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 story of her childhood, saying, “If you knew more about me, Deming, maybe you wouldn’t blame me so much, maybe you would understand me more.” Going on, she explains that her mother died of cancer. Polly was only a baby when this happened, so she doesn’t remember anything about her. As such, she often asked her father questions about her mother, though he rarely answered. Instead, he talked about how poor he was growing up, often complaining that people are too “soft and spoiled.” Overall, though, Polly describes her life as rather unrewarding. “Back then, leaving the village made you suspect,” she notes. “You might leave to marry a boy in another village and come home on holidays […] but otherwise, you stayed put.”
Polly’s attempt to avoid Deming’s “blame” confirms that she feels guilty about leaving him. To assuage this guilt, she tries to explain herself, thinking that the only way Deming will understand what happened is by getting to know her—an idea that encourages her son (and readers) to empathize with her when she eventually reveals why, exactly, she left. Furthermore, the fact that it was considered “suspect” for somebody like Polly to leave her village provides insight into why she cares so much about her freedom. After all, her ability to go where she wants has apparently been curtailed since she was a young girl.
Themes
Still narrating her backstory, Polly explains that she stops going to school after her eighth-grade teacher humiliates her for smoking a cigarette. The next year, she doesn’t return to class, instead listening to her father complain about “commercial fishing boats coming down the river from Fuzhou” and taking all the fish—a significant problem for him, since he’s a local fisherman. When Polly (who at the time is known as Peilan) is fifteen, she starts spending time with her neighbor, a boy named Haifeng. Before long, she and Haifeng kiss on a secluded riverbank, and they start seeing each other every afternoon, though they try to keep their relationship a secret from their parents.
From an early age, Polly dislikes being told what to do. When her teacher reprimands her, she simply decides to stop attending school, thereby rejecting the notion that anyone has control over her. This independent attitude foreshadows her eventual desire to lead her own life unencumbered by other peoples’ expectations.
Themes
Around the time Peilan and Haifeng start seeing one another, news circulates throughout the village about the benefits of working in the factories of Fuzhou, the nearest city. Although people from rural areas are unable to get permanent residency in cities (known as “urban hukou”), they’re allowed to purchase “temporary resident permits,” giving them the chance to find jobs that pay more than the ones available to them in the countryside. As such, Peilan decides to go to Fuzhou to work as a seamstress in a garment factory, and though her father says factory work is something only boys should do, she pays no attention, telling him that there are dormitories full of girls and that she’ll make 300 yuan every month.
China’s “hukou” system is a form of household registration that makes a distinction between rural and urban residency. Although the system was originally tied to the kind of work residents do (agricultural versus non-agricultural), it became a bastion of inequality, as people with urban hukou received benefits that those with rural hukou did not. Because Peilan doesn’t have urban hukou, she and her family are unable to live in the city of Fuzhou, which is why she jumps at the opportunity to purchase a “temporary resident permit,” which gives her the opportunity to pursue higher-paying jobs than she’d come across in her own village. The hukou system is worth noting because it’s one of the first restrictions on Peilan’s ability to live where she wants. All her life, it seems, people have been telling her where she can and cannot go, which is perhaps what has made her so averse to staying in one place.
Themes
In Fuzhou, Peilan works hard but enjoys her independence, sending so much money back to her father that soon other families let their daughters follow her to the city. Before long, Haifeng comes to Fuzhou and works in a nearby factory, and though he’s eager to see Peilan, she doesn’t make much time for him. Instead, she befriends Xuan and Qing, two girls who live in her dormitory. Xuan and Qing speak extensively about their sex lives, and Xuan—who has two lovers—shows her the fancy pieces of clothing one of her boyfriends gives her. Inspired by her friends’ sexual maturity, Peilan makes plans to meet Haifeng at a motel, where she has sex for the first time.
Finally out of her village and able to make her own choices, Peilan explores the new world of adulthood. Admiring her friends and their grownup ways, she embraces the idea of change and the process of maturing, and though she hasn’t necessarily shown an overwhelming amount of interest in Haifeng, she’s happy to use him to see for herself what it’s like to have the sexual experiences she has until now only heard about from Xuan and Qing.
