  Just wanted to know if there were any reactions to my reading of the umbrella passage. Remember, it's Freud, not me, who says that umbrellas are phallic symbols! (bet you never thought of this, did you? ) Anyways, to recapitulate. Freud says umbrellas are phalli, and that broken umbrellas are castrated phalli. Suzy remembers that she has left her umbrella on the train...And when Bob makes the racist mistake of identifying her with Grace, she asks whether she left an umbrella there the other day. Bob then lets her rummage through the bin where lost umbrellas are kept, and she chooses one, and this becomes "a weapon.
" Two points. First, if umbrellas are phalli, then they imply a connection with the girls' father and, by extension, Korea. A lost or broken umbrella suggests a broken connection to family and to tradition. Second, Suzy takes the "all Asian girls look alike" racist assumption of Bob and uses it as "a weapon. " If the broken umbrella suggests a lost tradition and the emasculation of Asian authority, then Suzy's appropriation of an anonymous umbrella and her use of it as a weapon is an affirmation of her identity. BH 
