Migration, Change, and Happiness Theme Analysis

A novel about migration and relocation, The Leavers provides an in-depth look at the human tendency to associate change with happiness. At first, Polly has to emigrate from China to get what she wants, since she doesn’t make enough money in her rural hometown. In America, she makes better wages, but the journey requires her to borrow tens of thousands of dollars from loan sharks, plunging her into debt. Ko uses this situation to illustrate that although migration can lead to new opportunities, such changes often come with considerable personal costs. In fact, Polly’s debt makes it impossible for her to flourish in New York, so she fantasizes about leaving once more, seeing migration as the only way to find new opportunity and, thus, happiness. However, she never gets what she wants, even years later when she has lots of money, an expensive high-rise apartment with an ocean view, a good marriage, and a renewed relationship with Deming. In this manner, Ko highlights the grass-is-greener mentality that Polly has developed as a result of her original need to emigrate. Having grown used to coupling the idea of change with the possibility of happiness, she now lives a restless life. In keeping with this, Ko suggests that although change is sometimes necessary, it isn’t always a path to contentment.

As a young woman in rural China, Polly is eager to transition into a more active life. Right from the beginning, then, she has a strong thirst for change. Unable to secure official residency in a Chinese city (known as “urban hukou”), she decides to travel to nearby Fuzhou to work in a factory. “Villagers couldn’t get permanent urban hukou, but they could buy temporary resident permits and find better jobs than fishing and farming,” she notes. Motivated by the possibility of upward mobility, she migrates for the first time, revealing her willingness—her eagerness—to drastically alter her life in pursuit of a more satisfying existence. In this section of the novel, readers come to understand Polly’s relationship with change, as she opens herself up to new possibilities because she thinks this is the only way to improve her life.

It is this mentality that eventually encourages Polly to travel to the United States. In search of happiness and financial prosperity, she puts herself into debt in order to experience something new. Eleven years later, she is still struggling to pay off the loan sharks and feels just as stagnant as she felt in China. “Once I might have become this woman, free to move across the country because she heard a city was beautiful,” she thinks to herself one day after meeting a stranger who tells her she’s moving to San Francisco simply because she’s heard nice things about it. In this moment, readers see the extent to which Polly has romanticized the idea of change, seeing it as something that might magically make her happy and cause her problems to disappear.

Since Polly is so committed to the idea that change and migration are tied to happiness, her experience in an immigration detention camp is especially traumatic. Captured by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), she is detained for fourteen months without trial. Not only is she kept from her family, but she also loses her ability to decide for herself where to go. Since Polly places so much importance on where she lives, it’s easy to see that her detainment and eventual deportation is a massive blow to her sense of mobility and freedom. For someone who sees change (and, thus, migration) as an opportunity to improve her life, it’s quite torturous to suddenly have no say about where she’s allowed to live.

Roughly a decade after Polly is deported to China, she finally manages to obtain the upwardly mobile life she has always wanted. Married to a successful businessman, she lives in a flashy urban apartment in Fuzhou. She even rekindles her relationship with Deming when he tracks her down and lives with her for a short period. When he returns to the United States, though, she once again decides to completely change her life. Her decision to leave her husband and move to Hong Kong proves that the kind of happiness she’s searching for is more existential than material, since she abandons the trappings of a wealthy existence in exchange for the freedom of the unknown. As she approaches Hong Kong on a ferry, she moves through fog and is “breathless with laughter,” exhilarated by change. “How wrong I had been to assume this feeling had been lost forever. This lightheaded uncertainty, all my fear and joy—I could return here, punching the sky,” she notes. “Because I had found her: Polly Guo. Wherever I went next, I would never let her go again.” The fact that Polly (who also goes by Peilan) feels as if she has “found” herself simply by migrating once again indicates that sometimes upheaval can be satisfying in and of itself. Notably, Polly is happy while she’s in the midst of her travels, not once she’s settled into her new life. Given her track record, she’ll likely tire of her existence in Hong Kong, meaning she’ll have to move again. Once more, then, Ko suggests that change doesn’t always result in happiness. At the same time, though, she subtly implies that the very process of migration itself can give one a sense of fulfillment and existential contentment. Or, to quote a well-known adage, life’s a journey, not a destination.