The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

A private detective traumatized by an event in her past, Ruth Law is a half-Caucasian, half-Cantonese woman who works in Boston’s Chinatown in “The Regular.” To control her emotions and make sure her decisions are based upon rationality, she uses a Regulator. She also depends on the Regulator to stave off her grief, as she failed to save her daughter, Jessica, from a hostage situation. When a similar situation occurs while she’s hunting down a murderer, Ruth manages to act without the use of her Regulator and save the hostage’s life.

Social stigma dictates that women are more emotional than men. Ruth uses a Regulator to counter her emotional “afflictions,” as acting on emotion in the past caused the death of her daughter. When she manages the same scenario without her regulator at the end of the story, it suggests that she learns emotion isn’t always a weakness. 

At the beginning of “The Paper Menagerie,” Jack is a young boy playing with his mother’s origami animals. As he interacts with more Americans, he begins to distance himself from his Chinese heritage and his mother. After his mother’s death, the origami animals remind him of her, and he finds her letter in the origami tiger.