The Family Chao

“They say, ‘You’re special,’ ha! ‘You can do anything you want!’ Nobody can do anything they want. Do you think I want this dog’s life? No, I do what I have to do. But my oldest son? He’s trying to find himself.”

Leo expresses the irony that American claims of independence and self-actualization run counter to his experience as a man who emigrated from China. Leo will prove a foil and antagonist to his American-born sons in several aspects. His self-characterization here also introduces the dog motif that will be used throughout the novel to define him; Leo suggests he works as hard as an animal, with few comforts to show for it.

“Dagou takes a visible breath, chest swelling, and faces their father. Leo Chao’s face grows both brighter and darker. Younger, with his edges more defined, he seems to recognize another man in Dagou, someone from long ago.”

This passage is representative of Chang’s prose style, precise in its language and blunt in its imagery, making use of the present tense in its narration. Leo and Dagou are foils as well as antagonists, their disagreements resonate on several thematic levels, but it’s suggested here that Leo’s combativeness toward his son stems from a recognition of his younger self. The novel explores self-hatred in various ways through other characters in the novel as well.

“And yet the fate of these fellow Chinese parents, and these American sons, is everybody’s fate.”

Even when close to the point of view of one of the characters, the omniscient narrator retains the power to comment on the thematic action. This passage suggests the whole Chinese community of Haven is invested in the confrontation between Leo and Dagou because it plays out cultural and generational conflicts that impact all of them.

“We Chaos, who are full of passion and inner chaos! None of us can bear to be in our present lives. We’re charged up with unrelenting ambition for the future; it’s why Ma and Ba came to the States.”

The plural of the family name Chao resembles the English word chaos, which Dagou uses here to describe the energy of the Chao family. Dagou’s ambition for more contrasts with James’s desire for a small, satisfying life. Their ambition is one element each Chao son inherits from his father, pointing to the theme of Loyalty, Filial Piety, and Sacrifice for Family.

“The afternoon is raw. The clouds lower, pale and unrelenting, sealing everything under a colorless vault of winter.”

Weather often plays a metaphorical role throughout the novel, establishing atmosphere—here, dark and colorless, predicting the snowstorm to come. Aptly, Leo’s death takes place at the darkest season of the year in Wisconsin, with the landscape reflecting the stormy, brooding mood brewing among the family.

“[Dagou] told me the ring isn’t about money. It’s about the value of family, the value of history. It’s to be given only, not sold, and given out of affection.”

Katherine’s description of the jade ring she wears is both innocent and prescient. She is unaware of how Leo came by the ring and supposes, as Dagou does, that Leo gave the ring to Winnie as a gift. Katherine wears the ring as a symbol of Dagou’s affection and refuses to put a monetary value on it. Her words serve as foreshadowing since, for O-Lan, the ring does indeed signify the value of family and her own history as well as her mother’s.

“Leo smiles his gleaming smile. James has often noticed he is not like his self-proclaimed totem animal the dog, but like the Cheshire Cat.”

The dog motif surfaces here in reference to Leo, suggesting he is somewhat feral or even dangerous, and has bequeathed certain animal qualities to his son. This analogy to a malicious character in Lewis Carroll’s novel The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland further casts Leo in a diabolical light. Later, a reference to O-Lan smiling like the Cheshire Cat hints at the connection between O-Lan and Leo right before Ming guesses the truth, thus serving as foreshadowing.

“James has the crushing sense that he was born too late to understand the real story of the Chaos—that the great passions, the bedrock promises and betrayals that formed the basis of whatever lies among the members of his family, have long since taken place.”

This passage hints at how the meaning given to family events and relationships persists and becomes part of a family’s history, even mythology. James, the naïve and more innocent character reflecting on the conflicts of the others, provides an apt point of view for the narrator to comment on these themes.

“Darkness presses into him, pushing him against his will toward the dream, the very darkest dream, the source of violence and hope and absolute peace. […] He’s descending into the basement of the restaurant. He’s at the bottom of the stairs. His father is there, in the room. Dagou reaches inside.”

Dagou’s vision of shutting his father in the freezer room represents the anger and resentment he feels toward his father, and his voicing this dream serves as foreshadowing of the murder to come. This fantasy becomes one of the reasons Dagou eventually feels responsible for Leo’s death--a lack of filial piety that compels Dagou to accept the punishment of prison even though he did not actually commit the murder.

“Eric Braun seems confused by their conversation and this restaurant […] he peers around the room and straightens slightly, defensively, as though he’s surrounded by goblins.”

The reference to the Chinese American citizens of Haven as “goblins” in the eyes of their white guest demonstrates the anti-Asian bias that proves a motif of the novel. Eric feels like an outsider in this “in” group of the Chinese community, aware of his foreignness among them just as they feel foreign to him.

“Their bodies are lighter, their souls expanded. It is a breathtaking meal created by a truly gifted chef, a man who has reached for and has grasped the power of life’s possibility. They will remember it forever.”

Dagou achieves his ambition of impressing everyone with his food and the extravagance of his dishes. This high point of narrative action is deeply contrasted by the sharp fall in his fortunes when he goes on trial for Leo’s murder. This passage shows The Power of Food to create community and memories.

“He hears the creak of the freezer door. The floor is dissolving, as if through the curls of black steam rising from below, and [Dagou] is falling, falling into darkness. The restaurant is empty and his father is in the freezer. The events unfold themselves to him as they have a dozen, a hundred, even a thousand times: himself, having done what he has long imagined doing, emerging from the basement, turning off the lights, walking freely out into the silent night. All is calm, all is bright.”

The repetition of this dream and its powerful imagery show the urgency and appeal this fantasy has for Dagou. The repeated emphasis creates suspense for the reader, hinting that Dagou may actually commit the murder. The calm and bright phrasing alludes to the carol “Silent Night,” sung about the birth of Christ, which Christmas celebrates.

