The Breakdown
The story is really about the breakdown of order. The police accused a man of disrupting the social order when it is, in fact, they who are responsible. Mr. Chiu’s physical and mental health experience a breakdown in working order and on a more abstract level his belief and trust in the system breaks down under the weight of theory coming face to face with truth. This breakdown is mirrored very subtly through imagery that counterpoints the prison facility when Mr. Chiu first arrives in comparison to how it seems later. On his first day of incarceration, order is still intact with the description a window marked off symmetrically by six steel bars through which two empty children’s swings sway gently from the breeze while from somewhere else a meat cleaver is making a pleasant rhythmic sound when chopped against a cutting board. A few days later this orderliness is undone by images of a strange orange light bulb, shouts and laughter drifting in through a door left slightly ajar and the pleasant rhythm of the cleaver now replaced by a disembodied sound of accordion described as “coughing.”
A Smokescreen
Beautifully engaged just once and all the more memorably effective because of it, at one point the Police Chief literally blows smoke inhaled from his cigarette directly into the face of Mr. Chiu. The imagery is simple and to the point: whatever the official reason behind this humiliation of Chiu by the police may be, ultimately it is all a smokescreen to disguise the actual intent which will, of course, remain forever hidden from not just Mr. Chiu, but the reader as well.
Feasting on Famine
The story opens with images of people eating and closes with images of people eating. Notably, while Mr. Chiu and his bride are enjoying their meal, the images surrounding them is significantly less so: the odor of rotting melons fills the air while flies are buzzing about and street vendors seem to be having trouble unloading their supplies. This juxtaposition of enjoyment of eating amidst reminders of the thin line between feast and famine will recur at the end in a much more horrifying demonstration.
The Fleas
The use of fleas as imagery is one of the more exceptionally brilliant little touches. Mr. Chiu is allowed a very quickly outlined flashback to recall a previous time when fleas failed to bite him. The story ends with the punchline that his friends back then took this aversion on the part of the fleas as a sign of his lack of humanity which very subtly links to his strange alienation of affection for his wife and his generally professorial air of detachment from the real world. In the present, however, the fleas in the prison which also manifest a strange aversion to biting him can be interpreted as a subtle commentary upon his actual physical state. One way to explain away the fleas not biting him under these circumstances is that they are wary of feasting on the blood of a body under assault by hepatitis while at the same time also foreshadowing Fenjin’s upcoming observation that Chiu has suddenly become ugly to him.
