Free Food for Millionaires

The novel emphasizes the persistent unease and strain that comes with striving to achieve upward class mobility. In the novel’s world, the tension of clinging to the next rung of the social hierarchy generates dissatisfaction, stress, and anxiety, bringing out the worst of the characters’ compulsive behaviors, playing into the theme of Giving in to Compulsions Despite Consequences. Even when some characters appear to be successful in their efforts, that success is often short-lived, falling through in dramatic fashion.

In exploring the different mechanisms by which people strive to climb the social hierarchy, the novel tends to indicate in turn the specific costs of relying on those mechanisms. Ted Kim, for example, looks to marriage and wealth as tools for progression. At first, Ted is the character who seemingly best embodies class mobility; though he grew up in a working-class Korean American family in Alaska, he has managed to secure a lucrative job in New York investment banking. However, while Ted presents as very confident, people who are perceptive (such as both Ella and Casey) sense the anxiety that sustains his high energy: They can detect “the self-doubts that he could not concede to her or to himself—his terrors drove him” (53). Ted’s determination to succeed and his tendency to gauge success according to financial and material means makes him seem very pragmatic and calculating; nonetheless, Ted recklessly throws away both his marriage and his lucrative job in order to pursue Delia. On finding an opportunity for expression of genuine emotion and passion, Ted seizes it so compulsively he acts without any of his typical precision and care. As Delia later explains, “falling in love with me has been his most irrational act. But he said that being a smart and calculating person has been his way of building a strong cage” (295). Ted’s true values also become apparent when he insists on divorcing Ella, even after his mother urges him to stay married. Because Ella is elegant, refined, and from a good family, Ted’s parents have always seen her as another mark of his social progress, but Ted chooses a woman who he truly loves instead. In short, by relying on wealth to sustain his fragile new status, Ted creates a high-pressure situation in which he must never lose that wealth. By relying on marriage, he enters a relationship built on hollow, rather than sincere, attachment.   

Casey and her sister, Tina, provide an additional example, as their parents push the women to pursue social mobility largely through striving for prestigious careers. Their parents initially hope that Casey will become a lawyer while Tina works as a doctor. Tina comes closer to achieving these goals since she does begin medical school, and she also marries a fellow med student who comes from a wealthy family. However, Joseph still ends up disappointed when he learns about Tina’s intended specialty of endocrinology: “[M]y daughter’s supposed to be a surgeon. That’s what I told everyone” (267). Because Joseph is more preoccupied with social status than with Tina’s true happiness, he is never truly satisfied with her achievements. Tina’s ostensibly socially advantageous marriage also falls flat when her new in-laws embarrass her family; as Casey bluntly states, “they think we’re shit because we’re poor” (283). Tina’s plotline reveals just how strongly the family she comes from affects her attempt at social climbing. In addition, career-wise, their parent’s pressure marks how making a prestigious career central to gaining class mobility can erode motivation and ambition.  

Casey, meanwhile, largely rejects her parents’ aspirations of social mobility; she defers making career decisions for a long amount of time, and neither Jay nor Unu, her two love interests, are wealthy. Casey chooses to follow her heart even though she is uncertain about what she truly wants; unlike many other characters, she is shrewd enough to ascertain that she will never be fully accepted. When Casey considers going to fancy restaurants and other elite spaces, she concludes that such institutions would not take her presence kindly: “[S]he believed that she could be asked to leave at any moment” (293). Casey ultimately decides not to sacrifice her dreams and desires in pursuit of social mobility because she can see that this pursuit would ultimately always be futile anyway.