Ha Jin's "The Bridegroom"

I do not think I've ever read a story so completely homophobic like this one. This was a very weird story that seemed very unrealistic or one that took place in the time of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, maybe from the whole electric bath thing.

The man in the story, who remains nameless, takes over the care of a longtime friend's daughter when he passes. Throughout the story he picks on her figure and then when a man named Huang Baowen wants to marry Beina, he is hesitant. I guess Baowen's randomness would be a legit reason to be worried about his adopted daughter's feelings, but he didn't really seem as though he cared too much when presented with a few gifts.

"Sometimes I couldn't help wondering why Baowen had fallen for Beina" (92). I just think this is mean. It just seems like he should have accepted that his "daughter" was happy, regardless of if her husband was homosexual or not. That's what a real father would do, and that is the position he was supposed to play.

I don't know the best way to organize my thoughts on this story, so I'll just take the lines that stood out to me and break them down in order of occurrence.

"Whenever I heard that somebody had divorced, I'd feel a sudden flutter of panic" (92). This is ironically funny to me. He was so worried about a divorce that the thought of homosexuality never ran through his mind. Also, he "believed that if it (a marriage) survived the first two years, it might last decades" (93), but at the end of this story it is reaching a year; and, although they want to see it to survive, due to his personal shame, he did not.

I loved the realism of the working scene office drama when the narrator states that "it seemed that they were determined to wreck Beina's marriage" (93).

One of my favorite lines in the story was: "I figured Baowen must have been involved in a major

crime--either an orgy or a gang rape" (94). Since he considers those major crimes, this suggests that he comes from a rather innocent or naiive background. Then on the next page, homosexuality is described as "a social disease, like gambling, or prostitution, or syphilis". In whatever time period this, they were less accepting of homosexuality and did not really understand it.

I love when courses can relate to each other. In my history class, we just learned about the bourgeois lifestyle mentioned on 96 versus the lifestyle of the working class.

"I wanted to make sure, so that I could help him" (97). This upsets me. So, if he had done anything sexual with another man, he wouldn't have helped him? It's people like this that continue to hold back society from progressing. On the next page, I found this interesting: "Once he became a criminal, he'd be marked forever as an enemy of society, no longer redeemable. Even his children would suffer. I ought to save him" (98). MTV's award winning show True Life just had an episode entitled True Life: I Have a Parent in Jail or something to that effect, and I wasn't able to catch it; but, I think this is one of the most realistic lines in the whole story. Society looks at criminals with what I call a "side eye". The mere thought of a criminal in a workplace just brings notions to one's mind. Once you have that record, it's hard and nearly impossible to recover and become a working member of your community. That's why most criminals return to jail. And the absence of a parental figure in the life of a child, that damage is already known.

"He'll never have a lifestyle problem" (101). When I first read this, I instantly thought.."isn't having a gay husband a lifestyle problem", but my point was proven with further reading. I think this quote is being used to examine the male American figure. Just about everyday, some famous person is admitting their infidelities. If it's not a celebrity, it's a political figure. America even has talk shows dedicated to the confessions of unfaithfulness. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I think this also goes to show why America's divorce rate is so high compared to other nations around the world. I value a faithful man, but I don't know if I would prefer a homosexual husband over one that cheats. It seems like a sticky situation.

"I didn't touch the milk, unsure whether homosexuality was communicable" (109). This was funny, seeing as his daughter just drank before him out of the same cup. Homophobic much?

I thought it was crazy how they had spent "over three thousand yuan" in order to cure him of something that was incurable. How did they not know that homosexuality was not an illness? I'm just confused. And that figure that "one out of a thousand homosexuals" was cured. Hahaha. Someone decided to be bisexual.

"It's impossible for me to have a criminal as my son-in-law. I've been humiliated enough" (115). This one sentence sums up the adopted father's personality. He asks his daughter to divorce her husband and tells her he is not worth waiting for when he previously mentioned that the thought of divorce made his heart panic. Now, when his reputation is in jeopardy, he does not seem to care and is willing to abandon his daughter as if his responsibility was based on his availability. The poor girl probably suffered a long time due to his making her choose: "if you want to wait for him, don't come see me again"(115).