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Chapter 1
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Emperor of Gladness, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Found Family
Time
War and Generational Trauma
Distortions of Reality
The American Dream
Summary
Analysis
The boy hadn’t planned on jumping off the bridge, but a fall could be blamed on gravity, sparing his mother the heartache of her son killing himself in a more intentional manner. He moves to the center of the bridge (its highest point) and recalls a girl telling him how quick this death would be, letting him be “free from the human cage of your body.” Despite this knowledge, he’s instinctually resistant to jumping. Before he can make a decision, someone calls out from the river’s banks.
Even as Vuong delves deeper into the boy’s character, revealing his hope to protect his mother, he is still left nameless and few other details are revealed. The narrator’s hope to be liberated from his physical body exemplifies his feeling of being trapped and his hope for unrestrained freedom. Still, his instincts take over and keep him from jumping, displaying just how powerful biological instincts can be despite one’s desperate wishes to die.
Active
Themes
Next to a withering house, the boy sees a woman fumbling with her clothesline. He shouts that she’s about to lose her blankets, and the woman tries to see who was speaking to her through the heavy rainfall. When she sees the boy on the bridge, she insists he get off the bridge, though he says he wasn’t going to jump. After she threatens to call the police, the boy complies; still, she insists that he come down to see her, and it’s then that he realizes she must be about 80 years old.
The boy’s immediate decision to help the old woman, even though it reveals his position on the bridge, shows his caring even for people he may not know. Her insistence that he come inside after he’s on safe ground shows her similarly protective nature, although she expresses it in a more abrasive manner than the boy does.
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Themes
The woman invites him into her home and has him sit at her kitchen table. There, the boy sees a stack of magazines, which she tells him are Lithuanian, from the country that she was born in. She then points out her collection of owl figurines, which she highlights as being made “in a free country,” none of them coming from Communist nations. Although the boy tries to leave, the woman insists he stay. He introduces himself as Hai, a Vietnamese name; the old woman misunderstands him to mean his name means “hello,” so she gives him the nickname Labas (“hello” in Lithuanian). She introduces herself as Grazina.
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Themes
Assuming he works for UPS, Grazina asks about his jacket. Hai informs her that he got it from a friend. With Hai still visibly upset, Grazina decides to show him the perfect way to get rid of sorrow. They bring a bag of dinner rolls outside and, under her instruction, put them on the muddy ground and stomp on them. She explains that, while bread was precious in her home country, she can now crush bread at any time she likes. Hai says this makes him feel beautiful.
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Hai wakes in Grazina’s spare room in the middle of the night to Grazina singing “Silent Night.” When he goes into her room, he finds her lying still with her eyes open, continuing to sing despite his presence. Hai returns to his room and wakes up once again come morning. He reflects on the friend who gave him his UPS jacket–Noah, who died two years prior. When Grazina wakes, she makes him latkes for breakfast, and Hai reveals that he has no one close in town, as he and his mother aren’t speaking. After asking Grazina about her singing the previous night, Hai finds that she doesn’t remember that occurring. Grazina feeds him raw carrots, saying they improve the will to live. She then shares her past, telling Hai of her husband’s passing and her daughter Lina’s alcoholism.
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Themes
Before Hai can try to leave again, Grazina asks that he live with her, his only payment to be looking after Grazina’s wellbeing. Though she had live-in nurses in the past, they left because Grazina’s neighborhood was the site of a spill of toxic waste in the 1980s; she’s the only person who remains on her street. Hai hesitates, and Grazina concedes that he might need to fix his fraught relationship with his mother, but he eventually agrees to look after her.
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