Themes
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Two months later, Peilan realizes she’s pregnant, but she doesn’t want to tell Haifeng because he’ll expect her to marry him. When they were lying together in the motel, he talked about moving back to the village together and waxed poetic about what it would be like to be married—two topics that did nothing but drive Peilan away. “Until now, I had done anything I wanted to, without repercussions,” she notes. At the urging of Qing and Xuan, she visits a hospital, but the doctors won’t let her have an abortion because she doesn’t have a proper ID, since she’s not “registered as a city person.” Defeated, Peilan goes back to the factories, where her work suffers because she’s so distracted. Shortly thereafter, her boss fires her, at which point she decides to go back to her village to get an abortion at a rural hospital.
Peilan doesn’t want to tell Haifeng that she’s pregnant because she knows his expectations won’t accord with what she wants. Because she doesn’t want to marry him, she tries to make her own decision about her pregnancy, ultimately deciding to get an abortion. However, she once again finds her freedom curtailed by the hukou system, since the doctors refuse to give her an abortion because she isn’t an official “city person.” Experiences like this one—in which other people interfere with Peilan’s autonomy—shed light on why she later reinvents herself as Polly, an act that proves she can do whatever she wants.
Themes
Even at the rural hospital she visits, Peilan isn’t allowed to have an abortion. This time, it’s because she isn’t married. However, she also doesn’t have a “birth permit,” meaning she’ll be fined for having a baby. Taking pity on her, the nurse at the hospital tells her to wait in the lobby, implying that she’ll make an exception for her. As she sits and waits for the nurse to return, though, Peilan starts to fret, thinking about the times throughout her childhood when she watched previously pregnant women come home “smaller and subdued, but with no babies.” What’s more, she fears that she’ll be fined even if the hospital allows her to have an abortion, and she knows she won’t be able to pay. With nobody watching her, then, she gets up and leaves.
In this scene, Ko shows readers the profound power Peilan’s government has over her. Because she only has rural hukou, her family isn’t wealthy, and this means she can’t afford to pay a fine for having a baby without a “birth permit.” However, she also doesn’t qualify for an abortion, putting her in an extremely difficult position. And though the nurse seemingly takes pity on her, she ends up deciding to go through with her pregnancy. She makes this decision, it seems, because she’s afraid of having an abortion, though this is ultimately less of a choice than it is a surrender. Indeed, none of the options available to her in this moment are desirable. As such, this marks the first time that Peilan is unable to do what she wants.
Themes
Peilan tells her father that she’s home for a short vacation. Keeping her pregnancy a secret, she ruminates about the fact that she’ll have to marry Haifeng once everyone finds out she’s having his baby. During this period, she and her father go to a party for a fellow villager who went to America and has come back to visit. Although he incurred a sizable amount of debt to travel to the United States, he’s now paid it off and is living prosperously. The next day, Peilan decides to go to America, too.
It makes sense that Peilan decides to travel to America, since it’s the only way she’ll be able to avoid marrying Haifeng. By choosing to leave China, she effectively regains her autonomy, even if she’s still going to have a baby she doesn’t want.
Themes
To get to America, Peilan pays a woman $50,000 to make the arrangements. She borrows $3,000 from relatives, but the rest comes from loan sharks, whom she has to pay twice a month via wired installments or else risk physical harm. After a series of connecting flights and train rides, she finally arrives in a wooden box, her clothing wet with urine and her tongue “raw” from having bitten it over and over. “In New York City, I changed,” she explains. “For one thing, I was no longer Peilan.” On the suggestion of a fellow immigrant, she changes her name to Polly, thinking of it as the English equivalent of her actual name. Right away, she starts working at a garment factory, sleeping on the floor of a multi-person apartment every night.
It's worth noting how much of a sacrifice Peilan makes to reach America. Not only does she endure an extremely uncomfortable journey, she also throws herself into an astounding amount of debt, which will be very difficult for her to pay off. Nevertheless, she sees this as a new beginning, reveling in what it feels like to start anew with a different name and—thus—identity. The fact that she’s willing to sacrifice so much in order to get away from her previous life in China underlines her belief in the power of change, as she clearly thinks that the transformations she undergoes in America will make up for the fact that she has accrued massive amounts of debt.
Themes
Polly enjoys living in New York City, often riding the subways and appreciating the commotion and noise. “My new life was unstable and unsure, but each new day was shot through with possibility,” she notes. She makes friends with one of her roommates, a woman named Didi who’s originally from a village close to her own. As time passes, Polly nears her due date, so she goes to a free gynecology clinic, where the doctor tells her she’s too far along (seven months) to get an abortion. After this appointment, she feels hopeless: “I had run out of choices; I was fucked.”
