A “Forensic” Reading of Waiting

            Among the numerous literary devices available to novelists, the use of descriptive passages can be a subtle but effective means of engaging readers more fully into the story. By invoking all of our senses, a skillful author makes it possible to enter a fictional world and feel as if we are there ourselves as witnesses, within the landscapes or the architectures described. The average reader might only perceive these “prose imagery” passages as a sort of generic enhancement, similar to the establishing shots a cinematographer might employ. But they are often also used symbolically to cast a desired atmosphere, foreshadow later events, or create an environment that reinforces the story's theme.

            In the acclaimed novel Waiting, author Ha Jin's careful attention to detail in his descriptive passages emerges as a significant factor in the narrative's overall tone. The choices made in Waiting when depicting the landscapes, flora, and fauna pack an emotional impact. These help the reader empathize with the oppression and emptiness that exist in the lives of the central characters and the repressed society they live within.

            Ha Jin, by careful attention to the imagery within his novel, manages to establish a backdrop onto which he can project the actions of the plot, and to continually influence the reader's perception of these elements as they progress. Almost subliminally, with subtle references to death and decay within the incidental landscapes of Waiting, he provides an undertone to the story that supports his portrayal of the central characters and the bleak circumstances that they find themselves in. Communist China, during the era of the story, set a protocol for how its citizens were supposed to behave, right down to the most intimate and detailed aspects of their lives. Ha Jin portrays this censorship both palpably and poignantly. Lin Kong as protagonist behaves throughout the novel as if he were a puppet under Chairman Mao's influence and control. He is frustratingly loyal to a political environment that impedes almost all of his basic desires. As readers we yearn for him to question authority, but he never does.

            An overview of the human conditions addressed in Waiting helps in the gathering and forensic analysis of Ha Jin's numerous descriptive asides. First, the title itself; the “waiting” refers to the almost twenty years that protagonists Lin Kong and Manna Wu prolong consummation of their love for each other. So worried about all the rules and protocol of China's cultural revolutionary era, and also of what their colleagues will think of them, Lin and Manna end up enduring the full eighteen years required for him to obtain a divorce from his long suffering wife Shuyu. During that time they never once make love and are mutually reluctant to show any displays of affection. Manna does attempt to arrange one early tryst, but is so rebuffed by Lin for suggesting it that it scars their romance ever afterward. Waiting demonstrates the slow decay of their relationship and how love can die without nourishment. The symbols that Ha Jin inserts into the scenery around them reflect that decay, death, and futility very poignantly. Some of them also foreshadow later moments of crisis in the story.

            Confinement is one element in the lives of Lin and Manna, and Ha Jin provides several passages that allude to their love and how they keep it locked away. In the ironically named Victory Park, Manna had been sent by Lin to meet his cousin Lian Meng. She discovered that the park had changed for the worse since she had been there last. “It had become a zoo, noisy and crowded, with hundreds of animals kept in iron cages and deep concrete pits” (Jin 114). Soon after that encounter, she reprimands Lin for trying to find another man for her, with her observation “Even birds may not become mates if you put them together in a cage, not to speak of us human beings” (119). When Lin Kong muses much later, near the novel's end, “Why do people have to live like animals, eating and reproducing, possessed by the instinct for survival?” (273) he is perhaps realizing (too late) that we humans are animals, and like all other creatures, not meant to be restrained. He yearns for that higher sense of meaning that separates mankind from the rest of the organisms on this planet, but never quite attains it. He is ultimately just another member of the herd, and stays meekly within the fences the shepherds have built around him and his peers.

            Animals serve as reminders of decay and death throughout Waiting. Only when seen in the broader perspective of the novel do these incidental details make sense; otherwise we the readers would question Ha Jin's choices of such sad little vignettes. A very powerful example can be found in one of Lin's visits to his rural home in Goose Village. “Beside the pigpen, a white hen was scraping away dirt and making...sounds to call a flock of chicks, the smallest of which was dragging a broken leg. It was warm and windless; the air reeked of dried dung” (86). The baby chick represents the blind devotion of a member of China's communist regime. It will follow “mother Mao”, (the hen), because it literally has no other viable choice, within its limited mental capacity. Although doomed, it follows in the footsteps nevertheless. It is all that it knows to do. Lin Kong is that baby bird, as are many of his countrymen.

            It is quite a feat on Ha Jin's part, the themes of confinement, eminent death, and decay all captured in a minimalist two sentences. A crippled little chick will be easy pickings for a predator, but that fate is only implied. Later we read about “four sparrows perched on the window ledge, which was coated with a soot that looked like rat droppings... One of them had a blind eye, whose corner carried a drop of frozen blood” (170). Other carcasses strewn here and there in the novel: dead fish in an icy lake (27), a rabid dog corpse used as fertilizer (112), and ants carrying off a dead beetle (135). There is a void of romanticism, since the world of Waiting is such a dystopian one.

            These images of life's cruelties reinforce the underlying theme of Waiting: It depicts a society that spells out, to the last letter, its requirements for its citizens. China was attempting to impose a set of restrictions on its population that rivaled the very laws of nature itself. The lower class becomes the equivalent of ants, those most truly communist of all organisms, carrying off the carcasses of their superiors. No waste, no diversions. There is no overt sentimentality. Just another day's work to be done.

