The Last Rose of Shanghai

“There is a kind of love that strikes like a thunderbolt; it blinds you, yet opens your eyes to see the world anew.”

This is a lyric from “The Last Rose of Shanghai” song, which represents the lovers. The thunderbolt frames their love as natural and inevitable yet potentially destructive, while the oxymoronic nature of blinding and opening eyes foreshadows the couple’s path of pain and joy combined.

“The first thing you need to know, young lady, is the truth: in Shanghai, if you’re a woman and a business owner, you cannot climb through a tunnel of spiders without catching some cobwebs in your hair.”

Aiyi tells this to Scarlet Sorebi at the beginning of her story, cementing that a massive part of Aiyi’s identity is being a businesswoman. This quote highlights the gendered barriers to a woman seeking agency and material wealth.

“He had kept it gloved to help repress the memory of being mutilated, the fear, the despair, and the hatred, and now again it was a target.”

In this line, Ernest’s injured hand is established as a symbol of the lasting effects of persecution and violence, both to him and to those around him. The glove represents attempts to avert violence and maintain peace; ultimately, the glove is flimsy and powerless to help.

“I was raised to value my family, and family was in my blood.”

This statement of Aiyi’s is key to not only the theme of Oppression Versus Safety in Traditional Roles but also the ending of the novel; the structure of the novel ultimately builds towards Aiyi finding her and Ernest’s daughter. Aiyi’s conception of family changes and expands over the course of the book.

“He was living in a dream where money, adoration, and friends surrounded him, where he was loved, valued, and accepted for being a jazz pianist.”

This line shows the rewards of cross-cultural connection in that getting a new start in Shanghai allows Ernest to live the life that he’s always wanted, away from the persecution of his homeland. Again, music is the unifying force.

“He didn’t care that Aiyi was not Jewish. She wore a dress of finery and aloofness, but she was truer than any woman he had ever met.”

Ernest accepts his cross-cultural love for Aiyi, despite the taboos. This passage shows how well he knows her, referencing her love of dresses and seeing past her cultivated businesswoman facade. It also highlights a stereotype of Chinese people, “aloofness,” that Randel undermines throughout the novel through Aiyi’s character.

“But who would say it was wrong to indulge in a song from your heart during the winter days of your life?”

Developing the motif of music, this quote from Aiyi demonstrates the power of joy, represented by “song,” to survive hard times. “Winter days” reference the Japanese occupation and the deprivations of war.

“A love that couldn’t accept a lover’s flaws was a selfish love.”

This is the core of Ernest and Aiyi’s romance in the book: They come together repeatedly despite mutual flaws. It also shows Ernest’s warm and accepting character. Randel repeats of “love” at the beginning, middle, and end of the sentence, suggesting that love is what endures among problems and changes.

“Memory is a forest; it turns with the seasons. It swells in summer, dries up in fall, dies in winter, and sprouts furiously again in spring.”

In this quote from 1980, Aiyi pinpoints the importance of memory to the novel, identifying it as an environment and implying that she can (and does) live in it. The cyclicality here references Aiyi’s Buddhist faith and her thoughts on karma.

“God laughs when man plans, but I’m going to plan anyway.”

This line from Laura Margolis is repeated by Ernest at the end of the chapter. It represents the contradictions necessary to survive wartime: never give up but accept uncertainty. Both Aiyi and Ernest make it to the end of the war through a combination of strategizing and acceptance.

“I thought of my childhood days, happy days, the sound of runes Mother had mouthed, and the circle of life she believed in as the pale plume swiveled, growing, shifting, transforming into a grand dance hall filled with animated figures, and then it lengthened to form the mah-jongg tiles, the silk ties, the familiar world of courtyards, a world without ghosts, doubts, or fears.”

In this moment, the weight of Aiyi’s family tradition and its comforts push her to accept her marriage with Cheng. An unusually long sentence in the novel, its many clauses allow it to communicate the breadth of life and reincarnation. Randel represents fleeting images of domesticity to create a sense of intimacy, particularly with the tactile imagery of “silk,” and yet suggest that they are ephemeral, underscoring Aiyi’s “fears.”

“From now on, he was a wanderer, a drifter, unclaimed, unbound, unidentified.”

