54 pages • 1 hour read
Gish JenTypical American
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1991A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Homes and Houses
Houses and homes reflect the characters’ ambitions and failures. The dirty apartments Ralph lives in during his first few years in America represent his fear, his poverty, and his isolation. Ralph is a stranger in a strange land; he jumps from place to place and sacrifices comfort for survival. The apartment he shares with Helen and Theresa is similarly downtrodden, but at least the reunited family can depend on one another for support. There is a marked difference between Ralph’s previous homes and this apartment, as only one is filled with support and love. The family returns to the building years later to find the walls have fallen apart. The family’s unity and strength kept the roof above their head.
The house in the Connecticut suburbs reflects the family’s success. The home is the realization of Helen and Ralph’s dream and their symbolic attempt to integrate into American society. They grow a lawn and play bridge with the neighbors. The suburban house allows for the pretense that their lives are idyllic. If the building itself seems perfect, then everything inside must also be perfect. This idyllic scene eventually becomes less and less real. Windows are smashed, upholstery is ruined, and the roof begins to leak. The objects inside the house become tattered and worn just like the relationships between the family members.
The family leaves the house. Their vision of the American dream has failed, and the house no longer symbolizes their successes but their failures. Ralph cannot live inside without being consumed by paranoia, and they can no longer afford the mortgage. Grover looms on a nearby plot like a malicious force waiting to corrupt and destroy everything they value. They leave not just to save money but to save themselves. The family returns to a dingy apartment where they are once again kept afloat by the love and support they derive from one another. The family will always be tainted, but they invest themselves in each other rather than their house. The symbolic meaning of these various homes teaches the family to value one another more than physical buildings.
Cats and Dogs
The family gradually comes to own pets. Theresa is the first to bring a pet into her life. She adopts two cats and names them after the two nieces she misses most while living in exile. Later, Ralph buys a puppy and the family names him Grover. The pets allow the characters to express their emotions in ways they can’t otherwise. The pets also allow them to assert control over their rudderless lives. Theresa’s cats set the tradition for pets taking their names from real people. Theresa does not have children of her own, but she lives in the same house as her nieces and is very close to them. When Ralph drives her out of the house, Theresa is left with an emotional void that needs to be filled. She cannot simply have two young girls of her own, so she replaces the emotional value she derives from her nieces with two cats. The symbolism becomes more explicit when she names the cats Mona and Callie after her nieces. The cats allow her to care for other living beings and to invest herself emotionally into something besides her job. Theresa is perpetually exhausted, in the midst of a doomed affair, and separated from the only real family she has in America. The cats allow her to recreate a supportive, emotional environment and reassert control over a life that seemed to be slipping away.
Ralph buys a dog when he is at his lowest. His business is failing, and he is struggling to dig himself out of a hole. Ralph was tricked by Grover and emasculated by the fraudulent business his former partner sold to him. He names the dog Grover and trains it rigorously. He has no control over the real Grover, but the puppy education classes are a symbolic way for Ralph to teach Grover a lesson and exert the authority he lost through the real Grover’s manipulative schemes. The dog comes to embody all of Ralph’s bitterness and jealousy. He teaches the dog to growl and attack. He focuses the dog’s anger on the parts of his life that aggravate him: He trains Grover to attack the cats because they represent Theresa’s emotional well-being, for example. He is jealous of her success, and the dog becomes a means by which he can vicariously express his anger. That Ralph tries to get his dog to attack the cats is an expression of his unbridled anger and resentment, but one that allows him to hide behind plausible deniability. The dog chases Theresa in front of Ralph’s car, and she is almost killed; Ralph’s emotional outlet almost destroys his life. The dog’s final action in the text is a symbolic expression of Ralph’s failure to confront his negative emotions.
The Chicken Shop
The chicken shop represents Ralph’s untamed ambition and the hubris that causes his fall. The shop is built on unstable ground and the building is destined to fall apart. Ralph does not carry out his due diligence on the building and trusts in Grover. This trust proves to be misplaced. The business is successful for a short time, but it entices Ralph to break the law. He morally curtails himself in the name of success. When the shop begins to fall apart and has to close, Ralph loses everything. The family is placed under tremendous strain, and Ralph’s burning desire for money almost costs him his wife, his sister, and his daughters.
The building itself embodies the shallow nature of consumerist society. The walls appear to be structurally sound, and the shiny sign above the door shouts success into the street. Hidden below this veneer of stability and success is a hollow, unstable foundation that will inevitably lead to failure. There is no way Ralph could have made the shop work, and he was wrong to believe it could. The building was doomed from the moment he bought it. This doomed ambition reflects how Ralph invests in the wrong interpretation of the American dream. He constantly chases after greater profits, cheating on his taxes and committing fraud with his cash register. The store encourages Ralph to indulge his worse impulses and then punishes him for doing so.
The ultimate expression of this vaulted ambition is the second floor Ralph adds to the shop. His business acumen is sound, and his mechanical engineering is correct, but he is operating in the wrong context. He is unaware of the true nature of the building, of society, and of Grover Ding. Ralph trusts that society, the building, and Grover are all built on solid foundations. His math is correct but based on faulty assumptions. The second floor weighs the building down, crushing it. The store crumbles under the weight of Ralph’s ambition in a symbolic and a literal fashion. He can try to cover the cracks in the walls and in his life, but there is no escape from this inevitable conclusion.
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By Gish Jen
