From pp. 55-56 (Hyperion, 2008 edition):

Joice was the only person I told my true name to.  Though her calligraphic hand was as unbalanced as a child’s, the intimacy of what she wrote was mature. She was telling me that my name, maybe my life, was a lie. I felt a heat expanding in my chest. I only remember the red covers on the bed, the shine of the cushions and that I couldn’t stop until I destroyed it all.

Then I was in the middle of a ruin, breathing like a thug. The red and gold sheets were like coiled intestines and the strewn feathers reminded me of the bird alley. The gauze curtains were slashed. The eye of the phoenix, split. The plume of the phoenix, ripped. The dragon’s immortal pearl, cracked. The seascape, rent. This was not a bed of happiness.

Joice’s coat was on the floor, the body, shoulder and collar collapsed into itself like a sitting Buddha. I picked that up, along with the shredded bedding and torn cushions and threw everything behind the headboard.

How much was reversed in one day! I did not want to comprehend the consequences, so I lay down under Joice’s carved mandate and slept through the night.

When I woke, the morning’s harsh light poured in like paint, the bed was hard as an oyster shell and yet I felt harbored in tenderness. I lay in the forbidden bed, in the smell of paint, among the ruin of my own making, and I knew there was only one road before me.

Questions to consider:

Why does Jack destroy the marriage bed?

To what effect does Ng use parallel syntax in the second paragraph above? What kinds of imagery does she use in this passage and what effects do these images have? How do they help indicate Jack’s feeling state?

How does this passage foreshadow subsequent events in the novel? How does the idea of “consequences” function in the novel?

Later in the novel, Jack becomes furious at Veta when she colors on the headboard. What are the reasons for his fury and abusiveness?