These Violent Delights

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2020

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 3

Chapters 4-8

Chapters 9-13

Chapters 14-18

Chapters 19-23

Chapters 24-28

Chapters 29-34

Chapter 35-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

The Madness and the Monster

The madness that spreads across the city through insects and the monster that lurks in the river represent the dual nature of Shanghai and of the novel. The madness’s origin symbolizes the combination of outside capitalist interests and the violence endemic to the city. A foreigner, Paul Dexter, imports the insects that cause the madness into the city, but when he tries to infect Qi Ren with it, it morphs, causing Qi Ren to become a monster that spreads the madness across the city. Dexter profits from the mass suicides the madness causes by offering a vaccine to prevent the disease. Thus, the madness is both a symbol of the profiteering of colonists and a metaphor for the contagious gang violence already occurring in the city. In the first scene, the madness ironically intervenes between the two warring gangs, causing them each to die by suicide rather than kill one another. Its infectiousness resembles the contagious nature of the blood feud between the gangs, in which one act of violence leads to an endless cycle of retaliation.

Shanghai

The city of Shanghai represents the blending of Eastern and Western influences resulting in both the blossoming of jazz culture and widespread debauchery. The novel describes Shanghai as “The Paris of the East, the New York of the West” (2), calling it a cultural and economic mecca. Its bars, clubs, and brothels adopt Western culture, putting on burlesque shows or playing jazz. Meanwhile, it also has the Bund, a thriving financial district on par with New York City’s Wall Street.

While Shanghai’s neighborhoods are divided by ethnicity and class, they are tied together by the city’s booming economy, which benefits the city’s partygoers and foreign traders while exploiting the working class. The novel depicts the economic contradictions of the city, showing how its prosperity is not shared equally:

There was always a whistle blowing in the background, there was always the constant chugging noise of trams […]; there was always the stench of resentment stinking up the neighborhoods and burrowing deep into the laundry that waved in the wind (7).

The city’s noisiness illustrates the constant churning of its economy. The narrator contrasts this busyness with the “stench of resentment” from the working-class neighborhoods, implying that the working class are also constantly busy—not with leisure activities but with survival.

By allowing the foreigners to flood the city with capital, the city has made a dangerous bargain. The narrator personifies the city as a “bride” seeking a suitor which “mutilated itself with a wide, wide grin […] and now it worries not for finding suitors, but merely for running wild, drunk on the invulnerability of inherited power, well suited only for profit and feasting, dancing, and whoring” (127). Yet despite using this imagery to depict Shanghai, the narrator still calls the city “glorious” (127). Thus, the city’s contradictions, its “Western idealism and Eastern labor,” (128) its wealth and its poverty, and its cultural mixing all make the city uniquely successful—though not all are able to profit from its success.

Fashion and Décor

Fashion and décor are important motifs. They are used to explore the blending of Eastern and Western cultures due to colonialism and the importance of maintaining one’s reputation through appearances. In the novel, women’s fashion reflects the mixing of Chinese and European culture in the city. The novel describes the fashion trend of combining the Chinese qipao with a Western skirt as a “blend of Western flamboyance with Eastern roots” (9). In colonized Shanghai, Western-influenced fashion and décor have a higher status than Chinese styles, but by keeping some aspects of Chinese culture, the residents of Shanghai ground themselves in their history and heritage. Thus, the Cais strive to make their house reflect this balance of tradition and novelty to showcase their prominent status: “This house was a mirror of the city. It was a fusion of East and West, unable to let go of the old but desperate to mimic the new” (35). Foreigners in Shanghai also incorporate Eastern culture in their fashion and architecture, sometimes for status but also for function. For example, Alisa wears a shirt that looks like a traditional Chinese peasant’s outfit.

The only character who strictly adopts a Western style of dress is Juliette. Juliette’s flapper fashion is conspicuous because she is one of the only Chinese women wearing American style dresses. It becomes her signature look, associated with her reputation as a beautiful but deadly gangster. Furthermore, Juliette also uses fashion to conceal her weapons, wearing a garrote wire necklace that can be used to choke people and hiding knives beneath her clothing. To Juliette, fashion always has purpose. She uses it to present a particular image of herself to the world while pursuing her own aims.