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
Ten years after Polly Guo’s disappearance, Daniel Wilkinson huddles in the corner of a loft party in Lower Manhattan. His band, Psychic Hearts, is about to play a set to a crowd of hipsters, including the promoter for a revered club called Jupiter. As Daniel listens to the opening act, he thinks about his bandmate, Roland Fuentes. Roland has been his best friend since junior high and is a charismatic front man. The music he has written for Psychic Hearts is uninteresting to Daniel, who thinks the songs pander the latest trends, but this doesn’t stop Roland from trying to build hype about the duo, telling everyone who will listen how amazing Daniel is at guitar. As Daniel waits to go on, he guzzles vodka and watches people fawn over Roland while ignoring him completely.
It isn’t immediately clear why Ko cuts from the story of Polly Guo’s disappearance to this seemingly unrelated scene. However, this confusion mimics the lack of resolution that Deming must feel in the aftermath of losing his mother, since he’s forced to simply go along with his life without ever knowing what, exactly, drove her away.
Themes
By the time Psychic Hearts goes on, Daniel is drunk and can’t remember the songs. “Learn to play,” an audience member shouts, and Daniel unplugs his guitar and walks offstage, darting out of the loft and onto the wintery streets. Making his way to Chinatown, he walks around and feels a sense of familiarity. “Being surrounded by other Chinese people had become so strange,” Ko writes. “In high school, kids said they never thought of him as Asian or Roland as Mexican, like it was a compliment.” Before Daniel went to SUNY Potsdam (which he isn’t currently attending) and before he lived in the suburb of Ridgeborough, he was a “city kid who memorized the subway system by fourth grade.” All the same, he doesn’t feel like he “belong[s]” as he walks through Chinatown.
It’s worth paying attention to Daniel’s sudden awareness that he isn’t the only Chinese person in the vicinity. That he thinks it’s “strange” to be “surrounded by other Chinese people” suggests that he’s accustomed to spending time in communities in which he’s the only person of Chinese descent. When his high school peers used to try to compliment him by saying that “they never thought of him as Asian,” Ko highlights the ways in which undiverse white communities often fail to examine their own implicit biases, since this sentiment suggests that it would be a bad thing if people saw Daniel as Asian.
Themes
Having lived upstate for the past decade, Daniel hardly remembers how to speak Fuzhounese. When he went to SUNY Potsdam, he encountered several other Asian students, but they were mostly exchange students who stayed with one another, and he “avoided” them. And now the cultural breakdown of Potsdam doesn’t matter to him anymore, since he’s been sleeping on Roland’s couch in the city. As he wanders through the streets after the show, Roland texts him and asks him if he’s okay. Ignoring this message, Daniel pulls up an email he’s been looking at periodically for two months, when he first received it. It’s from Michael, who wants to know if Daniel’s name used to be Deming Guo.
When Daniel reads the email from Michael, readers understand how his story is connected to Deming’s—Daniel is Deming. Whatever has happened in the past ten years, then, it’s clear that Polly’s disappearance had a profound effect on the trajectory of Deming’s life, since he now goes by a different name and is unused to being around other Asian people. This, of course, stands in stark contrast to his life as a young child, when he lived in Chinatown surrounded by Chinese immigrants like his mother.
Themes
“You and your mom used to live with me and my mom and my Uncle Leon in the Bronx,” Michael writes in his email to Daniel. “I know we haven’t talked in years but if this is the right Daniel, can you write me or call me […]? It’s important. It’s about your mother.” Daniel closes the message, frustrated by the thought that Michael and Vivian and Leon could just come bursting back into his life after a full decade. “They’d let him go, given him away,” Ko notes. “He couldn’t think of anything Michael could tell him about his mother that he wanted to know. Wherever she was, she was long gone.” Thinking this way, he puts away his phone and decides to go back to the apartment and apologize to Roland, resolving to learn the songs and commit himself to Psychic Hearts.
Daniel’s assertion that Polly is “long gone” suggests that he has purposefully put the past behind him, wanting to avoid thinking about his mother’s disappearance. This, it seems, is how he has become Daniel Wilkinson, an entirely different person. As such, he doesn’t want to talk to Michael, since doing so would only bring up memories he’s clearly worked hard to forget.
