Reactions to the Finale

IT'S OVER!! And what an interesting turn of events...

I thought the finale was very good,a happy ending! Although the beginning and the middle of this novel was a very slow read, the ending turned into quite a thriller. John Kwang confessed his feelings and secrets to Henry which came as a shock to me as a reader because I was not expecting that at all.

""I didn't give him any money!" he yells, slamming his glass on the table. "How many times do I have to repeat myself? He worked for me for nothing, the same as you. For nothing, except for what I might show him about our life, what is possible for people like us. I though this is what he wanted. Was I crazy? I would have given him anything in my power. But he was betraying us, Henry. Betraying everything we were doing. To De Roos, I must think! Reports! You see, there is horror in your face. Think of mine when I found him out. i loved him, Henry, I grieve for him, but he was disloyal, the most terrible thing, a traitor. I left it to Han and his gang. I didn't know it would happen like that, and with Helda. You are the only one who knows now" (311).""

This happened after a bomb accident occurred in the buildings John Kwang worked in, killing two people: one was a maid while the other one was a young college student who John was very close to. Through this confession, I learned two key points which are 1. Eduardo was a traitor and 2. John ordered a Korean gang to punish him, but didn't expect their deaths. For point one, I think Eduardo being labelled as a traitor paralleled with Henry and his job. Henry is very close to John Kwang now, even thinking of John as a friend like he did with Dr. Luzan. Eduardo being exposed as a traitor could have scared Henry because he is also a traitor. Both Eduardo and Henry were giving out information on John Kwang to others in secret. Also, Henry must have felt alot of guilt because he was like Eduardo in such a way. After John Kwang got into an accident (another unforseen event), he seemed to have disappeared for a long time. I think part of that reason was because of point number two. John felt this massive wave of guilt for being indirectly responsible for the deaths of two people, so much that it sucked the life out of him. This reminds me of The Scarlet Letter when Dimmesdale's guilt just deteriorates his physical condition as well as his mental condition. Later on, John Kwang finally reveals himself and allows the massive (and angry) crowd to pummel him. In this scene, Henry shows for the first time his courage and his first action towards protecting a friend of his. "And when I reach him I strike at them" (343) is when he starts to attack the crowd because John was in danger. I think it's interesting how after this scene, John disappears from the storyline; i think that is because Henry finally realized who he was at that point of the story.

The ending to this book had a very light mood which contrasted with the falling action of the novel. The falling action was when John Kwang showed himself to the crowd after vanishing for awhile. The ending to Native Speaker was a completely different mood. It paralleled with Henry's decision in quitting his job which seemed to bring out his once hidden emotions. He is now spending a lot of time with Lelia, helping her with the speech impaired students and focusing on family. In some way, even though they aren't talking to each other while helping the students, the two seem to share a stronger connection at the end of the novel.

"Lelia gives each one a sticker. She uses the class list to write their names inside the sunburst-shaped badge. Everybody, she says, has been a good citizen. she will say the name, quickly write on the sticker, and then have me press it to each of their chests as they leave. it is a line of quiet faces. I take them down in my head. Now, she calls out each one as best as she can, taking care of every last pitch and accent, and I hear her speaking a dozen lovely and native languages, calling all the difficult names of who we are" (349).

This last paragraph of the novel wraps up how Henry feels now. Looking at the cultural diversity in the kids they are teaching, Henry now sees all the beauty in different languages and different looks. Before, Henry was very focused on finding out who he was. He wasn't sure whether he was Korean, American, or neither, but he wanted to fit into some category; he wanted to know where he fit in society as a whole. He gradually learned that the different languages show different identities and that in the end, his identity might actually be expressed in mulitiple cultures; that is the beauty of it. I think identity and figuring out your worth in this world is one of the biggest themes in Native Speaker. I think what Chang-Rae Lee is trying to say is that everyone has a reason to why he/she is here, and by going through obstacles (maybe not as dramatic as Henry's obstacles), there is a chance to find a person's true emotions and reason to live.

Identity: American or Korean?

The most conflicting question for the main protagonist of this novel is "Who, or even What, is he?"

As the story begins, Henry shows us the list of descriptions that Lelia jotted down for him and gave to him before she left for the islands. It mentioned descriptions such as "emotional alien," "stranger," "traitor," and "spy" (5). This note made Henry realized that he doesn't truly know who he was, whether he was an American or a Korean. The main conflict with this question was that it seemed, to him at least, that he belonged to neither one. He was an American citizen, but only because his mother gave birth to him after the plane ride from Seoul, Korea. "I wondered if I could ever desire as much from this land. My citizenship is an accident of birth, my mother delivering me on this end of a long plane ride from Seoul. In truth, she didn't want me to be an American" (334-335). Part of his skepticism on his identity could stem from the fact that his mother didn't want him to be an American, but his father loved the thought of him being an American.

