49 pages • 1 hour read
Ha JinThe Bridegroom
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Tiger
In “A Tiger-Fighter Is Hard to Find,” a director of a television show insists that one of his star actors, Huping, fight a real tiger in order to ensure that a scene looks as realistic as possible. This tiger, throughout the story, acts a symbol for ambition. Director Yu, for example, cares more about shooting the scene successfully than he does Huping’s health. After the first shooting of the scene with the tiger, Huping seems to have lost his mind and gets hospitalized for “mild schizophrenia” (59). Nevertheless, the director insists on re-shooting the scene. This time, the tiger comes even closer to harming Huping, while Huping’s mental health remains out of balance. Still, Director Yu insists on using Huping to film a third take of the scene. Like the tiger itself, Director Yu’s ambition is untamable and dangerous, and ultimately harmful to Huping’s sanity.
With the tiger as a symbol for unchecked ambition, it becomes clearer why Huping loses his mind. After fighting the real tiger for the first time, Huping claims, “I killed him! I’m the number-one tiger-fighter!” (58). From this moment on in the story, Huping is unable to see himself as anything but a real tiger-fighter. The story ends with him in a mental hospital, proclaiming, “I am a tiger-killer” (70). Just like the director, Huping gives himself over completely to his ambitions, as symbolized by his fight with the tiger. The result is that, again, as with the director, Huping is no longer able to see reality clearly, and endangers his own life repeatedly in a crazed attempt at success. In these ways, the tiger serves as a metaphor for the harms and dangers that come with unbridled ambitions.
The Earthquake
In “Alive,” Guhan is staying in a hotel in Taifu on a business trip when an earthquake devastates both his life and the city surrounding him. In the sense that the earthquake wreaks both figurative and physical damage, it is an apt metaphor for destructive forces that ultimately lead to a rebuilding and reshaping of a life. After the earthquake, the government implements measures to physically rebuild the city, as well as to rebuild the families it destroyed. Since Guhan suffers from amnesia, he is unable to recall that he already has a family back in Muji City, so gets swept up in the rebuilding efforts in Taifu. He remarries and gets an adopted son. Though Guhan remembers and goes back to his original family by the end of the story, the earthquake remains a figurative chasm and split in his life. At the end of the story, he “resist wondering whether he should have stayed with Shan and Mo in Taifu” (42). Just as an earthquake disorders a home, Guhan’s life gets tossed about, rearranged, and cannot simply return to its normal state. After taking part in the rebuilding efforts in Taifu, he can’t help wondering if that is in fact where he belongs.
The Influence of Gossip
Throughout The Bridegroom, the gossip of neighbors, colleagues, employees, and citizens serves an important narrative function, sometimes acting as a kind of character or chorus responding to a protagonist’s actions. In “The Woman from New York,” for example, the story appears from the point of view of the neighborhood, rather than from the point of view of any single character within it. The story begins, “Nobody in our neighborhood expected Chen Jinli would come back” (171). Later, when the protagonist can’t see her own daughter, the narrator of the story says, “[S]ome of us thought it served her right, because hadn’t she abandoned the child in the first place? But a few felt for her and said that since she couldn’t see her daughter, she shouldn’t stay for Chigan” (175). This style of story-telling from the point of view of a “neighborhood” (171) speaks to the importance of collective opinion throughout the stories of The Bridegroom.
In “The Bridegroom,” the narrator frequently shows concern over what factory employees are saying about his adopted daughter and son-in-law. He notices, for example, that “to many young women in our sewing machine factory, Beina’s marriage was a slap in the face. They’d say, ‘A hen cooped up a peacock.’ Or, ‘A fool always lands in the arms of fortune,’” (92). The narrator then responds to such accusations throughout the rest of the paragraph. He repeats this practice elsewhere in the story. In addition to acting as a comment on the prevalence of common opinion in Chinese social life, the inclusion of gossip acts as a useful narrative device allowing for diverse opinions and points of view.
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By Ha Jin
