Learn Hardcore Japanese: kanozyo ha zyousi ni hayaku kaereru you ni tanomu. - She asks her boss to let her go home early.

Person に + noun を + 頼む
- 上司に仕事を頼む。 – Ask the boss for work.
- 上司に = the person you ask
- 仕事を = the thing you request
Person に + (clause) ように + 頼む
- 上司に早く帰れるように頼む。 – Ask the boss so that she can go home early.
- The “thing requested” is not a noun but the whole clause 早く帰れるように.

So:

に marks the target person of the request.
を would mark a thing being requested, not the person.

You cannot say 上司を早く帰れるように頼む; that would be ungrammatical or sound like you’re “requesting the boss himself,” which doesn’t make sense.

Why is 帰れる (potential form) used instead of 帰る?

帰れる is the potential form of 帰る, so it means “can go home / be able to go home / be allowed to go home.”

The nuance is:

早く帰るように頼む
→ Ask someone to go home early (i.e., you want them to go home early).
早く帰れるように頼む
→ Ask someone so that (I/she) can go home early (i.e., you want them to allow or enable you/her to go home early).

In this sentence, 彼女 is asking her boss for permission or the ability to go home early. That’s why the potential form 帰れる is appropriate: it focuses on “being able to go home,” not directly on the action “go home” as a command to the boss.

What exactly does ように do in 早く帰れるように?

Here ように links a clause (早く帰れる) to show a desired result or purpose.

Roughly, V-plain + ように means:

“so that …”
“in such a way that …”
“with the aim that …”

So:

早く帰れるように頼む
= She asks (her boss) so that she can go home early.

This pattern is very common:

忘れないようにメモする。 – I write it down so that I don’t forget.
子どもが起きないように静かに歩く。 – I walk quietly so that the child doesn’t wake up.

Same structure: [clause expressing desired situation] + ように + [main verb].

Is 早く modifying 帰れる or 頼む?

早く modifies 帰れる.

Japanese adverbs like 早く almost always modify the closest verb in their clause. Here:

Subordinate clause: 早く帰れる
→ 早く modifies 帰れる (“be able to go home early”).
Main clause: 頼む
→ Not directly modified by 早く.

So the meaning is “be able to go home early,” not “ask early.”
If you wanted to say “she quickly asks,” you’d typically place 早く nearer to 頼む, or rephrase for clarity, e.g.:

彼女は早く上司に頼む。 – She quickly asks her boss. (Now 早く tends to be read with 頼む.)

Who is actually going home early in this sentence – the boss, or 彼女?

It’s 彼女.

Japanese omits repeated subjects when they’re clear from context. The main clause subject is 彼女:

彼女は / 上司に / 早く帰れるように / 頼む。

The subordinate clause 早く帰れる has no explicit subject, so by default it is understood to be the same as the main clause’s subject, unless the context says otherwise.

So the underlying meaning is:

（彼女が）早く帰れるように頼む。
She asks so that she can go home early.

The boss is the person being asked (marked by に), not the one who will go home early.

Why is 頼む in plain present tense? Shouldn’t it be 頼みます or 頼んだ?

The form 頼む here is:

plain (dictionary) form
non-past (can be present or future depending on context)

Reasons this is normal:

Example-sentence style
Dictionaries and textbooks usually show verbs in the plain non-past:
- 食べる, 行く, 頼む, etc.
  So this looks like a neutral example sentence.
Non-past in narratives
Japanese often uses the non-past to describe general facts, habitual actions, or “story present”:
- 毎日彼女は上司に早く帰れるように頼む。
  She asks her boss every day so that she can go home early.
Politeness is to the listener, not inside the sentence
Whether you see 頼む or 頼みます just tells you how polite the narrator is being to you, the reader/listener.
The actual act in the story (requesting the boss) can still be very polite even if the narrator uses 頼む.

You could change it to:

彼女は上司に早く帰れるように頼んだ。 – She asked (past).
彼女は上司に早く帰れるように頼みます。 – (Politely) She asks her boss…

All are grammatically fine; nuance depends on context and register.

What is the grammar pattern ～ように頼む? How is it used in general?

V-plain + ように + 頼む is a standard pattern meaning “ask (someone) to do ~ / ask (so that) ~.”

