Character Analysis
When we try to list all of Frank Frink's important actions and decisions in this book, we get… actually, we don't have a list at all, just one entry that happens before the book starts. He changes his name from the Jewish-sounding "Frank Fink" to the silly-sounding "Frank Frink," so he can hide from Nazis. That's all we've got. Although Frank is very important for the arts and crafts plot (see our "Brief Summary") and he gets the most POV sections (tied with Tagomi), he doesn't seem to be doing very much here—and what he does seems motivated by other people.
For instance, Frank is important to this book because he creates authentic American jewelry with "Ed McCarthy." And Frank is very good as a craftsman. When he's making fake Civil War pistols for "Wyndam-Matson," he does it all: "he had made the molds himself, done the casting, and had been busy hand-smoothing the pieces" (4.32). Even the lab that examines the fake gun for Childan says it's a great forgery, done by "a real pro" (4.133).
So Frank can make good stuff, whether it's fake guns or authentic jewelry. But Frank isn't the one with the idea to start a jewelry business or the one with the designs for new jewelry. He only goes into business with Ed because Ed asks him to (and, oh yeah, because Frank got fired by W-M). And the same thing could be said about Frank frightening Childan about the antiques being fakes. Frank does it, but it's Ed's idea (4.70).
Even when Frank does make a decision or take an action, he first asks the I Ching how he should proceed or what he should do. We get the feeling that if Frank could avoid making any decisions or doing anything, he would.
Yay for Passivity
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. For instance, after the war, Frank had planned to join a violent resistance against the Japanese (1.48). But instead, over the past 15 years, he's made peace with the idea of the Pacific States. Instead of killing a bunch of people, he's learned how to survive, even come to appreciate the Japanese way of doing things—and not by becoming a secret racist, like Childan (1.50).
This easy-going manner is emphasized by the way Frank ends up. At the end of the book, after being arrested and freed, Frank seems to accept that there are some things that he will never know and that he should just go along with the flow:
I want to comprehend. I have to.
But he knew he never would.
Just be glad, he thought. And keep moving. (14.249-251)
Notice how quickly the narrative moves from "I have to [comprehend]" to "Just be glad." Frank isn't going to beat his head against a wall here. Instead he's going to go back to the workshop and make more jewelry.
Like Tagomi, Frank seems to come to a realization about how hard it is to really understand what's going on around him. And like Tagomi going back to work after slipping into our terrible timeline, Frank leaves the police station and decides that the one thing he should do is… get back to work on the jewelry. Now, that might not seem very heroic to us—and, confession time, sometimes we want him to lead an Inglourious Basterds-style commando team into Germany to kill Nazis.
All the same, there is something heroic in this book about contributing your little bit, even if that little bit is mostly about saving your own rear. Because, even though Frank's mostly passive, it could be argued that he saved himself with his jewelry. Tagomi let him go after slipping into a different world by meditating on some Edfrank jewelry. If that's all Frank's jewelry did, that would be enough (as Frank would say, dayenu). But Frank's jewelry also saves Childan—or at least makes him less of a jerk. It also maybe opens up Tagomi's mind to some sort of enlightenment. It's not like Frank's jewelry is going to go back in time and kill Hitler. Likewise, jewelry probably won't stop the Nazis from killing people. (You know "haters gonna hate"? Well, this is "Nazis gonna Nazi.") But in its own small way, the jewelry has made a difference on a small, personal scale: saving Frank's life; enlightening (and scaring) Tagomi; and helping Childan change.
Frank Frink's Timeline