Mr. Chang is the protagonist, although the story is not told from his point of view. The story’s primary thematic goal is to express the difficulties immigrants face as they try to navigate the norms of their new society, and he is the most insistent on following and maintaining Chinese cultural practices that do not translate into American culture.

Mr. Chang is both a dynamic and a round character. He has specific goals for his life, namely that he wants to run a successful business to provide for both his family and his community. Despite this, he has idiosyncrasies like wearing dirty and grubby clothes to prove that he need not please anybody else. He wants to replicate his grandfather’s complex patriarchal structure, whereby a powerful community member helps and provides for those underneath him, who in turn serve him. This type of altruism is complicated because he wants to sit at the top of a hierarchy that he both establishes and maintains, and he expresses this power by underpaying and overworking his employees.

He is a dynamic character because he eventually admits that what he is doing is not working.