Comment on major theme

Consider the theme of "fate". Through the complex overlap of each her character's distinct and shared experiences, the author explores the inarticulable forces that define the human experience. In the chapter "The Improviser's Guide to Untranslatable Words," the narrator identifies these forces via three Mandarin words: yuanfen, zaohua, and ciji. At the start of the chapter, the narrator attempts to translate yuanfen as follows: "Yuanfen acknowledges some unknowability in the workings of the universe, and implies there's an invisible mesh that loosely bound people and circumstances" (155).