Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Leavers, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Cultural Identity and Belonging
Migration, Change, and Happiness
Racism, Cultural Insensitivity, and Implicit Bias
Self-Deception and Rationalization
Parenthood, Support, and Expectations
Summary
Analysis
Polly narrates the events that take place after she’s taken by the immigration authorities. Shoved into a windowless van, she’s driven to a small room with a phone, where she’s allowed to make a single phone call. Because she can’t remember anybody’s number, she ends up calling a stranger’s voicemail. At this point, she’s taken to Ardsleyville, a camp in Texas, though she doesn’t know where it is at the time. For fourteen months, she lives under a large tent with other undocumented immigrants, often waking up when the guards come around to do “bed checks.” The living conditions in the camp are terrible, and the guards refuse to let her speak to a lawyer or to immigration authorities.
It’s worth noting that life inside Ardsleyville is grueling and strict, as if Polly has been put in prison. This is significant, since she hasn’t even had a trial and isn’t actually in prison. This provides a snapshot of what life is like inside US detainment camps, where countless undocumented immigrants are sent for long periods of time without any indication of when they’ll be let out or what will happen to them when they’re finally released. Given that Polly places so much importance on the idea of being able to change her life according to what she wants for herself, it’s easy to see that this kind of detainment would be quite torturous.
Themes
In the camp, Polly worries that Deming will forget her face. She itches her arms so much that her skin tears, but still she only thinks about what she’s missing, wondering if Leon has taken another lover. One day, Polly and a group of detainees decide to protest by going outside and holding up a sign that says HELP, hoping the news helicopters that often circle the camp will glimpse their message. However, the only plane that goes by flies away after a moment, and the guards spray them with teargas and hit them with police batons. Afterwards, Polly is placed in solitary confinement, where she fantasizes about wrenching open the walls with her hands so she can rejoin the world. “Because I wasn’t really here,” she narrates, saying that she’s living out the life of “another person.” “I pushed at the walls with my head,” she notes.
The prison-like quality of Ardsleyville wears on Polly, curtailing her freedom and disrupting her life. Throughout the entire novel, Ko has hinted that Polly left Deming behind on purpose, but now readers see the devastating truth, which is that she has been wrenched from her family and forced to endure inhumane conditions. As she thinks about what she’s missing, she feels the walls closing in on her, a representation of her sudden inability to decide for herself where she goes.
Themes
After Polly bangs her head against the walls of her cell, the guards take her out and bandage her wounds, at which point she finds herself sitting in front of a man in a suit who says the word “lawyer” in Mandarin, though she can’t understand anything else he says. Not long after this, she’s taken to court, and when she tries to answer questions on her own, the judge reprimands her for not waiting for her translator to translate. When she asks why she’s in court, the judge gets fed up and dismisses the case, ordering her to be deported because she “spoke out of turn.”
The judge presiding over Polly’s immigration case makes the unfair assumption that she doesn’t understand English. When she disproves this, though, it becomes clear that he’s eager to punish her, refusing to listen to her and ultimately dismissing her case simply because she tries to advocate for herself. In this way, readers see the role racism plays in the immigration system, as Polly’s deportation is based not on the particulars of her case, but on the judge’s cultural insensitivity.
Themes
When Polly lands in Fuzhou again, she makes her way back to her childhood village, where she finds Haifeng’s mother living in Polly’s father’s old house. “We’ve been using it,” Haifeng’s mother explains, saying that she didn’t know how to get in touch with Polly. Annoyed, Polly walks past the woman and spends the night. The next day, Haifeng’s mother gives her 5,000 yuan for the house, and Polly goes to Fuzhou and calls the loan shark, only to discover that the entirety of her debt has been paid. That night, she finds a job at a nail salon and rents a room populated by other out-of-town laborers.
Although Polly’s time in Ardsleyville is quite traumatic, her deportation gives her a chance to start anew. Of course, she isn’t necessarily happy about this, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that she has been fantasizing about escaping her debt and caretaking responsibilities for quite some time. In turn, her new beginning in Fuzhou is a chance to build a better life, though this opportunity has come at a significant personal cost.
Themes
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