyunghee, but Isak’s growing family and their struggling families back in Korea, in an unforgiving colonial environment. Yet forgiveness will be key to Yoseb’s ability to bear this terrible weight. Though he is less forthcoming about his Christian faith than Isak, Yoseb’s choice of name for the new baby (referring to the biblical story of Noah’s ark in Genesis) reveals much about his own sustaining faith—he faithfully tries to do what’s asked of him even when it feels impossible.
Themes
