The Emperor of Gladness: Summary, Analysis, and Impact
A troubled teen on the edge of a bridge. An elderly widow lost in the haze of dementia.
Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness finds its spark in that moment of crisis. In 2025, when nearly a quarter of Americans care for a sick or aging family member, Vuong’s new novel cuts right to today’s pain and hope. It opens in a run-down Connecticut town and quickly shows how a small act of kindness can change everything.
Vivid, spare prose paints a scene at dusk: Hai, a 19-year-old immigrant kid, prepares to jump into dark waters. Then he hears Grazina, an 82-year-old Lithuanian widow, yelling from across the river. By the next chapter, Hai has become her reluctant caretaker.
This unlikely pair – a young man and an old woman – will weave themselves into each other’s lives as the year unfolds.
Their story is about loneliness and compassion, secret pasts and small joys.
The first lines grab you: the hiss of rain on a bridge, two people saved by a moment of connection.
Then the novel pulls back to reveal a community of misfits, all hungry for hope.
Key Points at a Glance
Suicide averted by kindness. Nineteen-year-old Hai is talked out of jumping off a bridge by Grazina, an elderly neighbor lost in dementia.
A new role as caregiver. Out of options, Hai moves into Grazina’s decaying house. He becomes her unofficial caretaker, hiding his own struggles as he attends to hers.
Found family at work. Hai lands a job at a fast-food diner chain called HomeMarket. His boss BJ and co-workers Maureen and Russia become his makeshift family.
Games and war fantasies. To calm Grazina’s panic attacks, Hai invents a fantasy game. He and Grazina pretend to be heroes battling the world’s cruelties, folding history and imagination together.
Secrets and lies. Hai lies to protect people’s feelings – hiding his drug use and telling his mother he’s in college – while learning that others, like his cousin Sony, also invented stories to cope.
Immigrant family history. The novel weaves in the trauma of war and migration. Hai’s Vietnamese American family carries old wounds, even as they try to build a peaceful life in America.
Hope amid hardship. Against the backdrop of economic struggle and personal loss, the characters search for glimmers of meaning. Small pleasures and acts of care create moments of genuine “gladness” in a hard life.
Background and Context
Set in a post-industrial corner of Connecticut, The Emperor of Gladness feels like a modern American fable. The fictional town of East Gladness is a sad, forgotten place outside Hartford, worn down by deindustrialization and a toxic chemical spill that gave one street the grim nickname “Devil’s Armpit.” This setting echoes many real towns facing factory closures and economic decline in the 21st century. The time period is present-day America – not the glamorous coastal big cities, but the small towns that often slip under the radar.
Ocean Vuong, best known as an award-winning poet, drew heavily on his own life for this story. Vuong’s background includes years of restaurant work and caring for relatives, and he wanted to honor the dignity of ordinary lives. He has said he wanted to push back on the idea that immigrant success is only about wealth or fame. Instead, The Emperor of Gladness shows that driving the same car and holding the same job for decades can be “a decent life”. In interviews Vuong explained that his own family never had a rags-to-riches story – they simply worked hard and stuck together. That theme shines through in this novel’s world of modest routines and small victories.
The book also enters the tradition of literary fiction about life on society’s margins. Critics have compared Vuong’s style to writers like William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connorworldliteraturetoday.org. The mood blends naturalistic detail (rainy streets and frozen dinners) with flashes of the surreal (hallucinations, fantasy battles). It’s a coming-of-age tale, a story of immigrant generations, and a novel about aging and memory. Social issues like the opioid crisis, aging populations, and the grind of low-wage work all loom in the background. In The Emperor of Gladness, these are not abstract ideas but lived experiences: Hai is a recovering drug user living paycheck to paycheck, and Grazina’s dementia turns ordinary life into a constant puzzle. At the same time, Vuong weaves in echoes of history – like war memories and cultural heritage – as if the past constantly whispers into the present.
Plot Overview
The story begins late one summer night. Nineteen-year-old Hai stands on King Philip’s Bridge in the cold rain, ready to drown himself. He is broken by loss and addiction: his father died in the Vietnam War before Hai was born, and Hai’s own dreams have faltered. He feels alone and unmoored. Suddenly an old woman’s voice shouts, pulling him back from the edge. This is Grazina, a lively yet confused Lithuanian widow who lives across the river. Without knowing it, she has saved Hai’s life that night.
