Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Police Brutality, Corruption, and Systemic Racism
Healing, Progress, and Collective Consciousness
Justice, Perspective, and Ambiguity
Individuals vs. Institutions
Action vs. Symbolic Gesture
Summary
Analysis
Smith interviews the Park family. They sit in the Parks’ new, modern home in Fullerton. Walter Park was shot through the eye during the riots. June, his wife, sits next to him, dressed elegantly. Chris Oh, June’s son and Walter’s stepson, sits with his parents. Ravel plays on the sound system. Mr. Park speaks confidently, but his wife and son make motions intended to make Smith see that he doesn’t know what he’s saying. This is because Park has been heavily sedated ever since the shooting.
Walter Park is another Korean American victim of the riots. The Parks’ situation is certainly a tragic one. The new home in the nice Fullerton neighborhood of Los Angeles, combined with the Ravel (an early 20th-cenutry French composer) playing on the sound system evokes a family whose experience in America had been one of economic prosperity and upward social mobility. Yet, this success doesn’t protect the family from becoming victims of the riots.
Themes
Walter Park recalls feeling “lonely” inside his store. He decided he needed to go to Korea to see his mother. He talks about calling some guys and telling them about his plans to “go Korea, / see if I can change, uh, / situation.” One of the men asked Park why he wanted to go to Korea so soon after he was released from the hospital. Park wondered about that. He went home and told June about his plans. She said nothing in response, which is typical of her. Park pauses before stating that it’s common for Koreans to hide things from people they really love. If silence is how June loves him, it’s fine, “and [he] ha[s] to pay her back / that makes it even.”
Walter’s confused ramblings about needing to return to Korea to “change, uh, / situation” add to the emotional weight of his monologue. He seems, perhaps unconsciously, to want to address what has happened to him—but he’s either unable or unwilling to do so directly. Walter’s words are primarily the effect of his brain injury and sedation. However, his impulse to embrace his Korean culture suggests, perhaps, an unconscious detachment from America in light of the country’s failure to protect his family from suffering during the riots.
Themes
