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
With the worldwide Depression hitting Korea, the winter of 1932 is an especially difficult one. At the same time, the widowed Yangjin has to learn how to run the boardinghouse on her own and be an employer. She can’t raise the rent on her struggling boarders, so she stretches meals out of what scanty provisions she has.
Yangjin has to learn how to be a savvy, resourceful businesswoman under particularly difficult circumstances—newly bereaved and in an environment of overall financial struggle.
Themes
One evening, Yangjin listens as some boarders, the Chung brothers, talk politics over dinner. Japan is currently at war with China. The brothers boast on behalf of Korea’s “elder brother,” China, saying that Japan “is just a bad seed.” The young Chungs have always lived under colonial rule, so they long for another nation to prevail where their own rulers have failed. Yangjin remembers how Hoonie used to listen to such talk, then sigh and say, “No matter.” Regardless of the war’s outcome, the next day’s chores still need to be done.
By this point in the twentieth century, some Koreans have never known life without Japanese imperial rule, but it’s a perpetual topic of discussion. The theme of “bad blood,” which will be recurrent in the novel, is already present in the Chung brothers’ comment about Japan. While Hoonie had paid attention to politics, he believed it had limited impact on daily living, and Yangjin, with her many cares, sees things the same way.
Themes
A young, sickly man from Pyongyang arrives at the boardinghouse door after a long journey. Yangjin is surprised by the sight of him—he’s handsome and elegant in Western-style, professional clothing. The man introduces himself as Baek Isak and explains that his brother, Yoseb, had stayed here years ago. He’s looking for a place to stay on his way to Osaka. Yangjin knows that an evidently wealthy man like Baek Isak would expect his own room, and she reluctantly explains that they have no space for him. At the last moment, however, she tells him there’s just enough room for him to sleep beside the other lodgers, and he gratefully accepts.
The arrival of Baek Isak, who appears so different from the typical boardinghouse lodger, signals an impending change in the life of Yangjin’s family. Because of Isak’s Western-influenced dress, Yangjin knows he’s from the upper class and would expect fancier accommodations. However, Isak gladly accepts what she's able to offer, suggesting his humility—and also hinting at how sick Isak really is at this moment.
Themes