Instead of jumping, Hai crosses to her side. Grazina, who has mid-stage dementia, convinces him to come home with her. They end up at her house on Hubbard Street – a dumpy ramshackle place overflowing with junk, owl figurines, and the scent of old meals. In that odd living room, Hai and Grazina stare each other down. She’s old, stubborn, and pill-addled; he’s young, guilty, and desperate. Somehow, they make a bargain: Hai will stay and help her. Though Haj is a stranger, Grazina acts as though he is the grandson she never had. The next morning Hai wakes up on her couch. He has nowhere else to go and, surprisingly, commits to helping her with daily tasks.
We learn more about both of them as the seasons turn. Grazina’s life is bleak: her dementia makes her slip between past and present. She eats TV dinners of Salisbury steak every night, believing they ward off sadness. Thunder sounds like Nazi bombs to her ears. She needs fourteen pills a day to survive. Her own children have mostly abandoned her, seeing only a cranky old lady. Hai reluctantly becomes her caregiver. He helps her take pills, reminds her of appointments, and even sleeps next to her some nights to protect her from imagined monsters.
Meanwhile, Hai tries to rebuild himself. He lies to his mother back in Hartford, promising that he’s enrolled in a pre-med program. In truth, he works a late shift at HomeMarket, a fast-food diner chain outside town. At HomeMarket, we meet a group of young and hard-luck coworkers who change Hai’s life. BJ, a gentle giant with a buzz cut, runs the kitchen; he dreams of being a pro wrestler under the name “Deez Nuts.” Maureen mans the cash register – she’s brash, conspiratorial, and uses mac-and-cheese dinners to ease her aching knees. Russia, a stoner-type named for his Tajikistani roots, endlessly sneaks Starbursts candy and hitches rides home. Together these co-workers form a ragtag found-family. They tease each other, argue about wrestling TV shows, and share smuggled snacks in the backroom. It’s noisy, exhausting work, but the HomeMarket crew provides Hai with his first sense of belonging in a long time.
Back at Hubbard Street, to deal with Grazina’s worst moments, Hai invents a series of bedtime adventures. He and Grazina imagine themselves as heroes in a war (a game that mashes up everything from James Bond to Nazism to Star Wars) fighting for truth. When Grazina has panic attacks or wakes screaming about Nazis, this playful storytelling calms her. The two of them lie in bed at night, whispering pretend war strategies, giving Grazina power over the terror in her mind. For a while, this game becomes their escape.
Life outside and inside progress side by side. One notable outing: BJ takes Hai, Grazina, and the crew to a local slaughterhouse. This is supposed to be a tour of where the diner’s meat comes from. The reality is starkly brutal: factory farming and animal cruelty shock them all. It’s a rough experience and the book doesn’t shy away from the gore. Another wild night: they go to “Hairy Harry’s” dive bar for wrestling matches. Over cheap beer, they laugh, cry, and cheer. In these scenes, Vuong uses dark humor to highlight how these ordinary people chase tiny thrills – a cheap dinner at HomeMarket or two stolen painkillers – to survive grinding days.
As winter turns to spring, Hai’s secret opioid habit resurfaces. He pillsnap from Grazina’s prescriptions when she sleeps, longing for release. When Grazina does something violent (sprays boiling tea or lash out in panic), Hai has to protect her without calling it abuse. The strains of caregiving and the growing burden of responsibility push Hai to his limits. He still calls his mom to lie and say he’s okay, even as he struggles.
Despite hardships, something changes in Hai. Day by day, the small kindnesses and routines give him purpose. He begins to face his own demons because he knows someone depends on him. We see flashbacks of Hai as a child: his family after the Vietnam War, stories of soldiers and bones. These flashbacks mirror the scars on his heart – and show why he once felt like dying. Meanwhile, Grazina sometimes has lucid moments of clarity. In those precious minutes, she mistakes Hai for her own grandson, dotes on him, and tells a funny story about his father. In those moments they are a real family.
The novel ends without fireworks – there is no single dramatic finale. Instead, we see that Hai has slowly been transformed. He is still on the fringes of society, but he has empathy, friends, and a sense of dignity. The final scenes suggest that Hai will continue both caring for Grazina and working at HomeMarket. He’s tired but determined. Even if life stays hard, a soft glow of gladness seems to light up his days. The last pages hint that, in the quiet between jobs and nighttime games, Hai has found a kind of second chance.
