The Leavers

“Tilt,” the title of Part 3 in The Leavers, refers to having slipped too far past righting oneself. Daniel feels he is tilting when he plays badly at Roland’s show and when he repeatedly falls into online gambling. The section titled “Tilt” covers his return to Ridgeborough for the summer session Peter and Kay insist he complete, and his subsequent escape from Ridgeborough after being caught gambling yet again. Polly’s detainment is also covered in this section, as well as her return to China, ashamed and grief-stricken after the loss of her family, and the loss of her own confidence in herself. What Ko suggests through these parallel narratives and what Daniel discovers is that tilting does not mean a complete inability to recover. Polly and Daniel reconcile, and Polly is able to recover her old sense of adventure. Daniel himself is able to salvage all of his relationships. He sees Peter and Kay again after his return from Fuzhou and recognizes that they have wanted his approval and affection all along. In China, he begins to pay his friend Angel back, and she answers his email once he returns to New York City. There, he also meets up with Roland again. The novel ends with Daniel “tilting” in his own show out of fear, reminiscent of the show he did with Roland, except this time was more successful: “He remembered the line and the song righted itself, regained its balance” (329). 

Music provides the means through which Daniel begins to find himself. His discovery of music at Ridgeborough is described like a return: “The city had been one long song, vivid, endlessly shading, a massive dance mix of bus beats, train drums, and passing stereos” (68). As a child, he fantasizes about the appreciation that subway musicians receive. Later, when he goes to Fuzhou, he describes the city similarly to New York with its ebullient sounds. In comparison, Ridgeborough is not as sonorous. The music he gravitates to there is the music that he plays on Kay’s old discman and his headphones, which makes him feel as if he’s in the city with his mother. Daniel sees colors in the music and finds that he can express himself perfectly through the music he writes, even if no one else understands it. Because music presents such a space of authenticity to Daniel, it disturbs him to see Roland changing their band’s style to get signed. During his return to Ridgeborough, Daniel writes his own songs, which drives back his feelings of dissatisfaction at being back home. At the close of the novel, Daniel will not just be writing confessional songs, but playing them in shows. Baring himself so completely is at once frightening, but also an expression that regardless of acclaim, “he was worthy of being heard” (329).

At various key points, the narrative makes a connection between Polly and water, especially when she finds herself in front of rivers or oceans. Polly links water to her own self-expression: “I would see myself in that hydrant, but tugged open, a hungry stream” (121). She grows up going fishing with her father in Minjiang. She is happiest at seeing the blue of the river and the sky stretching around her, seeing it as the opposite of being the target of the villagers' gossip. She meets Haifeng at the riverbank when she is hiding from her father and others.

In New York, Polly goes to the beach at Brooklyn, wading out to the Atlantic after she’s told she must have her baby. There, she takes on motherhood as a challenge, reflecting on how far she’s come from Minjiang. The connection between water and possibility, particularly with respect to creating connections, also appears through Leon taking Polly and Deming out on the Staten Island Ferry, where he asks them to move in with him and Vivian. During their time together in New York, Polly and Deming frequently go to the water. It’s water that Polly dreams about while she is detained and separated from Deming. When she returns to China and marries Yong, she moves to an apartment near a man-made lake where she likes to go when she feels anxious. Daniel first calls her as he sits in front of the East River, and he will find her through her closeness to water in Fuzhou.