An Important Passage-Please count as a regular post. The Rhetoric Study will come later! Thank you!

“ In his earnestness, Dr. Luzan kept delving further into my psyche, plumbing the depths. I was developing into a model case. Of course I was switching between him and me, getting piecemeals of the doctor with projections in an almost classical mod, but for the first time I found myself at moments running short of my story, my chosen narrative. Normally I would have ceased matters temporarily, retreated to Westchester to reiterate and revise. But inexplicably I began stringing the legend back upon myself. I was no longer extrapolating; I was looping it through the core, freely talking about my life, suddenly breaching the confidences of my father and my mother and my wife. I even spoke to him about a lost dead son. I was becoming dangerously frank, inconsistently schizophrenic. I ceased listening to him altogether. Like a good doctor he let me go on and on, and in moments I felt he was the only one in the world who might comfort me. I genuinely began to like him. I looked forward to our fifty-minute sessions on Thursday mornings, enough so that we began meeting on Mondays as well. Hoagland assumed I was stepping up the operation. When I was in the chair across the desk from Luzan I completely lost myself. I was becoming a dependent, a friend” (22-23).

One of the first things I noticed about this passage was his short, choppy sentences with the exception of one sentence. Although grammatically speaking the sentences are very short and choppy, when I read it, it felt like the passage had really long sentences. I think this effect paralleled with the fact that Henry wanted his sessions to be longer and longer each time he went over to Dr. Luzan’s office. He even made it twice a week instead of just once a week. There was also a change of attitude from the protagonist. At first, I saw him as just a pitiful man who lost all of his family, but in this passage, he found Luzan to be a friend, and it made me feel happy for him.

Another thing I noticed was that even though Henry was supposed to lie about his life (his “legend”), he started to speak the truth and talk to Dr. Luzan about everything, even the touchy subject of his dead son. This shows the reader how comfortable he felt with Luzan which is a nice change of pace from the Henry who didn’t even open up that much to his own wife. I think it was good that Henry was able to talk one on one with someone he considered a friend about all the ups and downs of his life and what he wants to do next. Also, it was good that he “completely lost” himself because so many things went wrong for Henry that sometimes it would have been good for him to just forget everything and just talk.

His job was to gather information about Dr. Luzan secretly. Of course he did that little by little, but I think after getting to know Luzan, Henry started to feel sorry and even started to forget that he was on a job. Even though normally he would have reconstructed his “legend” if something went wrong, this time he just went with the flow and started adding truth to the lie. I think this further tells the reader that Henry just needs someone that can support him and be there for him when times get rough. He just needs a true friend who will not only help him get through situations, but also help him identify who he is as a person and what he should be doing with his life.

Personal Response on Several Topics

So far in Native Speaker, I have mixed feelings for the main protagonist, Henry Park. When I read about his mother, father, and son dying, obviously I felt pity, anguish, sorrow, and any other possible depressing mood. I’m sure that everyone who has read this book can sympathize with this protagonist. Some of his actions are uncalled for though. One example of a time his actions were a little too much was when he was talking to his father about how bad of a husband he was and any other criticisms he could think. “In truth, Lelia’s own eventual list was probably just karmic justice for what I made him endure those final nights, which was my berating him for the way he had conducted his life with my mother, and then his housekeeper, and his businesses and beliefs, to speak once and for all the less than holy versions of who he was” (49). Although this is how Henry truly felt, I don’t think it was necessary to say all these things to a dying man, not to mention his father.

I can connect a lot with the narrator of this novel. Not only am I a Korean American like he is, but also I understand a lot of the family situations he goes through, especially his feelings towards Asian stereotypes and how he feels about Korean parents.

“I was to inherit them, the legacy unfurling before me this way: you worked from before sunrise to the dead of night. You were never unkind in your dealings, but then you were not generous. Your family was your life, though you rarely saw them. You kept close handsome sums of cash in small denominations. You were steadily cornering the market in self-pride. You drove a Chevy and then a Caddy and then a Benz. You never missed a mortgage payment or a day of church. You prayed furiously until you wept. You considered the only unseen forces to be those of capitalism and the love of Jesus Christ” (47).

This whole paragraph has statements that a typical Asian lives by; I am no exception. My father and my mother both work really hard to earn money for the family, but my brothers and I hardly see them except on their day off or when they return at around 10 at night. Of course, I am used to it by now, but I understand where Henry is coming from, especially the part where he talks about how he comes home to an empty house sometimes. Although he has it worst than me, I think this connection I have with the narrator helps me to better understand what the author is trying to get at in terms of emotions and understanding.