Main Characters
Hai
Hai is our narrator and protagonist. At 19, he is Vietnamese American and finds himself adrift. Born after the Vietnam War, he was raised by his mother, grandmother and aunt – relatives who never speak much about the past. He grew up in Hartford, feeling caught between two worlds. He lied to his mother, telling her he was studying medicine in college to make her proud, when in reality he was working at HomeMarket and secretly abusing opioids. In the present timeline of the novel, Hai is suicidal and desperate. He’s haunted by a sense of failure and the feeling that he has already used up his only life.
Throughout the story, Hai is complex: he’s both caring and flawed. When he meets Grazina, he reluctantly accepts a job as her carer, even as he cares little about himself. His motivations evolve: at first he helps her mostly out of loneliness and necessity, but gradually he finds a glimmer of purpose in it. Living at Hubbard Street gives him stability, even when it means putting aside his own pain. Hai’s secret tendencies (taking Grazina’s pills, stealing Twix bars from HomeMarket) show how he clings to escape. But his growth comes through small acts of loyalty: keeping Grazina company in the night, hiding from her family when Grazina embarrasses herself, and being honest with his new friends. By the end, Hai is more hopeful – he even manages to write a little journal – hinting that caring for another human has helped heal his fractured self.
Grazina
Grazina is an 82-year-old Lithuanian immigrant who lives alone in East Gladness. She’s described as small and stooped, with a sharp tongue and a museum of memories in her mind. Dementia gradually unravels her sense of time: sometimes she’s an old woman complaining about dinner, and sometimes she’s a young fighter from wartime Lithuania, whispering in German. She mistakes thunder for Nazi bombs and insists carrots and canned Vienna sausages cure her blues. Her personality swings between sweet and terrifying: she can be tender, singing “Silent Night” while snoozing, but in panic she once brandished a steaming bowl of soup like a weapon.
Grazina’s past touches the book through little fragments. She lost her husband years ago. In family photos and muttered stories we see a portrait of a strong woman who has seen hardship – a World War II survivor turned grandmother. She’s stubborn and proud; she admires when Hai plays along with her fantasy games, calling him “my brave soldier.” What drives Grazina is confusion more than anything. She needs a caretaker not just for physical help, but to anchor her to reality.
Hai’s presence at her home slowly changes Grazina, even if she barely knows him. She enjoys having a young grandchild again, someone to boss around affectionately. In moments of lucidity she showers him with love. But ultimately, Grazina remains bound by her dementia. She rarely truly recovers her memory; her character arc is not to “get better,” but to have meaning in those twilight spaces she inhabits. She passes peacefully in a subtle scene near the end, leaving Hai a note with wisdom from her youth – a final gift of clarity. Through Grazina, the novel explores themes of memory, aging, and the simple, stubborn refusal to be alone.
BJ, Russia, and Maureen
These three make up the HomeMarket crew who become Hai’s coworkers and chosen family. BJ is the big-hearted manager who sneaks groceries from the store’s trash to feed his friends. He talks about wrestling moves and lame one-liners, but he quietly protects the team. Russia, named only by his home country once, is the skinny night-shift worker with a nose ring and a sweet tooth. He’s from Tajikistan, came to America with nothing, and keeps a “Starburst” candy hidden in his apron. Maureen is the sharp-tongued cashier in her fifties. She sells conspiracy theories and rheumatism stories while her knees rest on a cooler of cheap mac-and-cheese.
Each of them is struggling. BJ’s family life is troubled; Russia is cut off from his homeland and has PTSD from war. Maureen’s grown children have long since moved out, and she fights her own demons of loneliness. Yet together, they form a ragtag community. They share shifts, split $5 dinners, and offer each other rides home when they have no way. After work, they go on jarring outings: one night at a pig slaughterhouse, another night at a dive bar to watch faux-wrestling. Those scenes combine humor and horror in equal measure, but they bond the group.
For Hai, these coworkers are a lifeline. They are the first people in his life to laugh with him and tolerate his quirks without judgment. They call him by a nickname, slop from the kitchen on their faces, and let him sleep on the backroom couch if he’s broke. Their kindness balances the harder parts of his life. In a way, BJ, Russia, and Maureen teach Hai how to be family to someone beyond blood.
