These Violent Delights

The surprise reveal in Chapter 35 that Paul Dexter is the Larkspur underscores the book’s critique of capitalism and colonialism. Paul claims to have started the madness to prevent the Communists from taking over, but he also profits from the madness’s spread by selling the vaccine. As a foreigner, he represents the intrusion of European powers in the city. His plan to force people to become dependent on a product he sells echoes the events of the Opium Wars.

Qi Ren as the monster symbolizes the hybrid between the new Shanghai and the old. He lurks in the river, which the narrator calls, “the beating heart” of Shanghai (406), and attacks people at random. While Paul controls Qi Ren to a certain extent and controls who receives the vaccine, the actual spread of the madness is beyond his command. Thus, Qi Ren represents both the violence of the gangs and the colonial powers who seek to dominate the city, regardless of the consequences on its people.

In these chapters, Gong uses suspense and allusions to drive the final chapters of the plot forward. Chapter 36 is only a single sentence long: “Roma’s hands launched to his throat” (415), emphasizing the suspense of the moment when Roma becomes infected with the madness. Roma’s near death by suicide caused by the madness alludes to Romeo’s suicide in the original play when he believes Juliet is dead.

The scene in the hospital in Chapter 38 contains several more allusions to the original play: Tyler shoots Marshall, just as Tybalt wounds Mercutio in a duel in the original play, and Marshall even repeats a version of Mercutio’s famous last words: “There’s a plague on both your damn houses” (426). The use of the word plague, which Marshall means in a figurative sense, is ironic since there has been an actual contagion affecting both the Montagovs and the Cais.

The twist ending in which Juliette pretends to betray Roma while actually saving Marshall using Lourens’s potion, transforms the ending of the original play into a story in which Juliette becomes the hero instead of having a passive role. In Shakespeare’s play, Friar Laurence concocts the plan for Juliet to pretend to be dead until she and Romeo can safely unite. In this retelling, Juliette uses Lourens’s potion to drug Marshall, thereby saving Roma and the other White Flowers from her cousin’s wrath.

Juliette’s rescue of Roma is a reversal of his choice to keep the White Flowers from killing her. She views their situation as a cycle of love and betrayal that they cannot escape: “The lover and the liar, the liar and the lover. They switched those roles between them like it was a game” (428). Juliette views her actions as necessary but knows that Roma will view them as a betrayal, calling herself “a monster in her own right” (425). By comparing herself to the monster causing the madness, she asserts that she is just as powerful. Just as the madness can cause mass violence, she realizes she can prevent mass violence using her wits.

It is the monstrous side of Juliette, the façade she uses to hide her emotions, that makes her seeming betrayal of Roma believable. Since she has already manipulated others through flirtation, including Paul Dexter, her claim that she has just been using Roma rings true. Furthermore, her reputation for being merciless makes her point-blank shooting of Marshall seem real.

The novel’s epilogue, which reveals the truth behind the Juliette’s actions and sets up a suspenseful cliffhanger, suggests that Juliette has only found a temporary solution to the conflicts she faces. The gangs are still at an impasse for control of the city, the workers were unsuccessful in their strikes but might try again, and the madness resurges. Just as the characters in the book cannot escape the cycle of violence, the city seems locked in a perpetual state of crisis.