Previous
Chapter 2
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 two settle into a routine, with Hai’s main responsibility being to give Grazina the medications she is prescribed for her dementia. To check on her mental state, Hai asks Grazina who the president is, as he had with his schizophrenic grandmother (who he refers to as his bà ngoại). Hai’s other responsibility is to make grocery trips, which are paid for by Grazina’s EBT card. During his second week with her, Hai improves at reading her body language, knowing when her mental state is slipping. Grazina’s mental state often worsens in the middle of the night, when Hai placates her and ushers her back to bed.
Again, Vuong reveals a small detail of Hai’s life: his grandmother’s schizophrenia. The fact that he cared for her shows both his caring nature and his close relationship with his grandmother. Grazina’s EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) card reveals her level of poverty, as it is a government-issued supplemental card for those struggling to buy basic necessities. Hai’s improvement in reading Grazina displays not only his intelligence and experience, but also the pair’s growing intimacy.
Active
Themes
In the desk of the spare room, Hai finds a copy of Slaughterhouse-Five, which he reads during one breakfast. Grazina’s husband had been trying to translate the text into Lithuanian but failed to finish before his death. Grazina asks Hai to read her the opening, and he does. Her cuckoo clock goes off at 6:43, which she says is the time Vilnius fell to Stalin. Later, Hai finds Grazina’s husband’s abandoned Dilaudid, which he pockets behind her back.
Hai’s choice of reading is significant as the Vonnegut novel is notably anti-war, suggesting that the novel will go on to explore a similar theme. This is solidified as Grazina explains the significance of her cuckoo clock, as it shows how the Second World War remains on her mind decades later. In stealing her husband’s old pills, Vuong points to Hai having a substance abuse problem.
Active
Themes
That night during a thunderstorm, Hai wakes to Grazina’s screams as she walks about the house. She enters his room, collapsing on the floor. Hai asks her who the president is, but she only responds in Lithuanian. Eventually, she begins speaking English, begging Hai to get her baby brother out of a fire. Hai tries his best to comfort her, reminding her of the current date and her present life, but the only thing that soothes Grazina is a Vietnamese folk song his grandmother used to sing to him. Though she is still stuck in the past, she is significantly calmer.
Active
Themes
As Hai helps her bathe, Grazina asks Hai what he wants to do with his life. He said he once wanted to be a writer, “to write a novel that held everything [he] loved, including unlovable things.” Grazina tells him her husband wanted to be a poet but never ended up writing anything. She adds that, in Lithuania, writers were often killed. Hai knows that writing isn’t a lucrative position, which reminds Grazina that they are down to $34 on her EBT card. Knowing they need more money, Hai recalls that his cousin, Sony, works at a fast-food restaurant in town and resolves to see if they need employees the following day.
Active
Themes
Get the entire The Emperor of Gladness LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
Hai makes the trip to HomeMarket, Sony’s place of work, the following morning; it is regarded as being fancier than other fast-food establishments, though when Hai approaches the building, he only sees the chimney’s black smoke and “the scent of burnt flesh.” Inside he asks for Sony, and after two employees make sure Hai isn’t there to harass Sony, Hai and his cousin sit at a dining table. Sony says that the two shouldn’t talk since their moms are fighting. Sony insists, using American Civil War jargon, that a soldier shouldn’t betray their own, but once Hai explains that he just wants a job, Sony relents. He tells Hai that his mom, Hai’s Aunt Kim, is in jail, which neither Hai nor his mother knew.
Active
Themes
Sony explains that Kim and her boyfriend set their nail salon on fire for insurance money. Sony wants to get the five and a half thousand dollars to bail his mom out. He also shares that he is living at the Meyer’s Center, what used to be a halfway house. Sony tells Hai that he has to see his manager BJ if he wants to get a job. Hai then notices Sony’s handmade origami penguins on every table. As Hai leaves, Sony recommends that he watch Heroes, since Hai liked Power Rangers as a kid, and Hai thinks of how much he misses his cousin.
Active
Themes
When Sony was born, he had to have emergency brain surgery, leaving a scar from the middle of his head to the nape of his neck. This often led to bullying in school and his father leaving the family because “[his] sperm can’t make a retard.” Once, in their childhood, Hai recalls Sony coming to show their family that his scar disappeared, excited that he could now join the military; they quickly realized he just colored his scar with marker. As Hai leaves HomeMarket, he sees the opening of a new pizza place: Sgt. Pepper’s Pizza. When home, he shares the news of his interview with Grazina, and the two smoke and listen to the radio, which plays a news story about the war in Afghanistan.
Active
Themes
