Free Food for Millionaires

Sabine functions as a surrogate parent for Casey, especially after Casey becomes estranged from her biological family. Sabine is unlike most of the other Korean American women depicted in the novel: she does not have children; she is married to a white man; she takes her career extremely seriously; and she is motivated to be successful, wealthy and independent. Sabine both offers a model of what Casey’s future could look like and reveals that authority figures will almost always try to impose their value systems onto the people they care about. Sabine ostensibly supports Casey following her dreams, but she also has a rigid idea of what those dreams should be. Sabine even goes so far as to try bribing Casey into deferring to her judgement. As Casey cynically observes, “when a person followed her advice, [Sabine] transformed into her full-blown Lady Bountiful persona” (189).

Sabine’s tendency to use money, gifts, and opportunities to reward deference reflects the novel’s interest in systems of power and privilege, in which individuals tend to get ahead based on strategy and ingratiating themselves with the correct people. While Casey learns a great deal about power and manipulation while working in the cutthroat world of finance, her experiences with Sabine are equally formative. Casey concludes that “nothing kind or good came without expectations or demands” (199). Within the theme of Creativity and the Value of Beauty, Casey’s conclusion deepens her struggle to connect with her own creativity and love of beauty in a way that evokes joy and nothing else; even in the realm of the arts, in which fashion falls, the calculations of social hierarchy and capitalism apply. While Casey and Sabine genuinely love one another, their relationship can still be strained due to Sabine’s intense desire to see Casey live up to her full potential, which—as Sabine perceives it—entails social and financial success.

Casey applies to business school not only out of deference to Sabine but also because of financial pressure, which is, on all fronts, escalating the many sources of Tension Alongside Class Mobility. As time passes and Casey grows older, she is more and more frustrated by the limitations imposed by her lack of income, wondering “how did a person become rich anyway? The methods seemed inscrutable to her” (165). Casey’s financial woes are compounded by her tendency to spend excessively, which illustrates the theme of Giving in to Compulsions Despite Consequences. Casey is not ignorant of the fact that she is spending excessively, but she also can’t seem to stop herself: “[T]hough her debts terrorized her, the desire for more […] only grew stronger” (161). Casey carries deep shame about her debts. The one promise of change, however, is that this shame does enable vulnerability and connection after she and Unu begin dating. When Unu asks Casey to move in with her, she is embarrassed to tell him about her debt, but he reacts with empathy instead of judgement. In turn, he also reveals his own compulsions, telling Casey that, “I spend nearly everything I have, and I gamble for fun” (250). Although it begins quite casually, Casey and Unu’s relationship is marked by true honesty, affection, and respect; they are each willing to show the other the worst and best of themselves.

The juxtaposition of Casey and Unu’s blossoming relationship with Ted and Ella’s collapsing marriage emphasizes the importance of that genuine honesty, which provides a stronger foundation than any aesthetic conformity to social norms. On the surface, Ted and Ella appear to embody an ideal couple and conform to traditional, gendered norms: Ted is a self-made man who has achieved significant financial success, while Ella is beautiful, demure, and domestic. Ted’s affair with Delia further exemplifies the theme of allowing compulsions to win, consequences aside, because Ted risks his marriage both when he begins the affair and also when he begins seeing Delia again after he and Ella have reluctantly reconciled. Ted even jeopardizes his job by having sex with Delia in the office. While Ted experiences powerful sexual attraction to Delia, he also finds her to be someone whose values align with his own; he finds himself “laughing out loud, feeling as though his shoulders could finally relax” (184).

Delia and Ted’s relationship adds dimension to the novel’s exploration of the intersection of race and class: Delia is a white woman, but she comes from a working-class background that is more similar to how Ted grew up. In comparison, though Ella shares Ted’s Korean heritage, she has led a much more privileged and sheltered life. Delia and Ted’s chemistry has multiple origins and shows how difficult it is to predict why some individuals bond while others find it challenging to maintain connections. Despite behaving with much more restraint, Ella also begins to explore feelings for an alternative partner even before her marriage ends: her colleague, David, for whom she has long had romantic feelings. Interestingly, Ella and Ted both end up pursuing much happier relationships with partners who are not Korean. While Casey struggles to find genuine connection with men who are not Korean, feeling much more at ease with Unu, Lee also portrays successful relationships wherein the partners have different cultural backgrounds.