Chapter Twenty-three: A Very Pessimistic Kind of Optimism

Summary

• The narrator interviewed their great aunt Harmonee about her experiences during the Korean War as a child and misunderstood the prevalence of home invasions during the conflict.
• Harmonee reacted strongly to the narrator's suggestion that such atrocities were "rare," recounting her village's fear and her personal traumatic incident.
• The narrator's history assignment initially presents a simplified understanding of wartime experiences, which is later revisited with deeper insight into the complexities of history.
• Harmonee's very pessimistic kind of optimism involved imagining worse-case scenarios to feel thankful that something even worse did not happen.
• During a memorial dinner, the family shared memories of Harmonee, including her bizarre optimism, and an anecdote about a spilled milk incident was recounted.
• The narrator's mother revealed a tragic family secret that Harmonee and her sister Chesuk were raped by soldiers during the war, while their family was killed outside by a bomb.
• The narrator reflects on Harmonee's brand of optimism and how it relates to their father's advice of adopting a low baseline for happiness.
• The chapter discusses memory and history, questioning how the events of 2020 will be remembered and recorded in the future, drawing from the present experience of living through the Covid-19 pandemic.
• The narrator recounts a frustrating phone call their mother had with the health department regarding potential exposure to Covid-19, highlighting privacy laws and bureaucratic hurdles preventing them from gaining important information.
• The health department could not provide any details about a potential Covid-19 case to the narrator's family, invoking privacy laws, leaving them without answers regarding the narrator's father's condition or whereabouts.
• The family learns that Eugene must isolate for at least fourteen days due to Covid-19 exposure, impacting court obligations and other life events.
• An ominous series of coincidences involving Covid-19 emerges, connecting with the story of the monkey's paw and making the narrator ponder the ramifications for their family.
• The family frantically checks for Covid-19 exposure notifications as they race to get tested, and the narrator wonders about the implications for their missing father's whereabouts.