These Violent Delights

“The constant grappling between the Scarlet Gang and the White Flowers wasn’t a secret. Far from it, in fact, because the blood feud was not something that raged only between those with Cai and Montagov to their name. It was a cause that ordinary members loyal to either faction took on personally, with a fervor that could almost be supernatural.”

The narrator’s description of the gang members’ passion for the violent rivalry between the two gangs as “supernatural” echoes the supernatural events occurring in the city, implying that violence, when taken to the extreme, is monstrous beyond the point of explanation. Furthermore, this quote shows the power of the Cai and Montagov families to order eager gang members to commit violence against the other side.

“Roma said Cai like a foreign merchant, his mouth pulled wide. The Chinese and the Russians shared the same sound for Cai: tsai, like the sound of a match being struck. His butchering was intentional, an observation of the situation.”

Roma purposefully mispronounces Lord Cai’s last name to assert his disdain for the Cais. The narrator explains the correct pronunciation of Cai and compares it to the sound made when lighting a match. This simile also reflects the Cai family’s dangerous nature.

“Lord Montagov reigned at the top and Roma—at least in name—stood second, but below, roles were constantly changing, determined by will rather than blood. Where the Scarlet Gang depended on relationships—on which family went the farthest back before this country crumbled from its imperial throne—the White Flowers operated on chaos, on constant movement.”

The narrator contrasts the social hierarchies in each of the gangs to show that while the Scarlet Gang value tradition, the White Flowers are more subject to the whims of Lord Montagov. This dichotomy reveals the gang’s weaknesses. The Scarlet Gang is often behind the times, while the White Flowers are too dependent on the authority of one man, Lord Montagov, who sometimes leads them astray.

“It was lex talonis: an eye for an eye—that was how the blood feud worked. If he hadn’t launched the first attack, they wouldn’t have retaliated against his mother. There was no way to spread blame in a feud of such scale. If there was anyone to blame, it was himself.”

The novel uses third person limited narration to explain Roma’s feelings of guilt over his mother’s death. Roma does not blame the Scarlet Gang and instead blames himself for inciting the attack that led to his mother’s death. Thus, Roma feels personally responsible for his mother’s demise while recognizing the futility of continuing the cycle of violence.

“Monsters weren’t real, no matter what Chinese fairy tales had once been taken as truth. This was a new age of science, evolution. The so-called monster had to be a creature of someone’s creation—but whose?”

Juliette’s speculation over the true source of the monster rumors reveals that despite her family’s traditional values, she embraces empiricism. She seeks a scientific explanation for the monster causing the madness, since she dismisses the idea of a supernatural creature as fantastical. Ironically, the novel later reveals there is both a scientific and a supernatural source of the madness and a villain who created it.

“Juliette did not falter. The sky grew redder, and her eyes grew brighter. Wherever she went, no matter how far into the darkest underbelly of the city she wandered, as long as she stayed within her territory, she was the reigning supreme.”

Juliette is the Scarlet Gang’s version of royalty. She is so well respected that no one will dare to bother her. However, the association of her eyes with the redness of the sky suggests that the respect she garners comes more from fear of her violent reputation than from genuine admiration.

“Because there were so many foreigners here clambering for a piece of the city, the road of the French concession reflected their greed, their scramble. Houses within each sector turned inward in a manner that—if viewed from the skies—almost appeared circular, huddling in on themselves to protect their underbelly.”

The narrator personifies the layout of the city to compare the architecture of the French concession to people shielding their bodies. This metaphor indicates the foreigners’ selfishness. They hoard their resources and seek only to benefit themselves, refusing to share their fortune with the Chinese residents of the city.

“She was already forgetting how steady her grip had been on the wire, how willing she had been to hurt Madame for what she wanted to hear. All she could think about was the name she had received—Zhang Gutai—and how she was to proceed next.”

This quote reveals how desensitized Juliette has become to violence. By remarking on the absence of Juliette’s feelings on her violent conduct, the novel critiques Juliette’s single-minded pursuit of information. She will pursue her family’s goals through any means necessary, even torture.

“This city does not know itself; it will not feel the parasites that grow upon its skin until it is far too late. This city is a miscellany of parts smashed together and functioning in one collective stride, but place a gun to its head and it will only laugh in your face, misunderstanding the violence of such intent.”