Hai’s Family
The novel also features Hai’s biological family, primarily through memories. His mother, aunt, and grandmother are Vietnamese women who came through the war and moved to Connecticut. They live in a modest Hartford apartment. Vuong paints them as survivors who may be physically safe but whose minds hold invisible scars (“spared by war in body but not in mind”).
Hai has a tender but uneasy relationship with his mother. He loves her warmth but struggles under her hopes. When Hai dropped out of college, he lied to her about why – he didn’t want to hurt her pride in his new life. A poignant motif is that Hai often imagines his mother’s “face brightening” when he says he’s going to “heal the sick” (study medicine), even though it’s not true. This lie becomes a weight on Hai. It highlights the expectation placed on immigrant children to achieve and not disappoint.
Hai also had a cousin named Sony, who appears in conversations. Sony has a mental disability and an obsessed interest in the American Civil War. His presence in the story (and the scene of Sony’s dad’s false war story) deepens the theme of how violence and history haunt ordinary lives. Hai’s “chosen family” – the people he lives and works with – eventually feels more real to him than the secrets he keeps at home.
Themes and Ideas
Chosen Family and Empathy. One of the clearest threads in this novel is the idea of family beyond blood. Hai and Grazina are total strangers, yet they become surrogate family members. In caring for each other they find solace. Similarly, the HomeMarket crew looks after one another the way siblings might. The novel shows that in hard times, support can come from anyone: a coworker’s loyalty, a neighbor’s compassion, a friend’s shared secret. These found-family bonds contrast with Hai’s tense relationship with his real family, suggesting that love is as much about understanding and kindness as it is about biology.
Work and Survival. Vuong writes with blunt honesty about menial labor and economic precarity. HomeMarket isn’t just a setting: it symbolizes survival. The characters are scraping by, trapped in cycles of low pay and long hours. This echoes real-world problems of working-class Americans and immigrants who take any job to pay rent. The novel asks: how do you find meaning in a job that barely pays? The answer it offers is that sometimes you make a life through the people you meet there. In scenes at HomeMarket and the slaughterhouse, the narrative exposes how capitalism can dehumanize, treating workers as disposable. Yet it also shows how these same spaces can bring people together to nurture one another.
Storytelling and Reality. Story is a powerful theme here. Hai and Grazina literally play a story game to cope with trauma and illness. Hai’s life is full of the stories he tells himself (and others): the fictional college, the heroic war games, the comforting lie to his mother. Vuong often blurs fiction and reality – much like Grazina’s mind blurs her past and present. Readers learn that “everyone’s a storyteller” as the Guardian review suggests: each character has their own narrative they use to survive life’s chaos. The novel highlights the thin line between self-deception and hope. Is Hai's lie to his mother, or his bedtime war tales for Grazina, really a lie? Or a gift of beauty in a brutal world? This theme feels acutely relevant today, as modern life (social media, politics, and media) is full of invented stories. Vuong seems to suggest that narrative itself, whether true or not, can give people strength.
Memory, History, and Trauma. History is ever-present. Grazina’s wartime memories and the hints of Vietnamese war trauma in Hai’s family fill the background. The novel spans decades of personal and collective memory – a legacy of violence passed quietly between generations. Characters wrestle with inherited wounds: the lie about Sony’s dad, the memory of Hai’s father’s death, Grazina’s lost homeland. This ties into themes of identity and survival: how does someone move forward when haunted by the past? Vuong doesn’t shy from the ugly bits (Nazi artillery in Grazina’s hallucinatory world, or references to slavery and war). These historical echoes emphasize the novel’s portrayal of people living on society’s fringes, survivors and descendants of survivors who must find their own peace.
Loneliness and Connection. Almost every character starts off isolated. Hai is a loner, Grazina is nearly abandoned, the HomeMarket workers feel invisible. The story’s gentle heart is in how they break out of isolation. Simple acts – a shared joke, an afternoon at a park, even offering quarters for Grazina’s breathing machine – become life-saving. At the end, the “gladness” that title promises is not fireworks, but the faint smile on a crowded lunch table or the comfort of a quiet house where someone cares.
Impact Of Book
Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness hits home in 2025 because it tackles issues many readers face today. The novel’s portrait of mental health – Hai’s depression and Grazina’s dementia – resonates with growing awareness of these struggles. We live in a time when stories about addiction and suicide among youth are all too common; Hai’s journey reminds us of what a difference one person’s compassion can make to someone teetering on the edge.