Another reason could be because of the language barriers. Henry's English was pretty good, but it took a lot of though and calculation for Henry to say something. He was NOT a "native speaker" because some words could not come out of his mouth naturally. On the other hand, his Korean was horrible; he couldn't speak the language very well, preventing him from communicating efficiently with other Korean people. "If I had the sentence, the right words, I would ask her about her family and she could tell me about her daughter and her son. If I were able with my speech..." (316). His inability to speak Korean fluently is keeping him from discovering and exploring the Korean culture and his roots, which is making him question his Korean identity. On the other side of the wall, he is an American citizen, but he is not white, so that makes him feel different; it makes him feel uneasy calling himself an American because Americans are usually associated with white people. Not to mention, he will never be able to speak perfect English because he is also Korean. "I thought English would be simply a version of our Korean. Like another kind of coat you could wear. I didn't know what a difference in language meant then. Or how my tongue would tie in the initial attempts, stuffen so, struggle like an animal booby-trapped and dying inside my head" (233). Henry realizes that English is not like Korean and Korean is not like English; in a certain way, Henry can't speak neither Korean nor English perfectly which makes him feel like an alien from both of his so called cultures or roots. In this way, he doesn't really belong in the American or the Korean cultures.

"I told him how I didn't know the subtle nuances of meanings of Korean names, even though I knew quite a few, that it would have been like naming someone purely by sound. And he wouldn't want an American name, because everybody else had one, because it was all so ordinary...He knew karate, kung fu, tae kwon do, jujitsu. He could be up the big black kids if he wished, the tough Puerto Rican kids, anyone else who called us names or made slanty eyes...He knew all about science, about model rocketry, chemistry sets, baseball cards, about American history. He was the lead in the school play. He spoke a singing beautiful English...He was perfect" (205).

This passage on page 205 was one of the few passages that actually revealed who and what Henry wants to be. This is when Henry is talking to Luzan about his "invisible brother." He mentions how he didn't know Korean enough to name his "brother" with a Korean name that had a special meaning, but he didn't like American names because they were too ordinary. This goes along with the idea that he is split between Korea and America and quite possibly, he could fit under neither of the two. The description of this "brother" is an ideal image of someone who Henry wants to become. This imaginary person is smart, athletic, strong, courageous, popular, and any other positive adjective you could think of. He's merely perfect and that is what Henry wants to be, perfect. Even though it's just one small part of the whole passage, the part where he says this person sang in "beautiful English" stood out to me because I knew that one of the few things Henry wishes he could do was speak perfect English to be part of at least one group. This ongoing conflict is solved at the end when he realizes that he might just be part of both of them, but it doesn't matter as long as you know what you're doing, but this question of his identity is one of the key points of the novel.

The Past

One of the key things I've noticed throughout the novel was the constant shift between the past and the present. There is some great significance in Henry's constant flashbacks because I think the past represents everything he regrets whereas the present is full of conflicts and issues he deals with that makes him a stronger person in the end. It pulls the whole "live in the present" and "learn from your mistakes" aphorisms together throughout the novel.

One place where I see the past being a time of regret is when he talks about his son, Mitt. "You suddenly notice that all of his friends are wild, bad kids, the kind that hold lighted firecrackers until the very last second, or torment the neighborhood animals. Mitt, the clean and bright one--somehow, miraculously, ours--runs off with them anyway, shouting the praises of his perfect life" (100). This goes back to the whole idea of how Henry regrets not being able to prevent Mitt's death either by stopping the kids from crushing Mitt or by stopping Mitt from continuously hanging out with these children who were horrible examples to follow. He always describes Mitt as an angelic type of kid who was "clean and bright," but several instances in the book, Henry mentions the kids who contrasted with Mitt's character. I can take this further and say that holistically, the relationship between the bad kids and Mitt might be a microcosm for Henry's relationship with the world. Henry can be seen as the caring and nice man who has this horrible job of basically ratting out bad or even good people like John Kwang and Dr. Luzan. The world is this horrible, dark place where Henry is forced to continue to do this job that he feels uncomfortable doing. The only difference between him and Mitt is Henry was able to overcome the world and fight for his idenity (identities) whereas Mitt was not strong enough to fight off the other children.

Henry may regret the past, but in the present he starts to realize who he is and what he has been doing wrong. "And the more I see and remember the more their story is the same. The story is mine. How I come by plane, come by boat. Come climbing over a fence. When I get here, I work. I work for the day I will finally work for myself. I work so hard that one day I end up forgetting the person I am. I forget my wife, my son. Now, too, I have lost my old mother tongue. And I forget the ancestral graves I have left on a hillside of a faraway land, the loneliest stones that each year go unblessed" (279). Henry is somewhat of a workaholic; he concentrated so much on his work that he did not spend enough time with his son and his wife. He regrets doing that to his son the most because now, although he has the chance to spend more time with Lelia now that he realized this, Mitt is long gone, and he will not be coming back. This adds to the pity that I feel for Henry and for Lelia as well. Also, Henry sometimes forgets about his parents; now that he is reflecting on some of the actions his parents did, Henry feels like he should have treated his parents, especially his father, with a better attitude. Although he always listened to his father and what he ordered Henry to do, it seemed like Henry felt servile under his father. Now, he realizes that what his father did (giving up his succes in Korea to work hard in America) was one of the biggest things that Henry took for granted.

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.