59 pages • 1 hour read
Homesick for Another World
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
Beta“Mr. Wu”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
“Mr. Wu” Summary
The titular character is a middle-aged man who lives in a small town and obsesses over a nameless woman who works in the neighborhood computer arcade. Every day, Mr. Wu patronizes the arcade—really just a small store with internet-connected computers—for three or four hours at a time just to stare at the woman. The woman does not acknowledge Wu when they pass on the street, and he knows that she is not interested in him, but he intentionally drags out their interactions in the arcade.
Wu becomes obsessed with finding a way to be with the arcade worker. He knows that if he asks her out, she’ll reject him, so he tries to find a way to make her believe she is in love with him. He is overjoyed to discover that the arcade’s advertised phone number goes directly to her cell phone, and he begins to brainstorm things to text her. When Wu’s neighbor confides that he thinks his wife only married him out of desperation, Wu gets an idea: he sends the arcade worker an insulting message insinuating that she’s a failure. The tactic works, and the lonely, vulnerable arcade worker ultimately agrees to meet up with Wu (who has not revealed himself) at midnight.
As he prepares for the meetup, Wu grows increasingly anxious. He watches the arcade worker and wonders if he really likes her. Wu imagines the arcade worker washing a sex worker and performing oral sex on her, and he is explicitly disgusted by the thought. He imagines the two women defecating and urinating on each other, and although he is upset by the idea, he decides to travel into the city to patronize his favorite sex worker again. When she is unavailable, he asks the manager for the least intelligent sex worker instead. Ultimately, Wu performs many of the sex acts that so disgusted him previously, including oral sex and anal contact.
Wu returns to his town and meets up with the arcade worker. When he sees her, he is consumed with fear, and decides to text her, rather than approach her. He tells her that he’s going to stand under a neon light so that she can see him: if she likes him, she should clap, and if she doesn’t, she should whistle. He stands under the light and receives no response.
“Mr. Wu” Analysis
The story begins with a single-sentence paragraph describing Mr. Wu’s daily journey from his home to a small restaurant where he eats before visiting the arcade. The claustrophobia of this long, dense sentence—exemplified by phrases like “past the stinking ravine and the firecracker salesman and the old temple now used as a kind of flophouse for the farmworkers” (17)—sets the tone for the rest of the piece. The distaste Mr. Wu feels for the “barbershops and brothels and pharmacies and little clothing stores and cigarette shops” (17) is both a symptom and a cause of his Social Isolation. Spending almost all his time alone, Mr. Wu begins to see the crowded world around him as a threat to his bodily integrity. His disgust evinces a fear of contamination and contagion that is ultimately a fear of contact with others. Initially, he idolizes the woman at the arcade as someone set apart from all that disgusts him in the world and in himself. He describes her as “so light of heart, so free” (20). By agreeing to meet him, however, she steps off the pedestal he has constructed for her and into the “stinking ravine” of his imagination. His perspective changes dramatically. As he walks by the ravine, “he imagine[s] the woman from the arcade swimming in the refuse. He imagine[s] her sucking the dirty water into her mouth and then spurting it out like a fountain” (30). The disgust Wu initially feels for the city ultimately becomes disgust for the people he encounters within it.
This story contains some of Moshfegh’s most explicit depictions of sexuality, as Wu’s fantasies and fears grow more extreme. The explicit nature of these scenes contrasts with the childish euphemisms Wu uses to describe the acts, such as “private parts,” “use the latrine,” and “moving her bowels” (30). This juxtaposition highlights Wu’s emotional distance from these acts, which disgust him as much as they arouse him.
The end of the story is somewhat anticlimactic: the arcade worker neither accepts nor rejects Wu but disappears into the darkness. The fact that Wu leaves the encounter “in victory” suggests that he is relieved by her lack of response. By disappearing without a response, the arcade worker is opening the door for Wu to continue adoring her from afar without any input from her. He risks neither painful rejection nor the possibility of a physical encounter, and he remains as isolated from her as before.
Unlock all 59 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Ottessa Moshfegh
