The Burden of Filial Duty and the Cost of Protecting Family in The Eyes Are the Best Part

The Thematic Claim: When Protection Becomes Destruction

In The Eyes Are the Best Part, Monika Kim builds a horror narrative around a deceptively ordinary family structure: a daughter who quietly absorbs the role of caretaker after her father abandons the household. The novel's central thematic claim is that filial duty—the obligation to support a grieving mother, shield a younger sister, and hold a fractured family together—is a burden that grows heavier the longer it goes unacknowledged. Ji-won's violence does not emerge from malice or madness but from a protective instinct twisted by years of unspoken responsibility. By the novel's end, her murders are framed not as random crimes but as the logical, horrifying endpoint of a daughter who was never allowed to be anything other than the family's protector.

The Burden Takes Shape: The Father's Departure

The novel opens in the immediate aftermath of the father's sudden departure. In the first chapter, Umma performs her ritual of breaking down a whole fish at the dinner table, offering the eye to her daughters, and eating it herself when they refuse. The narrator's discomfort is visceral—she reflects that she never felt bad about eating fish before her mother began this practice, but now she cannot even look at a fish without feeling cruel. This early scene establishes the family's emotional dynamic: the mother performs normalcy through ritual, the daughters comply with discomfort, and the narrator quietly manages the aftermath. When the mother retreats to her bedroom, it is Ji-won who scrapes the remaining fish into the trash, a small act of cleanup that foreshadows her larger role.

The burden becomes explicit in the second chapter, when Ji-hyun asks whether their father will return. The narrator lies and says yes, not because she believes it but because she understands that her sister needs the comfort. This lie is the first of many protective deceptions. When the mother cooks a large meal and sets an extra place for the absent father, then rushes to the door at the sound of keys only to find a neighbor, the narrator witnesses her mother's unraveling without being able to stop it. The mother's decision to eat a fish eye for luck—believing it might bring her husband back—is both pathetic and desperate, and the narrator's horror at the act is matched by her inability to intervene.

Chapter 3 deepens the burden. The narrator overhears her parents' final confrontation, learning that her father is leaving because he has met someone else. She claps her hands over her ears and crawls under the covers beside her sleeping sister. The detail that Ji-hyun remains asleep is significant: the narrator is the only one who carries the knowledge of the affair, the only one who must absorb the truth while protecting her sister from it. Her mother's sobbing continues through the night, and the narrator cannot escape the sound even by muffling it with her pillow. This is the moment when the burden becomes inescapable.

The Mother's Backstory: A Pattern of Waiting

Chapter 4 provides crucial context for understanding the narrator's frustration. The mother's childhood in 1970s Korea—her parents leaving in the night to find work, her decision to stay behind while her siblings followed—reveals a woman shaped by waiting and sacrifice. The narrator's reaction is complex: she wants to shout at her mother, to shake her, to cut her down for what she sees as stupidity, but the feeling gives way to sadness. She feels sorry for her mother, sorry that every part of her life had been characterized by misery.

This backstory does more than explain the mother's passivity; it establishes the generational pattern that the narrator is determined to break. The mother waited for her parents to return, and they did. She waits for her husband to return, and he does not. The narrator sees this pattern clearly and refuses to repeat it. Her violence, in this light, is a rejection of her mother's model of passive endurance. Where Umma waits, Ji-won acts.

The Burden Intensifies: College and the Pressure to Succeed

By Chapter 21, the burden has become crushing. During a philosophy final, the narrator suffers a stress migraine, and her thoughts reveal the full weight of her responsibility: now that Appa is gone, she has to try even harder. She reflects that if she fails out of college, her life—and her mother's and sister's—is over. There is no trust fund, no plan B, no time to discover a secret talent. Her mother can barely support herself, so it falls to Ji-won to get a good job and support the family.

This passage is the clearest articulation of the filial duty that drives the novel. The narrator is not choosing to be responsible; she has no choice. She envies kids who have no idea how good they have it, who live untethered, without having to be responsible for everyone around them. The word untethered is telling—the narrator is tethered, bound to her family by obligation.

Chapter 32 shows how this burden warps her perception of the men who enter her family's life. George, her mother's new fiancé, is loud, self-absorbed, and rude, and the narrator watches him through slitted eyes. Her reflection on her father's humiliation at the dry-cleaning store—the white customer who accused him of ruining a shirt, the father who stammered and paid fifty dollars to make the problem disappear—reveals a deep anger at the men who fail her family. She hated the customer, but she also hated her father for letting her see him humiliated. This anger is the seed of her violence.

