In the chapter When the Emperor was Divine, the mother emotionally fell apart in the beginning she presented herself as a strong unemotional mother making sure that her children were safe and even taking on the role of her husband hauling around heavy buckets of water. She continued her everyday routine of cooking, cleaning, and lying.
Her once hard shell was slowly cracking each day but I believe the night when her husband was taken was the night was the end of her life, and the beginning of her new life having to portray this unemotional women being forced to hold it together for the sake of the kids. We learn that she had destroyed her personal belongings, burning family photos and her silk kimonos; she slowly erased her cultural-identity and began Americanized herself and the kids.
The pearl earring was what caught my attention; I interpreted the missing pearl earring as a symbol of the absent husband. The way she randomly turns to her son and says, “I lost an earring on the train. Did I ever tell you that?” (pg87) She nonchalantly expresses to the boy how she hasn’t felt right ever since, and for a moment wonders where the earring is. I believe this was a way for her to open up out loud without having to say what she was really missing, her husband.
The mother repressed the feeling of regret the night of the arrest, she opens up to her son again about how the father asked her if she would get a glass of water, telling him to get it himself. She relives their last moments in her dreams picturing him searching for a glass of water. I can relate to the feeling of “if I only had but I just didn’t moment”, which can be very taunting. This once strong mother is on a path of destruction and it’s only a matter of time until she surrenders.
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