Themes
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The next morning, Daniel meets Peter and Kay—his adoptive parents—for lunch. While Peter complains about the font on the menu, Kay tells Daniel that there’s “controversy” at Carlough College, where they both teach. “The minority students have been protesting,” Peter interjects. “They want the administration to establish an Ethnic Studies department.” When Daniel asks why this is a problem, Kay is quick to say that she and her husband “value diversity.” However, Peter adds, they take issue with “the level of vitriol” coming from the students. “All this focus on trigger warnings, political correctness. I’m afraid we’re breeding a generation of coddled children. I’d like to think that we’ve raised you to not have that sort of entitlement, Daniel,” Kay says, and Daniel assures her that this is the case.
When Peter and Kay talk to Daniel about “entitlement,” they fail to recognize their own entitlement, which allows them to cast disparaging judgments on minority students who are simply advocating for equal representation. As an Asian young man who has been to school at a white-majority university, Daniel seems to understand why Peter and Kay’s students might protest, but Kay doesn’t give him an opportunity to voice this opinion, instead implying that anyone who questions such issues is entitled. As such, Daniel is forced to align with a perspective that doesn’t necessarily accord with his actual viewpoint.
Themes
Noticing how tired he looks, Kay asks Daniel if he was out late the night before, and he says he had a show with Roland. “Was it in a bar?” Kay asks. “Mom,” Daniel replies. “I haven’t been doing anything. A beer or two now and then.” In response, Kay reminds him that “temptations can lead to relapses,” insisting that he should be living at home with them in Ridgeborough in upstate New York. Going on, she says she wishes he would come home and go to Gamblers Anonymous, but Daniel lies and says he’s been attending meetings in the city.
At first, it seems as if Kay is saying that Daniel has a drinking problem, but it soon emerges that Daniel is addicted to gambling, not alcohol. Still, Kay’s assertion that “temptations can lead to relapses” is important to note, since it foreshadows the ways in which Daniel later rationalizes self-destructive behavior. In this moment, Kay articulates the fact that giving in to one impulse often encourages a person to give into another, ultimately creating a snowball effect.
Themes
Ko explains that Peter installed a “blocking software” on Daniel’s laptop after Daniel failed out of Potsdam. The blocker makes it impossible for Daniel to visit the poker websites that distracted him from his studies and emptied his bank account. At lunch, Daniel assures Peter and Kay that he’s doing well in the city. “I’m making decent money at my job, not using my credit card,” he lies. “It’s not like Potsdam, where there’s nothing to do. I’m too busy to get distracted by that stuff here.” This comment angers Peter, who says, “Nothing to do in Potsdam, he says. It’s school. You’re supposed to be studying.” Going on, he laments the fact that Daniel is working in a Mexican restaurant like “a common laborer,” and when Daniel tells him not to be racist, he denies that what he’s said is insensitive. “Call a spade a spade,” he says.
Throughout Daniel’s conversation with his adoptive parents, it becomes rather obvious that Peter and Kay are quite worried about how he lives his life. Subjecting him to a number of expectations regarding his academic habits, they disapprove of the fact that he works in a Mexican restaurant. When Peter likens Daniel to a “common laborer,” readers see that he has an elitist perspective, one that disparages working-class people. What’s more, Daniel detects racist overtones when Peter says this, but Peter denies this. Rather ironically, he dismisses the idea of his own bigotry by saying, “Call a spade a spade,” a phrase that has in itself become a racially charged thing to say. In this way, Ko spotlights how unwilling Peter is to examine his own prejudices, which are so deeply engrained that he fails to even notice when he’s perpetuating culturally insensitive ideas.
