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
Mozasu’s wife, Yumi, has lost two pregnancies in three years. During her third pregnancy, her doctor orders bed rest. Yumi is terrified, feeling that she has to work. Mozasu, who’s making good money, tries to comfort her with promises that he’ll take her to America for a visit after she has the baby.
Yumi has always had to fight for survival, so being unable to work is disorienting for her. She still hangs on to her youthful dream of moving to America, but Mozasu has good prospects in the pachinko business and isn’t interested in leaving for good.
Themes
Sunja takes time off from her confectionary store to help around Mozasu’s house. One morning when Sunja brings Yumi breakfast in bed, Yumi talks about her mother, who was abusive and only cared about drinking and getting money, and about her little sister who’d died while they were living on the streets. Sunja tells Yumi she has suffered too much.
Sunja’s market stall has finally become a successful store. However, she drops everything to care for her family. Yumi has never had a good mother figure and finally opens up to Sunja. Some of her fears about motherhood may stem from her own difficult childhood, which had none of the love Sunja enjoyed even at the worst of times.
Themes
Soon Yumi gives birth to a son, Solomon. On his first birthday ceremony, Solomon grabs a yen note, which signifies that he’s going to have a rich life.
Two generations after a poor and helpless Sunja left Korea, her descendants have a realistic hope of being wealthy; the struggle of Sunja’s younger years will be foreign to Solomon.
Themes