By personifying Shanghai, the narrator depicts the city as a place where violence is so normalized that people are unable to determine what is a real threat to their safety. The parasites are a reference to the madness that is spreading, but they also represent the foreigners who are exploiting the city for its resources but are not perceived as dangerous until it is too late. Thus, this quote foreshadows the end of the novel, when the foreigner Paul Dexter reveals that he infected the city with the madness to profit from selling a vaccine.

“The rich and the foreign, they didn’t truly believe it. To them, this madness sweeping the city was nothing except Chinese nonsense—only to affect the doomed poor, only to touch the believers caught in their tradition. They thought their glistening marble could keep out contagion because the contagion was nothing save the hysteria of savages.”

The narrator depicts the wealthy foreigners in the Bund as arrogant fools. They dismiss the rumors of the madness because they associate it with the Chinese residents of the city. Their belief that the working-class Chinese residents are ignorant and uncivilized leads them to ignore the madness, rejecting the possibility that the disease could also threaten the lives of Westerners.

“It was the entitlement that drove these men forward. Entitlement that encouraged their wives to place a delicate handkerchief on their nose and sniff, believing the tirade was deserved. They believed themselves the rulers of the world—on stolen land in America, on stolen land in Shanghai.”

Juliette connects her experiences of racism in the United States to the racism of the European colonists in Shanghai. By linking white people’s racial oppression across continents, the novel implies that the negative impacts of colonialism on Shanghai are only one example of a larger global issue of white imperialism. This is consistent with the book’s broader themes of anti-colonialism.

“Even if working together could merge their territory, even if it could bring a momentary peace to the feud so they could discover why their gangsters were being picked off one by one, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough set down the hatred and the blood, to resolve the fury that Juliette had been nursing in her heart for four years.”

Juliette’s vitriol for the White Flowers, despite her logical understanding that it is in her best interest to put aside the rivalry, illustrates the challenge of overcoming the blood feud. Unlike Roma, she reacts to the attacks against her family by wanting to retaliate so she can appease her anger. But responding to violence with more violence will only continue the vicious cycle.

“It almost felt supernatural, this exhilaration rushing through the lines of his limbs, this pulsating, absolute need to win against the favorite, to have the people remember who was the actual Montagov and who was the fraud, who was the one deserving of dignity as the heir.”

By describing the feeling violence gives Roma as “supernatural,” the novel associates the rush of adrenaline from violence with the supernatural madness that causes people to harm themselves. Roma normally disapproves of violence, but when he is forced to fight Dimitri, he finds it intoxicating because it seemingly offers an easy solution to solving his problems; if he can prove via brute force that he is superior to Dimitri, Dimitri will no longer challenge him as heir. Thus, the toxic culture of the gangs, which value machismo over everything, tempts Roma to engage in even more violence.

“She trashed every qipao and tossed aside every silk scarf Lady Cai tried to compromise with. To avoid being recognized when she colluded with Roma, she threw coats over her gaudy costumes, of course, but she was always treading a line of recklessness. Juliette had almost preferred the thought of being caught a traitor over putting on the same clothes as everyone else. She would have rather been an outcast than admit the blood in her veins was a product of the East.”

Juliette wears Western clothes to be seen as unique, even if she risks her reputation as a result. Her refusal to wear Chinese clothing also shows her rejection of her Chinese heritage. Since she was raised in New York and was bullied and shamed for being Chinese, her dislike for Chinese fashion suggests she has internalized Westerners’ racism against the Chinese.

“That monster sighting—it had affected her more than she had let on. It had sent her on long nights and spirals, and now she was questioning everything that her life was stacked atop of, which was dangerous for someone like Rosalind, whose mind was already an eternal, sepulchral place.”

Rosalind’s encounter with the monster causes the madness to haunt her. This suggests that the monster is a metaphor for depression or mental illness. Since the madness leads to suicide, just seeing the monster can have a negative psychological effect on those who view it.

“How much of his exterior was a mere image? Juliette hadn’t considered before this moment that while Roma was being swept into the rumors on her cruelty, thinking her transformed into someone else, perhaps Juliette had been falling into the exact same trap, buying into the tales of ice and coldness that had originated within the White Flowers themselves.”

