As I’ve continued reading Tropic of Orange, I’ve found Bobby Ngu to be more and more fascinating. I was in the group that analyzed his character on Monday, and as we’ve gone deeper into the text, new layers to him continue to emerge; every time you think you have a grip on his character, another detail blows your original assumptions away. In his first account (chapter 2 of “Monday”), we get a small glimpse into who he is through a narration that sounds like intoxicated men gossiping in bar after hours (though I’m stealing that incredible description from a previous post by Hannah), a narration which is full of nods to how much he values “work” and the continual making of money (which is also nodded to in the titles of his chapters). The first account characterizes Bobby as the most nonstop person you can imagine, very much defined by the “grind” that comprises his days. He is calculated. He is thorough. He is self-sufficient and has not a moment to spare. Though the narration is in third person, it also has an element of stream of consciousness, like reading a bullet-poitned account of what it looks like inside his head. If what we see in his mind is any indication, then we come to understand that his philosophy is indeed heavily action-based. Always moving. Always doing. Never stopping.
It’s later, though, that the window to his true motivation behind that drive begins to open. In “Tuesday,” it becomes clear that what’s really driving his constant state of motion is the strong sense of duty he feels to his family. We learn that he is still in contact with his parents in Singapore, still doing what he can to support them, but the real focus is Rafaela. It’s all for Rafaela, it always has been. Her name is slipped into Bobby’s narrative at a near-constant rate, and though he has the toughest possible exterior, his longing for and attachment to his estranged wife is what ultimately humanizes him – “But he’s gotta get that woman back. Gotta bring the boy home. Can’t be happy without his family. Can’t work. Can’t keep running. Can’t keep fighting,” (pg. 18). His will to keep going is literally fueled by his will to get her back. That struggle makes it’s way into everything Bobby does – even his feeble attempt to quit smoking, because he knows she wanted him to.
I think the most revealing passage in Bobby’s chapters so far is in “Wednesday,” on page 101. It’s really the first time we see an element of weakness in Bobby, a glimmer of sensitivity that borders on unbelievable in contrast to the seemingly mechanical and unrelenting man who once smashed a guy’s hand in a car door without a second thought ( pg. 14). This passage appears after her hears of the potential fate of his twelve year old cousin, a little girl: “Bobby tries to feel cold, and he can look cold, but he’s not like that. Rafeala knows this. He knows she knows this. So why’d she disappear? But he’s not gonna cry.” Here we see not only that he’s heavily invested in family, but that there’s a desperation to him, a desperation for the one person he feels can be real with, the one person in front of whom he can drop the act and rest a while – Rafaela.
It really makes you wonder what happened with them in the first place to inspire such an extreme cutting of ties.
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