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Allusion
Explanation and Analysis—Sorrows of Young Werther:
Captivated by his college curricula, Noa digs into books in Book 2, Chapter 15. Pachinko alludes to various western novels as he pores through the literature:
Like a man starved, Noa filled his mind, ravenous for good books. He read through Dickens, Thackeray, Hardy, Austen, and Trollope, then moved on to the Continent to read through much of Balzac, Zola, and Flaubert, then fell in love with Tolstoy. His favorite was Goethe; he must have read The Sorrows of Young Werther at least half a dozen times.
Noa’s favorite novel chronicles a deeply Romantic protagonist who struggles to find a place in society. Werther, The Sorrows of Young Werther’s eponymous main character, falls madly in love with a woman already engaged to another man. Yet he struggles to separate himself from her. Beyond loving her, he spirals in his work at court and loses his reputation while defending a murderer. Werther ends his life with suicide.
While situated in a more distant age, the novel’s broad outlines hold some parallels to Noa’s own. Like Goethe’s tragically sensitive character, Noa drifts through Japanese society and struggles to accept his Korean identity. He runs away from Akiko after she reveals his true connections to Hansu, and he eventually dies by suicide. In many ways, Goethe’s sentimental work anticipates the arc of Noa’s own life.
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