50 pages • 1 hour read
The Expatriates
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Symbols & Motifs
Margaret’s Apartment
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child loss and kidnapping.
After the loss of G, Margaret rents a secret apartment and spends her days there, away from her family home. The apartment symbolizes her grief, and her shifting attitude toward the apartment signifies her healing process. The apartment is in the working-class neighborhood of “Happy Valley,” an ironic name given that Margaret’s unhappiness drives her toward it. The room is tiny and old, so small that it has a bathtub but no sink. Margaret devotes time to cleaning it, even scrubbing “at the corners with a toothbrush” (26)—another irony since she has a housekeeper for her family home. She enjoys this pointless labor: “Everything she did there made her happy. The hours stolen there vanished into some forgotten morass of her life” (26). Lying in bed during the day when her family is at work or school, she feels “at home,” thinking “about what her life would be if she only had this life, this one room, this one place” (26). The apartment is a place for Margaret alone, and it doesn’t remind her of her missing son or the demands of her living children. Instead, it is a place where she can give into the fantasy that she is unattached and that no one needs her.
Margaret’s affection toward her refuge diminishes as she begins to re-enter the real world and move past her initial grief. The last time she visits the apartment, it is no longer a “sanctuary.” Instead, she feels ill at ease with the noise of the neighborhood. She realizes that the apartment is not her home but “[is] just borrowed, a place she use[s] in the off hours, while the real residents [are] gone. She is an interloper” (315). After this, she decides that she needs to go home to her family. The apartment signifies the world of grief, and though she still mourns her son, she is no longer trapped in stasis. Instead, she rejoins her other children and husband in their family home and goes about the business of living.
The Online Forums
Hilary continually posts on two online forums, which symbolize her inability to take an active part in her own life. She uses a pseudonym, HappyGal, which is “something that would set her teeth on edge in real life, but online, she figures, she could, she should, be a different person” (134). Hilary uses the false persona and the anonymity offered by online forums as an outlet for the kind of interaction and control she lacks in her real life. Online, she freely gives her opinions and “knows” people. In her home, she passively interacts with David and her housekeeper: “She has noticed how, as she grows older, she is more and more reluctant to say anything directly, even to her husband” (59). This passivity is also present in her relationship with Julian, whom she has not committed to adopting. After David leaves her, Hilary spirals into spending hours alone in her room on the forums. Finally, she confesses her addiction to them in a conversation with Olivia, who urges her to ignore what people say about her online, arguing “The best thing about getting older, the absolute best thing, is that I don’t give two hoots what anyone thinks about me” (252). Hilary comes to agree with Olivia and leaves the online echo chamber, instead focusing on adopting Julian and moving on from David. She realizes that she must leave her room to interact with the world.
The Fortune Teller’s Pamphlet
When Mercy is a child, her mother finds a fortune teller who gives her a pamphlet predicting that Mercy will not have a happy life. Throughout the novel, this fortune teller’s prophecy is a motif representing the idea that people can shape their destinies. It also connects to the novel’s theme of The Search for Identity and Belonging. Initially, Mercy is disturbed by the booklet’s text. She asks a stranger to translate it for her, and he reads her the phrase, “[A] crow cannot soar like an eagle” (14). She thinks: “It was always there in the back of her mind, but what did you do with a fate like that but dismiss it as old Korean folklore that had nothing to do with her?” (14). This phrase is a metaphor, on the one hand representing Mercy’s struggle with her lower-class position compared to her peers. On the other hand, crows are famously clever and have their strong suits, suggesting that the fortune is up to interpretation.
Despite her attempts to ignore it, Mercy regards the prophecy as true. After college, when her wealthy friends fall back on trust funds and family connections to succeed, she thinks of herself as a crow who has flown beyond her station. She also ruminates on the idea of being cursed after G disappears, worrying that she attracts bad luck, disaster, and bad men. The turning point comes when she finally confesses her fears to her mother. Instead of agreeing with the prophecy, her mother fiercely denies it. She says, “You can change your destiny. Look, I change mine by leaving your father. It reset. I don’t know how it is going to be, but it’s going to be different” (305). Her mother’s insistence that fate can be changed causes Mercy to act in her own life, deciding to keep her pregnancy and seek a new purpose in life as a mother.
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