            While these incidental interludes that Ha Jin places within Waiting may not speak as loudly as the actions (or often the inactions) of the characters , I feel that they add significantly to the overall mood he sets out to invoke. Life is quite dreary for Lin and Manna, a waiting game confined to just a few settings. They interact mainly at the hospital and otherwise live in separate apartments. Neither of them enjoy any privacy at their dwellings. Manna feels compelled to cry in silence in her apartment, even after her rape by Geng Yang. Lin cannot even get away with a wet-dream without being harassed by his roommates. Both of their living situations scream for a chance at solitude, but they do not have it. Lin goes back to Goose Village once a year, and sometimes to the courthouse. Manna doesn't even have those questionable luxuries. This is, by and large, the extent of the world they inhabit. These mostly depressing descriptive passages, peppered randomly over the meat of the story, provide some spice for the reader. But “chef” Ha Jin goes for the bitter and the sour only. The dystopian realism that he serves is an acquired taste. There is no dessert, no after-dinner cocktails; only the soup du jour.

            There is a lesser but important role that a few of Waiting's prose imageries perform. Placed strategically within the story, they provide foreshadowing of later crises. One of the better examples precedes the rape of Mannu by Geng Yang. On her way to Yang's to retrieve Lin's books, Ha Jin sets the scene outside the quite ominously named Department of Infectious Diseases: “Moonlight filtered through the naked branches... Ahead of her, skeins of snow dust... were slithering and twisting... while the wind was crying like a baby” [all italics mine] (177). Subtly but surely, the rape is referenced with the symbolism of nudity, a slithering snake (evil/phallic symbol), crying, and the baby. Manna will worry for a couple weeks as to whether she might be pregnant by Geng Yang. Her attempts to squat and eliminate her rapist's semen were, for me, the pinnacle of pathos for the entire story. The brutal honesty of that situation is the antithesis of “light reading”. Ha Jin hurt me there, right in my gut.

            There is another instance of note which occurs at Lin and Manna's wedding. Among their decorations “there were also two lines of balloons wavering almost imperceptibly; one of them was popped, hanging up there like a blue baby sock” (238). Almost the exact same imagery will be used again later when their twin sons come down with dysentery: “Like deflated balloons, the twins seemed to have withered all of a sudden” (279). It's hard to view these two balloon references as coincidence, particularly when a blue baby sock would be most likely worn by a boy. Whether Ha Jin had already foreseen the newlyweds having twin sons that would experience such a crisis is debatable perhaps, but the two passages are a conscious decision by the author. There is indeed some motive behind them.

            I used a bit of foreshadowing myself earlier in this essay with my choice of the phrase “forensic analysis” because it brings me to my concluding points. Novels such as Waiting can most certainly be enjoyed by the more casual reader, but a true student of literature needs, in my opinion, to adopt more of a “crime scene investigation” approach. Authors have the very enviable ability to create unique worlds that are only limited by their imaginations and skills. Everything happens for a reason in a story when the best writers craft them. Plot and characterization are the more obvious pieces of evidence, to be documented first. But a thorough investigation requires the proverbial fine tooth comb. By going down to the microscopic levels we begin to get a more thorough profile of the writers. Why did they mention that detail? Where are the fingerprints hiding that are uniquely theirs? What's the motive? I adopted that mindset in a second reading of Waiting, and my appreciation and depth of understanding increased exponentially.

            I find myself especially sensitive to symbols here of late. If you readers of this essay will indulge me in a brief personal anecdote, my and my immediate family's situation were recently focused on my mother's terminal cancer. It pervaded our daily existence as we watched her life fade. However, just like something out of a novel, I noticed the presence of a baby rabbit in my parents' backyard during the weeks that we were there. Both my wife and myself focused on it and took it upon ourselves to feed it and protect it. It was a new life, there on a property where that symbol took on special meaning.

            Ha Jin's symbolism in Waiting is that honest and simple, and that is why it has such impact. There is a synchronicity of sorts that always lurks beneath the surface of our lives. Sadly, many of us never notice it. For those among us lucky enough to see these signs, I think it is paramount that we cultivate that sensitivity. The more we search, the more we will find. Every moment of our lives has that potential for discovery and enlightenment. Such opportunities must not be squandered.

            I feel that Ha Jin used considerable restraint in this novel, and that the work was elevated as a result to a higher significance. By limiting his narrative to the parameters of just several characters and settings, it becomes a microcosm of the Chinese dilemma of that era, and then further transcends into a broader observation of the human situation in any society that seeks to control its individuals.

            At the very end of Waiting, Lin is listening to Manna saying “Happy Spring Festival” to a passerby. He notices that her voice was “still resonant with life” (308). I hope other readers share my wish that all that “waiting” was worth it, for Lin, Manna... Lake and River... and Shuyu and Hua. I applaud Ha Jin for a story rich with descriptive passages that enhanced my understanding of the writer's craft, and that left me with a glimmer of hope.

"I have abided by the Academic Integrity Policy on this assignment."

Works Cited

Jin, Ha. Waiting. New York: Pantheon Books, 1999. Print.