Chapters 18-19 Summary

Henry spends his days at home, helping Lelia with her students and napping. His nights consist of tabulating Kwang’s political contributions and then presenting a list each morning to Kwang. Kwang takes in and gives out money, too. He models the system on “ggeh,” a kind of mutual Korean money club. Henry has told Hoagland he’s resigning when the Kwang operation is over. Jack asks him to give them a list of ggeh members before he quits.

Kwang himself is not doing well. He seems weary. His polling is down. The news breaks that Eduardo Fermin was able to rent his own Manhattan apartment. Everyone wants to know how a student got this kind of money. Late one night, Kwang has Henry drive him and Sherrie Chin-Watt to a Korean after-hours club. Kwang gets drunk and makes a scene, and Henry has to tackle him to keep him from hitting Sherrie. After Sherrie leaves, Kwang reveals that Eduardo had been passing information about Kwang to Kwang’s political opponents. He’d asked Korean gang members to take care of it, not thinking they would kill Eduardo.

Chapters 18-19 Analysis

The scene in the club shows that Kwang is unraveling. As he does so, his role as a father figure becomes more complicated. At first, he was an idealized father figure—more magnanimous and godlike than Henry’s real father. Next to him, Henry’s father seemed small and narrow-minded. Now, with that facade gone, Kwang is still a father figure, but now a negative one. Henry obeys him out of duty, noting how natural it is for him to comply: “As long as you can, you will please the father, the most holy and fragile animal.” The startling descriptive image of a father as a “holy and fragile animal” can describe both Henry and his father.