The Burden Transforms: Violence as Protection

The novel's final chapters make explicit the connection between filial duty and violence. In Chapter 72, after Geoffrey has been arrested for George's murder, the narrator tells the police that Geoffrey woke her holding a knife and threatened to harm her as he had harmed George. She acknowledges that she called Geoffrey that evening, explaining that she phoned to ask him to stop his constant calls and messages. The officer assures her the incident was not her fault. But the narrator's reflection—that Geoffrey's fingerprints are on the murder weapon, that evidence from his home and phone records would implicate him in the killings—reveals her orchestration of events.

Chapter 73 is the novel's thematic climax. The narrator acknowledges that she was wrong to blame her mother for what happened to their family. She recognizes that Umma's grief comes from a place of weakness, of powerlessness, that her mother allowed the men in her life to control her and make all the big decisions. And then comes the crucial declaration: her mother may be too weak to protect herself, and her sister too young, but she is neither of those things.

This is the moment where the burden of filial duty fully transforms into violent intent. The narrator plans to visit Appa, whom she holds ultimately responsible for the family's suffering. She will punish him for everything he has done to her mother, her sister, and their family. Her final promise—that this time she will make sure he can never hurt them again—frames her violence as the ultimate act of protection.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel resists a simple reading of Ji-won's violence as justified. Her murders are framed as protective acts, but they are also acts of destruction that isolate her from the family she claims to protect. She kills George to protect her mother from a man who objectifies her, but her mother mourns George's death, weeping as she sits by the narrator's side. The narrator's violence does not bring her family peace; it brings more grief.

There is also a deep contradiction in the narrator's relationship with her mother. She blames Umma for allowing men to control her, yet she also recognizes that her mother's passivity is a product of her circumstances. The narrator's anger at her mother is really anger at the system that made her mother weak—and at herself for being unable to fix it through legitimate means.

The novel also complicates the idea of protection. The narrator protects Ji-hyun by lying to her, by hiding the truth of their father's affair, by keeping her violence secret. But protection through deception is a form of control, and the narrator's final plan to punish Appa is framed as protection even as it is clearly revenge. The line between protecting family and controlling family blurs throughout the novel.

Symbols and Their Connection to the Theme

The fish eyes that open the novel are the most direct symbol of the family's survival logic. The mother eats them for luck, believing they might bring her husband back. The narrator's revulsion at the eyes mirrors her revulsion at the family's desperate rituals. By the end, the narrator has internalized a different kind of eye-taking: she removes George's blue eyes, transforming the mother's superstitious consumption into literal violence.

The pocket knife is the symbol of the narrator's transformation. It is the tool of her violence, but it is also the tool of her protection—the instrument through which she eliminates threats to her family. The paper flowers that the mother makes for her wedding to George represent the fragile domesticity that the narrator's violence destroys.

Study Questions

1. How does the narrator's lie to Ji-hyun in Chapter 2 establish the pattern of protective deception that defines her role in the family?

The lie is the first instance of the narrator choosing to shield her sister from painful truth. Ji-hyun asks whether their father will return, and the narrator says yes to comfort her, even though she has no reason to believe it. This establishes a pattern: the narrator absorbs knowledge and pain on behalf of her family, managing their emotional reality while carrying the truth alone. The same pattern recurs when she hides her knowledge of the affair and, later, her violence.

1. In what ways does the mother's backstory in Chapter 4 explain both her passivity and the narrator's determination to act?

The mother's childhood—staying behind when her parents left, surviving alone on snow and bark, waiting for a return that took nearly a year—shapes a woman who equates love with waiting and sacrifice. The narrator sees this pattern repeat with her father and refuses to accept it. Her violence is, in part, a rejection of her mother's model: where Umma waits and hopes, Ji-won acts and eliminates.

1. How does the narrator's reflection on her father's humiliation at the dry-cleaning store in Chapter 32 connect to her later violence?

The memory reveals the narrator's deep anger at men who fail to protect her family and at her father for exposing his weakness. She hated the customer who humiliated him, but she also hated her father for letting her witness it. This double anger—at the men who threaten her family and at the men who cannot defend it—fuels her later violence against George and her planned punishment of Appa.

1. The narrator says her mother is too weak to protect herself and her sister too young, but she is neither of those things. What does this declaration reveal about how she justifies her violence?

The declaration frames her violence as a necessity born of absence: no one else can protect the family, so she must. It reveals a self-conception built entirely around duty. She does not see herself as choosing violence; she sees herself as the only available option. This justification allows her to view murder as protection and to plan Appa's punishment without moral hesitation.

1. How does the novel complicate the idea that Ji-won's violence is purely protective?

The novel complicates this reading through the mother's grief. Umma mourns George's death, weeping beside the narrator, and the narrator must watch her mother grieve the man she killed. This moment reveals that the narrator's violence does not produce the peace she intended—it produces more suffering. The novel also shows that the narrator's protection is entangled with control: she lies to her sister, hides her actions, and decides what her family can and cannot know. Protection, in this novel, is never pure.