Basic structure:

(Person A は) Person B に V-plain ように頼む。

Main uses:

Requesting someone to do or not do something
- 母は私に早く寝るように頼んだ。
  My mother asked me to go to bed early.
- 先生は学生に宿題を忘れないように頼んだ。
  The teacher asked the students not to forget the homework.
Requesting a situation (with potential, etc.)
- 彼女は上司に早く帰れるように頼む。
  She asks her boss so that she can go home early.
  (She’s not asking the boss “to go home”; she’s asking for a situation where she can go home.)

Related patterns:

～ように言う – tell (someone) to do / not do ~
～ように注意する – warn (someone) to ~

So in our sentence, 早く帰れるように頼む is exactly this “ask so that ~” pattern.

Could we say 早く帰るように頼む instead? How would that change the meaning?

You can grammatically say 早く帰るように頼む, but the meaning shifts.

Patterns:

Person A は Person B に早く帰るように頼む。
→ A asks B to go home early.
(B is understood to be the subject of 帰る.)
Person A は Person B に早く帰れるように頼む。
→ A asks B so that A (or someone else) can go home early.
(The subject of 帰れる is A/彼女 in our sentence.)

In your sentence, if you changed it to 早く帰るように頼む, it would sound like:

She asks her boss to go home early (i.e., “Boss, please go home early”).

That’s a completely different situation.
Using the potential form 帰れる keeps the intended meaning: “so that she can (be allowed to) go home early.”

Why is は used after 彼女, not が?

彼女は makes 彼女 the topic of the sentence: “as for her / speaking of her.”

Basic distinction:

X は … – sets up X as the topic; what we’re talking about.
X が … – typically marks the grammatical subject, often introducing new or focused information.

Here, 彼女 is already known or is the main character in the context, so making her the topic is natural:

彼女は上司に早く帰れるように頼む。
As for her, she asks her boss so that she can go home early.

If you used 彼女が, it would often sound more like you’re contrasting or newly emphasizing her:

（みんなは黙っているが）彼女が上司に早く帰れるように頼む。
(Everyone else stays quiet, but) she (in particular) is the one who asks the boss.

So は is the normal, unmarked choice here.

Is 早く here “early” or “quickly”? How can we tell?

In this context, 早く means “early (in time)”, not “quickly.”

Clues:

With 帰る (“go home”), 早く帰る almost always means “go home earlier than usual / earlier than expected”, not “go home quickly.”
“Quickly go home” would more naturally be すぐ帰る or 急いで帰る.

So 早く帰れる is:

“can go home early (e.g., before the usual end of work),”
not “can go home quickly.”

What is the difference between 頼む and お願いする here? Is 頼む okay with a boss?

Both relate to asking / requesting, but their nuance and politeness level differ.

頼む
- Plain verb, can feel more direct or casual.
- Often used among friends, peers, or in neutral narration.
- To actually speak to your boss, you wouldn’t normally say just 「早く帰れるように頼む」 to their face; that would be too blunt.
お願いする
- More polite/formal.
- Common in business and when talking to superiors.
- You’d say something like:
  - 上司に早く帰らせていただけないかお願いする。
    She asks her boss if he would kindly let her leave early.

In third-person narration (like a novel or example sentence), using 頼む to describe the action is fine:

彼女は上司に早く帰れるように頼む。
= “She asks her boss so that she can go home early.”

It doesn’t mean she literally said 頼む; it just reports the fact that she “asked.” If you wanted to reflect very polite real-life speech, お願いする would be more realistic in quoted dialogue.

Can I change the word order, like 早く帰れるように彼女は上司に頼む? Is that still correct?

Yes, the word order in Japanese is quite flexible, as long as the verb is at the end. These are all grammatically possible:

彼女は上司に早く帰れるように頼む。 (most natural, standard order)
彼女は早く帰れるように上司に頼む。 (slight emphasis on the content of the request)
早く帰れるように彼女は上司に頼む。 (emphasizes the “so that she can go home early” part first)

Splitting it is also possible in spoken style:

彼女は上司に頼む。早く帰れるように。

All of these can be understood. The original order is the most neutral and textbook-like. Other orders add slight emphasis or a more literary or conversational feel but don’t change the basic meaning.