Juliette realizes that Roma, like herself, could be projecting a façade to appear crueler than he actually is when he expresses regret over having to kill a man who pursued them. The two protagonists believe the worst in each other, which keeps them from reconciling until the end of the novel. Once Juliette begins to view Roma with empathy instead of pure hatred, she realizes that they both face the same challenge of the toxic, violent culture in their gangs.

“Civilians ripping out their own throats and the people of this city had become so desensitized that they were content to continue their dinner like it was a regular Tuesday. Juliette supposed it was. If this continued, it would be the norm until the whole city collapsed.”

The novel illustrates the Shanghai residents’ lack of a response to the crisis of the madness spreading across the city. Rather than looking for a solution or even panicking, the residents choose to ignore the problem, even as it worsens. This willful denial does not seem logical, but the novel suggests that it is easier for people to continue with the status quo than to address the problem. Thus, the madness could be a metaphor for other societal issues that people ignore until it affects them personally, such as poverty, environmental degradation, and real illnesses.

“Benedikt knew full and well that Roma could either be the heir or be a ghost. Benedikt might have been one of the only people who actually understood that Roma did not fight so hard to remain heir because he enjoyed the power but because it was the only place he could control his personal safety. If the heavens opened up and offered Roma a little villa in the outskirts of the country, where he could move himself and his loved ones out to live a life of obscurity, he would choose it immediately.”

While both Roma and Juliette vie to be the heir of their families’ gangs, this quote reveals that Roma’s desire to become heir stems not from ambition, as Juliette’s desire does. It stems from the need to survive in the harsh environment of The White Flowers. Roma’s hope to leave behind the gang violence rather than dominate it contrasts with Juliette’s drive to control the Scarlet Gang.

“They were vultures, all of them—the British and the French and every other newcomer. Circling above the city and awaiting the carnage so they could gorge themselves until they were full.”

The novel uses a metaphor to compare the foreigners of Shanghai to vultures. It implies that the Europeans intend to exploit the chaos in the city due to the madness, while its residents are still recovering from the aftermath of the disease. This metaphor implies that the Europeans who want to dominate Shanghai are selfish and greedy, with no empathy for the Chinese residents who are affected by the madness.

“She remembered how Roma used to ponder day in and day out the ways he would change things when the White Flowers came under his hand. And she remembered her own fondness for such ambition, that spark of hope flaring in her chest every time Roma said that the future was theirs, that the city would be theirs one day, united as one, as long as they had each other.”

Juliette’s reminiscence over what attracted her to Roma in the first place reveals how their original romance was rooted in their youthful idealism. They fell in love because they believed they could overcome the violence between the gangs. Reminding herself of this dream rekindles Juliette’s love for Roma.

“Her city, her gang, her family. The better thing to do now would be to walk away, walk away from anything that would distract her from what was important. But she couldn’t. She… hoped. And hope was dangerous. Hope was the most vicious evil of them all, the thing that had managed to thrive in Pandora’s box, among misery, and disease, and sadness—and what could endure alongside others with such teeth if it didn’t have ghastly claws of its own?”

This quote appears just after Juliette has begun to hope that she and Roma will be able to be together again. However, the allusion to the myth of Pandora’s box suggests that Juliette’s hope may be risky because it would cause her to neglect her duties to her family and to the people of Shanghai. It depicts hope as a monster with “ghastly claws” that resembles the monster loose in the city.

“She could hardly tell the difference between the times when she was fighting and the times when she was barely holding herself together, crumbled pieces staggering forward step-by-step. Maybe those two were one and the same.”

The narrator depicts violence as fundamental to Juliette’s identity. She has needed to fight her whole life to survive as heir to the Scarlet Gang. As a result, Juliette does not know who she is without violence.

“The land of dreams. Where men and women in white hoods roam the streets to murder Black folks. Where written laws prohibit the Chinese from stepping upon its shores. Where immigrant children are separated from on Ellis Island, never to be seen again. Even the land of dreams needs to wake up sometimes.”

The narrator critiques the idealized myth of America as the “land of dreams.” This occurs when Roma and Juliette briefly discuss the possibility of moving there to escape the madness. By pointing out examples of America’s injustices towards people of color and immigrants, the novel links the issues of racism and colonialism that the characters face in Shanghai to similar problems in the United States.