The theme of caregiving has never been more urgent. A recent 2025 report found 63 million Americans are family caregivers, often with little training. Hai’s role as Grazina’s caretaker mirrors this reality. Vuong highlights how ordinary young people find themselves caring for elders, blurring the line between child and parent. This story can inspire readers to see those family members – or neighbors – who need help, and to recognize the dignity in this work.
The book also speaks to the economic struggles of today. Many Americans work dead-end jobs at diners and stores, just like Hai and his crew. Their lives may seem invisible, but Vuong shows they have depth and dreams. The novel’s attention to the “blue-collar” experience – the subplots at the slaughterhouse, the fantasy boxing nights – reminds us that stories of working-class resilience are vital. In an era of widening wealth gaps, this book honors people whose lives are often overlooked.
From an immigrant perspective, Vuong’s story feels immediate too. Discussions of immigration, refugees, and diaspora experiences are front-page news. Hai’s story as a Vietnamese American, and Grazina’s as a Lithuanian immigrant, give personal faces to those headlines. The novel asks readers to humanize those we see only as statistics or stereotypes.
Finally, in a polarized world chasing quick solutions, The Emperor of Gladness emphasizes empathy. It tells us that kindness – like a stranger talking someone down from a bridge – is powerful. As the United States in 2025 navigates political and social divides, the book’s message that even small acts of understanding can heal a lot is needed. The novel is a reminder that the quiet, everyday heroism of caring for each other can matter as much as any grand gesture.
Real-World Parallels and Lessons
Think of the last time you heard about someone who adopted an elderly neighbor, or about a group of coworkers pitching in to pay for a sick colleague’s medicine. Those real-life stories echo Hai and Grazina’s situation. The Emperor of Gladness suggests that such acts of kindness are happening all around us, often unreported.
Consider how many young adults today juggle jobs and family responsibilities. Hai’s home-care role mirrors modern situations – perhaps someone you know skipped a career opportunity to move back home and care for a dementia-afflicted grandparent. Maybe in the news or on social media you’ve seen a viral post about a youth organizing groceries for an aging housemate. These scenarios aren’t fiction; they parallel how people cope when family structures shift.
The HomeMarket experiences also have real echoes. The novel’s depiction of fast-food work, complete with eccentric co-workers and dangerous conditions, reminds us of the stories we hear about the struggles of gig and low-wage workers. The friendships Hai forms with people he meets in tough jobs reflect the way real workers form communities, whether they’re leaning on each other at the local diner or venting with coworkers on a warehouse floor.
And then there’s the part about lies we tell. In everyday life, people often hide their woes behind cheerful faces or white lies. For example, an adult child might tell their parents “Don’t worry, I’m doing great” even while struggling to find a stable job – just like Hai hid his hardships by lying about college. Or a family might pretend a relative’s illness is improving to keep up appearances, mirroring how characters in the book manage Grazina’s condition. The Emperor of Gladness asks us to look more carefully: behind every calm update on social media might be a Hai wrestling with secrets.
Lastly, the novel’s use of fantasies and games has a parallel in our own coping methods. Many people use virtual escapes – video games, TV shows, or hobby communities – to handle trauma and loneliness. Hai and Grazina literally playing war heroes is an extreme version of this, but the principle is the same: when reality is too harsh, our minds create meaning through stories. It’s something we all do, from binge-watching comforting shows to imagining a better future. The book’s lessons remind readers to be gentle with those who seem lost, because everyone might be trying to rewrite their own story just to keep going.
Conclusion
The Emperor of Gladness is more than a tale of two unlikely friends; it is a portrait of how people survive on life’s margins. Vuong shows that even in the bleakest places, small acts of empathy and imagination light the way. The central message is clear: connection can save us. Hai and Grazina find, in each other’s company, something like redemption – a second chance at meaning.
This book still matters because it turns a mirror on our own time. It asks readers to notice the unseen struggles around them – the lonely older person next door, the exhausted young worker at the counter – and to imagine the stories they might tell if given the chance. It asks us how we can be bridge-builders in our communities.
The Emperor of Gladness deserves a place on your shelf this year. It reminds us to read with our hearts open, to seek out quiet tales of compassion where they hide. Pick up the book (or reread it), and pay attention to the voices calling from unexpected places. What would happen if all of us answered those calls with a little kindness? Perhaps we’d find our own moments of gladness, right here and now.