Ernest has just learned of his statelessness, and this sentence uses the repetition of “un,” a preface meaning negation, to reflect Ernest’s sense of national identity at this point. Rather than being defined by a concept, he is defined by a lack of something.

“In a world shooting bullets and bolts, he was alone, stateless, and it was up to him to live, survive, and thrive.”

Echoing Laura Margolis’s determination to plan despite likely failure, Ernest chooses to see his statelessness as an opportunity. Randel repeats “ive,” building to the final word “thrive,” emphasizing Ernest’s dedication to not just making but creating a better world.

“For though salt and sugar we might be, we all had blood in the veins and a heart in the chest, and we all died when hit by a bomb.”

Aiyi recalls the salt and sugar metaphor here, countering it by seeing the core vulnerability in all people. This adjustment of the metaphor reflects her commitment to her relationship with Ernest.

“If I left, I would never be allowed to step inside again, and my place in the family would be erased.”

The verb “erased” emphasizes how completely Aiyi understands her identity in the context of her biological family and their home, which represents generational history. Her fears reflect the novel’s exploration of the precarity of survival in wartime, as Aiyi considers not just her physical safety but how her memory can be preserved through her “place in the family.”

“Because we think love is fleeting, fickle, and simply frivolous. Life, however, is a mysterious well of infinity and profundity.”

Aiyi explains the Chinese disinterest in discussing love to Ernest, an example of them sharing their differing backgrounds. Although it is in a happy moment with Ernest, these lines illuminate Aiyi’s indecision about whether to pursue Ernest or marry Cheng, given that she has been raised to see love as separate from the vastness of life.

“He wondered if this was what his parents felt when they came to temple–to feel the togetherness, to feel the pulse of life, to become part of a tradition that bound generations past and generations to come.”

This line encapsulates the safety of tradition. As Ernest is in a synagogue, the line has the rhythm of a prayer, using anaphora in “to feel […] to feel […] to become” to reflect the idea of words and traditions being passed down.

“He had given his bakery to the refugees, and the bakery had given him back his sister.”

Though Ernest is not the one who speaks of karma, he often embodies it, in that his generosity to others returns benefits to him. Randel reflects this using an almost palindromic linguistic structure, “he had given” and “given him.”

“In his mind’s eye, he saw her slim figure waver, diminish, and finally disappear in the maze of tears, bullets, and ashes.”

Occurring when Ernest rejects Aiyi after Miriam’s death, this line represents The Psychological Effects of Wartime Violence. Ernest cannot see Aiyi in his mind due to the effects of war; he denies himself love and joy in an attempt to comprehend the pervasive violence that he’s experiencing.

“He could still make beautiful music, still remember the songs’ lilt and lyrics, but the woman whom he had played for lived in another room of his memory.”

Like Aiyi’s quotation from 1980, memory becomes an environment for Ernest in this line, suggesting the significance of memory to those whose survival is threatened. He also identifies Aiyi with music; in the same period that Ernest denies his love of music, he separates himself from Aiyi.

“It was tiresome, hollowing, and yet if there was such a thing called love, if there was a way to give happiness, then let him be the one to light the wick of warmth.”

This passage is from the moment that Ernest decides to marry Golda. It represents the safety of sinking into traditional roles (i.e., becoming husband to a woman of his faith) and highlights Ernest’s generous and optimistic personality. The metaphor of light reflects the significance of lighting candles in Judaism; candles are lit to usher in the Sabbath.

“We were what the tangle of the past made us, which trapped us, forcing us to be ensnared in a future we could never be set free from.”

Aiyi in 1944 is so traumatized that she can’t imagine transcending the tragedies that she’s suffered so far. The end of the novel, which depicts Aiyi finding her daughter, eventually contradicts this belief, leaving the novel with a tone of hope.

“He had forgotten it was once his life, forgotten it had helped him survive; he had forgotten it was a sacred land of joy and sorrow, the art of remembering and forgetting, the language of love and forgiveness.”

This quote depicts the music motif, clearly identifying its expressive aspects power. Randel uses polyptoton, focusing on versions of the verb “forget,” to give this line a musical sensibility and highlighting the extent to which Ernest’s memories have altered through war.