As I was reading through a chapter, I noticed a little aphorism that was briefly stated, but was strongly placed in my mind. A minor character named Dennis Hoagland stated, “no matter how smart you are, no one is smart enough to see the whole world. There’s always a picture too big to see… someone is always bigger than you. If they want, they’ll shut you up. They’ll bring you down” (46). I think this statement was a very simple way of describing how life is now. There are people in this world who believe they know everything because they are intellectuals to a high degree. Even if someone was the most intelligent person in the nation, no one is smart enough to know everything that goes on in this world. No one can predict accurately and precisely what will happen 100 years from now. No one will know if someone close to a person will die tomorrow or 50 years from now. I think this statement can also be a theme; no matter how smart you are, you will never know everything. There will always be someone higher than you or smarter than you or more athletic than you. In Henry’s case, he would have never known when his mother, father, or son would die. I think he is regretting everything so much that he is just stuck in one place. In fact, he might be moving backwards, constantly reminding himself of the past that is already over with. He needs to move on with life and try to at least fix things with his wife who is still alive, but ready to leave him.

Themes from American Literature

There could be many themes in this novel, but I think many of them are related somehow with family. Do not take your family for granted; choose family over everything else. I think these two themes come up many times as the narrator, Henry Park, switched back and forth from the present to the past.

Do not take your family for granted and choose your family over everything else. Henry lost all of his family some way or another. His mother died, then Mitt died, then his father died in that exact order. Afterwards, Lelia, his wife, left him, leaving him with only a piece of paper of what seems to be a list of insults. This is a very good case that supports both themes mentioned above. He is starting to realize all the things he missed out on, and all the things he did wrong. With his mother, he doesn’t even remember what happened in the hospital room the day she died. “I don’t now remember what I saw in her room, maybe I never actually looked at her” (59). With his father, he probably regrets many things: not being able to allow his father to show his true feelings, only criticizing him for his faults, having so many unnecessary fights… “In truth, Lelia’s own eventual list was probably just karmic justice for what I made him endure those final nights, which was my berating him for the way he had conducted his life with my mother, and then his housekeeper, and his businesses and beliefs, to speak once and for all the less than holy versions of who he was” (49). In the case of Mitt, the reader is still unsure of how he died, but it seems like he spent a lot of time with Mitt in the past before he died because when Henry reminisces about the past, it seems like Mitt is having a fun time in each event he is mentioned in. As for Lelia, I’m sure Henry is full of regret. He knew his marriage was falling apart, yet he was still focused on his job and wasn’t thoughtful of her feelings. “this was the way, the very slow way, that our conversations were spoiling… For the next few days, Lelia was edgy. She wouldn’t say much to me” (70). Henry had no idea how to deal with fights and how to make Lelia feel better. This eventually caused her to leave him alone with no one to talk to except his friends at work.

Henry also has a taste of living a lie and living life with regrets. When he first met Lelia, he was very calculative, lying about who he truly was. “I made those phantom calculations, did all that blind math so that I might cast for her the perfect picture of a face” (13). Instead of acting like his usual self, he tried to be her ideal man and calculated his every move in his head. Another thing that supports the idea of Henry living a lie is the fact that his job is to lie. “We worked by contriving intricate and open-ended emotional conspiracies. We became acquaintances, casual friends. Sometimes lovers… Then we wrote the tract of their lives, remote, unauthorized biographies. I the most prodigal and mundane of historians” (18). His job impacted the way he lived his life, causing him to unintentionally calculate his actions and emotions. These themes all intertwine with each other. Living life with regrets is a result to taking family for granted or not setting priorities straight. All these themes are cause and effect, and it just so turns out that Henry suffered all these unfortunate events.

Live life with no regrets is a common theme that everyone talks about, but it’s true; living life with regrets will cause a person to keep looking back into the past instead of moving on as in Henry’s case. Taking family for granted can also follow a person everywhere, especially if it is Henry since many of his family members died. These themes correlate with the conflicts of the novel which include relationships (love or family) and identity problems. Also these themes say things about the cultural identities of Americans. You can find anyone in America and ask if they have any regrets, only to be given either a truthful answer or a lie. Some people say they have no regrets, but in my opinion, I think everyone has at least one regret; it could be small or big as long as you want to change what the result was. I think in this novel, Chang-Rae Lee is saying that people will always regret something and that instead of hovering over the regret, people should just move on in order to not create another regret in the present.

Citations for Images

Images viewed and cited on 23 November 2009.

http://thegrandnarrative.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/korean-child-and-lonely-goose-father.jpg

***http://www.flickr.com/photos/giraffeheart/3534213657/

http://therealsouthkorea.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/jims-family.jpg

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/asia/southkorea/flag/Flagbig.GIF

http://people.eku.edu/pedersonn/mongoliaFire/american-flag.gif

*** due to technical difficulties, the second picture was replaced with a new picture. This image was viewed and cited on 7 December 2009.