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
Back at home, Isak, terribly feverish, drifts between dreams and consciousness. He struggles to speak to Sunja, telling her, “My life wasn’t important.” Having prayed ceaselessly for the family’s provision, he wants Sunja to understand how thankful he is for her hard work and endurance. The two share happy moments talking about their growing sons.
For Isak, enabling Sunja to have a chance at a good life was the most important thing; he was never motivated by the desire for his own success. Each has given the other things they never expected to have: for Isak, sons, and for Sunja, a semblance of a happy family life after her disgrace.
Themes
When Yoseb gets home from work and sees Isak’s condition, he asks in despair, “My boy, couldn’t you just tell them what they wanted to hear?” Isak sleeps as Sunja, Kyunghee, and Yoseb spend the evening shaving his gray hair and beard, filled with nits.
In keeping with his attitude that survival is the most important thing, Yoseb finds Isak’s suffering a terrible, pointless waste. He doesn’t understand why Isak couldn’t just let the Japanese believe that he worshipped the Emperor, even if it wasn’t true. If he’d cooperated, he possibly could have stayed with his family.
Themes
The next morning, when Noa is reluctant to go to school, Isak speaks up, reminding him how much he’d longed to attend school as a sickly child. He tells Noa he must persevere, be diligent, and be forgiving; when people aren’t fair, the Lord will be fair. To Noa, this sounds like what he hears from his teacher at school; that he must help his fellow Koreans be “good children of the benevolent Emperor.” Isak tells Noa how brave he is—that “living every day in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage.”
Even as a child, Noa is already pulled between two worlds, Korean and Japanese, and he doesn’t have a clear way of distinguishing between them, so he harmonizes them as best he can. He will struggle with this tension for the rest of his life as he lives in the presence of his oppressors.
Themes
