Essay Questions

Why is Jonah obsessed with cups?

Grace narrates, “Proudly, he holds up a white A4 sheet of paper with a black laser-printed message reading: PLEASE WRITE YOUR NAME ON YOUR CUP AND RE-USE IT… I look at his face for signs of grieving. I want to be angry with him for obsessing with cups when he should have been thinking about my mother and how miserable he made her for most of her life. I want to whip up my resentment against him, to remember the scoldings he gave her over her consumption of cups.” Psychoanalytically, the obsession with cups is blatant sublimation, which he embraces to divert his grief. Focusing on cups aids him to momentarily forget that his wife is deceased. On the surface, he appears to be concerned with cups, but unconsciously he is grieving for his departed wife. He redirects the energy which he would have spent on crying to cleaning the cups and ensuring they are utilized well.

What is the irony of Jonah’s reaction to the birth of Sonny?

Grace explains, “Everyone assumed that, like most Chinese fathers, the Patriarch would have been ecstatic that his child (Sonny) was a son. But the Patriarch didn’t like other males. He had grown up in a household where he had always been the centre of all female attention. He was the first-born son and heir.” Grace’s father is not impressed by Sonny’s birth for he regards him as a competitor in terms of attention from the females in his household. He reckons that Sonny will divert the females’ attention from him. The ironic envy depicts the challenges which only sons have when they become grown men and have sons. In some way, being the only son in a household may elicit narcissism in some boys.