At first, immigrating to America fills Polly with a sense of endless “possibility,” as she appreciates the fact that she can do seemingly anything she wants. However, this sense of freedom is cut short when she learns she can’t get an abortion. Although she has put herself in an entirely new context, she still lacks the feeling of uncompromised independence she so desperately wants, ultimately suggesting that change and migration don’t automatically bring about happiness.
Themes
After talking to the doctor, Polly takes a train to the end of its route and gets off on the edge of Brooklyn, finding herself standing before the ocean. Thinking about her own powerlessness, she wades into the freezing water. “Standing in the Atlantic, it grew into a challenge,” she asserts. “For Polly, the girl who’d defy odds, the girl who could do anything. New York was a parallel gift of a life, and the unrealness of being here gave even the most frightening things a layer of surreal comedy.” As she feels the ocean water lap against her shins, she thinks about how Peilan is living out an alternative reality in China while Polly stands here on the shore. “Peilan would marry Haifeng or another village boy while Polly would walk the endless blocks of new cities,” she notes. “Polly could have a baby without being married.”
When Polly thinks about having two “parallel” lives, readers once again see the duality that often accompanies a multicultural identity. Although Polly has left China, she hasn’t completely forgotten the woman she used to be. And though she is once again overwhelmed by the idea of losing her independence, she realizes that she still has much more personal freedom than she would have if she stayed in China, where she would have to marry Haifeng. This realization ultimately allows Polly to reframe her pregnancy, helping her see that she isn’t necessarily about to lose all of her personal freedom.
Themes
When Deming is born, Polly’s roommates don’t kick her out, though she agrees to pay extra rent. This proves difficult, though, since she has to quit her job, unable to bring herself to leave Deming with a babysitter. To make ends meet, she takes out another loan from the loan shark. Despite these financial troubles, she enters a period of bliss, marveling at how much she loves Deming. Meanwhile, Didi says she’ll get her a job at a nail salon whenever she’s ready. She also helps care for Deming, always willing to watch him when Polly wants to take a walk. And though Polly is floored by how much she loves Deming, she feels exhausted by her caretaking responsibilities. “What if I would always be required to offer myself up?” she fears, immediately feeling bad for thinking such thoughts.
Polly has a complicated view of parenthood. On the one hand, she loves Deming and is happy to be his mother. On the other hand, though, she sees her parental role as a burden, something that interferes with her independence. Ko manipulates this ambivalence, using it to stoke readers’ curiosity regarding why Polly eventually disappears. After all, the fact that she worries about always having to “offer” herself to Deming frames her as the type of person who might willingly abandon her child, though it’s not yet clear whether or not this is what happens.
Themes
Some of Polly’s roommates have children of their own and send them back to China so they can work. They tell Polly that it doesn’t matter, since babies won’t remember this period of their lives anyway. Still, Polly struggles with the idea of parting ways with Deming. When Deming is several months old, Polly goes back to work in a factory, but life proves quite difficult, and she eventually loses her job one day when she takes Deming to the factory with her. Placing him in a bag full of fabric, she implores him not to cry, but she can’t quiet him. As she fumbles to calm him down, she spills a bottle of formula on herself and lets the bottle fall onto his legs, at which point her boss notices what’s going on.
In this section, Ko emphasizes just how hard it is to raise a child as a single parent with very little money. Unable to pay for a babysitter, Polly has no choice but to take Deming to work, but her job performance suffers as a result. In this way, readers see that having a child truly has put a strain on her life, making it significantly harder for her to succeed. As such, her worst fears about the burdens of parenthood seemingly come true.
Themes
Keeping Deming in the bag of fabric, Polly picks him up and leaves work after her boss says she can return the next day without Deming. “You kicked me like you wanted to be freed,” she explains. “I don’t want to tell you what I did.” Seeing a bench nearby, she places Deming beneath it, looks around, and rushes away, feeling “lighter” and “relieved.” When she’s only several blocks away, though, she turns back and retrieves Deming, feeling terrible. That night, she calls her father and tells her she’s had a baby and that she needs to send him home.
Polly’s impulse to abandon Deming aligns with her view of parenthood as an overwhelming burden. Wanting to regain control of her own life, she leaves him under a bench. That she quickly comes back, though, is representative of her conflicted feelings as a mother. While she wants to enjoy the freedom of a life unencumbered by a child, she also loves Deming. Once again, then, Ko toys with her readers, causing them to wonder whether or not Polly’s eventual disappearance is purposeful.
Themes