Themes
Hearing Peter talk disparagingly about his job, Daniel challenges the idea that people who work in Mexican restaurants aren’t responsible or intelligent. When he finishes, Kay tells him not to “talk to [his] father like that,” and Peter tells him that they didn’t come all the way to the city just to “listen to his sarcasm.” At this point, Kay informs him that they’ve convinced the dean of Carlough College to let him attend summer school and then continue as a full-time student. When Daniel says he doesn’t want to do this, Peter says he and Kay have put themselves “on the line” for him. Still, Daniel says he’s going to focus on his music instead, and this enrages Peter. Giving Daniel an application to fill out, Peter tells him to write a statement of purpose, saying, “Do not mistake this for a choice.”
Peter and Kay’s negative reaction to Daniel’s comments demonstrates just how unwilling or incapable they are of holding themselves responsible for their own implicit biases. Rather than examining their prejudices and listening to Daniel—who, unlike them, actually knows what it’s like to be discriminated against—they ignore his opinion, pushing on to make him feel as if he owes them something. When Peter says that he and Kay have put themselves “on the line” for him, he acts as if Daniel is beholden to them. As a result, Daniel’s adoptive parents convey the message that he has to earn their love and support.
Themes
Before parting ways, Peter and Kay tell Daniel that they expect him to give them his statement of purpose the following weekend, since they’ll be returning to the city to attend a birthday party for Jim Hennings, their close family friend. “Angel will be there. You’ll join us, of course,” Kay says. This information puts Daniel on edge, as he realizes that Angel—Jim and Elaine Hennings’s adopted Chinese-American daughter—hasn’t gone to Nepal, as she originally planned. Ko doesn’t reveal why this information unsettles Daniel, but she does note that Angel and Daniel aren’t talking anymore. This is upsetting to Daniel, since he wants to tell her about “Peter’s accusation of ingratitude” and how he feels “torn” between “anger and indebtedness” in his relationship with Peter and Kay.
It's significant that Daniel wants to talk to Angel, since she is apparently one of the only people he knows who might understand what he’s gone through as an adoptee. Now, he wishes he could commiserate with her, since he wants to talk about how he feels “indebted” to Peter and Kay. This feeling comes from the fact that his adoptive parents act as if he needs to earn their love and support. Given that Daniel’s mother seemingly abandoned him, it makes sense that he feels undeserving of love, and Peter’s “accusation of ingratitude” only exacerbates this dynamic.
Themes
“We can’t make ourselves miserable because we think it’ll make [our parents] happy,” Angel once told Daniel. Ever since childhood, Daniel has confided in her, and in college they started talking on the phone every night. Now Daniel deeply misses these conversations, but there’s nothing he can do to get Angel to talk to him again. “We love you,” Kay says, bringing Daniel back to the present. “We want the best for you. I know it doesn’t seem like that right now, but we do.” Hearing this, he feels guilty about everything Peter and Kay have done for him, so he promises he’ll fill out the Carlough application.
Angel’s advice to Daniel is worth bearing in mind, since it addresses Daniel’s uncomfortable sense that he’s “indebted” to his parents—a belief that curtails his ability to do what he wants with his life. “We want the best for you,” Kay tells him, and though this is probably true, what she and Peter fail to recognize is that their conception of what’s “best” for Daniel is quite narrow and might not align with what he wants.
Themes
That night, Daniel works on a new song and then tries to think of what to say in his statement of purpose. When Roland comes home, he apologizes for running offstage, but Roland doesn’t hold it against him. Instead, he invites him into his room and shows him a recording he made, saying he wants to change the band’s sound because Hutch—the guy who books bands at Jupiter—likes a specific kind of music. Daniel doesn’t like the style of Roland’s new writing, but he agrees to help work on an album in this vein, figuring that this is a good opportunity to do something with his music career. In passing, he tells Roland about Michael’s email, but Roland warns him not to respond, saying that he’ll “regret” finding out new information about his mother.
In many ways, The Leavers is a novel about the ways in which people struggle to find the person they want to be. For Daniel, this process involves navigating Peter and Kay’s expectations while simultaneously pursuing his own desire to be a musician. In this scene, though, readers see that even working with Roland poses a challenge, as Daniel realizes that this project doesn’t reflect his own musical preferences. In the same way that he agrees to do what Peter and Kay want, though, he tells Roland he’ll help him record the Psychic Hearts album.
Themes
