The Eyes Are the Best Part

Ji-won’s mother, Umma, emerges as a complex supporting character whose behavior reflects years of discrimination and emotional abuse. Umma exhibits contradictory traits: resilience in survival yet vulnerability to exploitation, maternal protection alongside emotional neglect of her daughters’ needs, devotion to her culture of origin but disdain for Korean men, etc. The novel implies that these patterns were established at an early age, when Umma was abandoned by her family out of desperation. Abandonment repeats itself throughout her life, and after Appa leaves her, her fear of this abandonment becomes overwhelming. More recently, Umma’s internalized racism, expressed through her preference for white men over Korean men, suggests complex cultural trauma and assimilation pressures. This tension manifests in her speech patterns, which remain predominantly Korean, requiring her daughters to translate for George.

Her characterization develops partially through domestic actions and spaces. The preparation of traditional Korean food, particularly fish, serves as a key characterization tool, while her obsessive creation of paper flowers for her wedding to George represents an attempt to manufacture normalcy amid chaos. These domestic activities function as both cultural markers and psychological indicators, revealing her attempts to maintain control through ritual and routine. Her initial practice of eating fish eyes transforms from cultural tradition to superstitious ritual after Appa’s departure, reflecting her psychological state, which only deteriorates further after she begins dating George.

Geoffrey, a student at Ji-won’s college, functions as both a secondary antagonist and a foil to the novel’s primary antagonist, George, representing a younger iteration of predatory male behavior masked by performative feminism. His initial introduction wearing feminist slogans establishes his character’s fundamental contradiction, as he quickly becomes the embodiment of entitled masculinity. His characterization develops through increasingly invasive actions: the forceful addition of his phone number to Ji-won’s contacts, his surveillance of her movements, and his ultimate theft of her backpack as leverage. Geoffrey is a round, complex character who evolves from an apparently supportive classmate to a stalker, though this evolution represents uncovering rather than transformation.

The narrative develops Geoffrey through parallel behaviors with George, creating a pattern of white male entitlement across generations and cultural contexts. Both characters demonstrate possessiveness, racial fetishization, and the weaponization of women’s supposed need for “protection” as justification for control. For instance, Geoffrey’s gift of chopsticks reveals he holds stereotypical views of Asian culture despite his progressive self-presentation and echoes George’s similarly tokenizing or appropriative gestures. In many ways, Geoffrey’s performative allyship makes him a more unpredictable and dangerous character than someone like George, who is more open about who he is and what he’s capable of.

Geoffrey’s role in the narrative’s climax, when he follows Ji-won during her attempted murder of George, reveals the extent of his obsession with Ji-won while providing her with a convenient scapegoat. Ji-won’s final actions, saving herself while framing Geoffrey for her murders, reverses the typical portrayal of a white man exploiting a woman of color, as Ji-won relies on Geoffrey’s predatory behavior toward her to frame him for her crimes.