“Dagou can just see the lights of Haven, at first glittering and then, as they continue on, receding, until below them there’s only the wide, dark lake. The lake that existed long before the lights, before the town; the lake encountered hundreds of years ago, renamed by the Americans.”

Though Dagou did not in fact act on his fantasy, his dream on Christmas Eve of riding Alf symbolizes the freedom he wishes to achieve by separating from his father. Alf, read both as the “big dog” representing his father and as a projection of Dagou’s own dog self. This passage also touches on the theme of immigration by pointing out that the European settlers who colonized Haven and founded America were immigrants as well.

“But doesn’t every family have its own closed windows and closed doors? Isn’t every family a walled fortress of stories unknown even to its neighbors?”

This short chapter, a Prologue to Part 2, zooms out to view the Chaos and Haven from the vantage of the omniscient narrator, who remarks on the ways outsiders view all the Chinese Americans of Haven based on the crime in the Chao family. The image of a fortress to represent family secrets is characteristic of Chang’s use of figurative language.

“Leo Chao is dead, yet he will always be their father. He has given all three of them an inheritance of himself. And they’ve all accepted a part of this inheritance.”

This passage speaks to the notion of genetic inheritance and family relationship, hinting that the ways in which Leo has helped shaped their characters is his real legacy to each of his sons. This idea speaks to the theme of family bonds and loyalty, positioning the sons as contrasts and foils to Leo.

“[Ming] sensed, with the instincts of someone who had grown up as an outsider, that their eyes rested upon him for a moment longer than they normally would. They were thinking what was he doing here.”

Ming’s character is frequently used to introduce the theme of anti-Asian bias and the sense of Being Both Insider and Outsider. Ming was the Chao son who was most bullied as a child, the one who most longs to separate from his Chinese heritage. Even as an adult, traveling through a rest area, Ming is sensitive to the fact that his ethnicity is among the minority around him and thus he feels his legitimacy for being in the area, even in the country, can be called into question.

“They’ve [the Chao family] lost so much: their family ship balancing bravely on a crest, a wave of losses. Lost money, lost home, lost country, lost language, lost years, lost ancestors, lost stories, lost memories, lost hopes, lost lives, and there is more, it’s clear from their veiled faces, their foreboded happiness, their infrequent, wild laughter. Their extravagance.”

Chang departs from her descriptive prose style for a flight of fancy here in the layered modifiers and anaphora of the word “lost.” By emphasizing their losses the narrator invites the reader to view the Chao family sympathetically while also suggesting this loss is another experience they share and which bonds them as a family.

“I got in line [for the bathroom] behind a woman with a frosted-blond ponytail. When it was her turn to enter, she glowered at me, opened the door, and slammed it in my face. She wore a JUSTICE FOR ALF pendant on a ribbon around her neck.”

An example of Chang’s subtle irony surfaces in the way she conveys anti-Asian prejudice in Haven. This white woman in the audience at Dagou’s trial treats Lynn Chin rudely for no other reason than that Lynn appears Asian. The “Justice for Alf” crusade provides a note of humor throughout the trial in that the concern of so many outsiders is what happened to the dog—suggesting they value the life of the animal above the life of the humans involved in the case. Lynn calls the dog story a “lightning rod” (208) for prejudice.

“He says Big Chao is a hardworking, stoic immigrant whose inhuman hours are an investment into the American Dream. He’s the quintessential Asian American, the model minority, humble, diligent, hardly a person. He put his sweat and blood into his children’s lives like every Asian parent.”

Anti-Asian bias plays a role in the trial in the prosecution’s argument, which relies on stereotypes and cliches about Asians and immigrant families. The casting of Leo Chao in a heroic narrative is deeply ironic to all who knew him, but the theme of the sacrifices immigrant parents make for their children speaks to the novel’s larger themes of family loyalty.

“The dog, seemingly loyal, bottomlessly hungry. The dog, like the sons, not as loyal as the man might think.”

This passage again captures how dogs are used throughout to characterize Leo and the Chao sons, whose names reference dogs. Ming imagines dogs, and Leo talking about dogs, the night he hallucinates that Leo is speaking to him over the radio. Here, as he thinks of himself as increasingly animal, Ming’s psychotic break parallels the break he wishes he has been able to make with his family and his Chinese American identity.

“I wasn’t the oldest son he wished for: I turned out to be a beta, even with my physical fitness, my personality, and my grades. I could not conquer America for him. I came home with my tail between my legs.”

Dagou compares himself to a dog in describing how he detected Leo’s disappointment in him. The imagery of “conquering” America reflects Leo’s ambition, greed, and domineering personality. The dog represents the bestial part of Leo’s personality that his sons fear, to different degrees, that they have inherited.

“Will the jury believe a flawed but heartfelt Asian man?”

This question, posed by Lynn after Dagou’s testimony, creates suspense around the trial’s verdict. The reader knows that Dagou is not guilty, but Lynn suspects that Dagou’s emotional testimony will work against him. She suggests he is on trial not so much for his deeds as for his Asianness, and he does not fit the stereotypes of how Asians are supposed to act according to outsiders. Lynn suspects if Dagou is found guilty, it will be for this reason.

“Dagou’s forgiveness changed nothing about what [James]’d done. It’s as if one unthinking day he’d set foot on an island with an active volcano. A fissure opening in the ground. Now he’s standing on one side, watching his life move further and further away.”

This image captures how James feels his life has split, and the lack of direction he feels after the death of his parents, with a brother in jail. The novel’s final moments of James’s character arc mirrors the way in which other characters feel similarly lost or aimless, left directionless at the end of the novel, working against the usual dramatic structure that imposes resolution and denouement.