The three brothers symbolize different ways of coping with Chinese tradition. The eldest tries to bow to Confucian morality, and loses his individual soul in the process. The middle brother seeks a personalized, romantic Western-style method of escape. The youngest takes refuge in politics, and rejects all tradition, even refusing to ride in a sedan-chair as a protest to the status of his family, which he sees as stolen. Instead of merely talking about change, he lives change, and this seems to be the course of action favored by the author. But Pa Chin never takes only one side, and his portrayals are always slightly ambiguous. While Chueh-hui is admirable at times, however, there are also disturbing signs of Maoist censorship in his action. When his grandfather gives him a book he disagrees with called on Filial Piety and the Shunning of Lewdness, he destroys it, censoring it as his own magazine is censored, confident that destroying a book is good, because it will prevent other minds from being corrupted by its ideals. This suggests that he wishes to be in control of the ideas of others.

To give added political resonance to Family, Chin sets the book during the May 4th movement of 1919. This nationalist movement was a reaction to the Chinese government of the time and to Confucian hierarchies of authority in general. The new flame of populism is embodied into the younger generation, across China and also within the Kao family. But as the book is written from a distance from this era of history, Chin is not intent upon offering a literal depiction of the May 4th Movement, rather it adds atmosphere to the book and underlines the need to rebel against tradition in a coherent and meaningful way.

Rebellion is necessary, otherwise one falls into the trap of the first brother. But rebellion cannot be purely personal, along the lines of the second brother, otherwise things will never change. And even the political solution of the third brother, while it is validated more by the narrative than the neo-Confucian or quasi-Western paths of the first and second brother, is lacking in humanity. Chin advocates a balance, a balance that is often difficult to find in any society, but particularly in China -- whether the prerevolutionary traditional China infused with the memory of Confucius or the China Chin himself lived in, the China of Mao.