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Chapter 9
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Native Speaker, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Multiculturalism
Silence, Language, and Communication
Racism and Xenophobia
Love, Loss, and Moving On
Summary
Analysis
Henry goes to an apartment that Hoagland rents for the company in the city. Its windows are covered, and there are workstations where operatives like Henry can write reports about the people they’re trailing. The purpose of the apartment is to give them a safe hideaway to transmit intelligence back to the headquarters in Westchester. Henry has sometimes gone there to sleep after big arguments with Lelia. Now, he goes there and finds Jack on one of the sagging couches. They make small talk, with Jack asking how things are going with Lelia. Henry tells him things are fine. They’ve been seeing each other several times a week—she even stayed over one night, but Henry was careful not to make things too romantic.
Henry’s relationship with Lelia is slowly returning to what it once was, perhaps because he finally opened up to her on the night after he listened to the tapes of Mitt’s voice. Given that she originally left him because she felt like she was already alone with her grief, it’s significant that they finally talked about Mitt’s death, which seems to have opened the door to more contact between them.
Themes
Jack talks about how Henry has clearly chosen a life of relative solitude—he could be at home in bed with his wife, but instead he’s in a dark apartment with Jack. He naturally gravitates toward the line of work he found himself in. Jack’s comment makes Henry think about his initial dealings with Hoagland, who approached him outside a career services office a few years after he’d graduated college. Hoagland told him he could come work for a “research services firm” as an analyst. When Henry asked what the firm researched, Hoagland said, “People.”
Hoagland’s initial pitch about Henry’s future job was extremely vague, since it’s not at all clear what it would mean to work at a firm that researches people. At the same time, though, this description most likely appealed to Henry because he spent his childhood learning to fit in to an array of different cultural contexts—something that undoubtedly required him to closely study the people around him. Researching people, in other words, is what he feels he has been doing for his entire life.
Themes
Eventually, it becomes clear that Jack didn’t come to see Henry just to chat. He has a message from Hoagland, which is that Henry needs to be in contact with the firm a bit more. Hoagland wants to hear more about what’s going on with the Kwang case. Jack urges him to go to the office more often, or at least transmit more information. Hoagland has become quite flustered and anxious, so it would be a good idea for Henry to put him at ease a little.
Although Henry sees Jack as a friend and confidante, the truth is that Jack has ulterior motives for visiting Henry: he’s there on behalf of Hoagland to make sure Henry does his job. In turn, he comes to seem a bit sinister, and though Henry seems to trust him, the novel leaves subtle hints suggesting that he’s a rather ominous figure.
Themes
Jack points out that Henry didn’t even send back word about the incident outside the church in Brooklyn. Henry claims that he didn’t say anything because he’s still trying to figure out what happened, but Jack insists that the small explosive sounds were clearly just smoke bombs set off by teenagers who wanted to play a prank on the audience. Henry, however, doesn’t agree—he thinks there was something more sinister going on, and he insinuates that Hoagland himself might have been wrapped up in it. But Jack dismisses this idea and simply tells Henry to do his job.
The fact that Henry didn’t report the small explosions at the Kwang rally underscores his overall hesitancy to report important information about Kwang. Jack makes it clear that something so eventful would be of interest to Hoagland and, in turn, to the client who hired the firm to gather information about Kwang. And yet, Henry has withheld this information, suggesting that he hasn’t yet wrapped his head around working against Kwang by acting as an informant watching his every move. His silence on the matter also hints at his suspicion of Hoagland, as he thinks it’s possible that Hoagland might have had something to do with the unrest—a good illustration of how little he trusts his own boss.
Themes
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Jack thinks Henry should have left the firm after what happened with Luzan. He’s not in the right state of mind anymore for this kind of work. He should therefore finish the Kwang job by simply giving Hoagland what he wants: information. Perhaps, Jack suggests, there’s something going on with Kwang’s “money operation.” But Henry doesn’t think so—all he wants to know is if there’s a possibility Kwang might get hurt as a result of this secret investigation. Jack, however, says that this concern is “rookie” behavior on Henry’s part.
Jack’s comment about how Henry isn’t in the right state of mind suggests that their jobs require them to maintain a certain level of emotional detachment. By keeping themselves at an emotional remove, they can ignore any moral reservations they might have about transmitting private information about a subject to a potentially malicious third party. To that end, Jack says that Henry’s worry about Kwang getting hurt is a “rookie” concern, implying that it will be impossible for him to do his job if he thinks about such things.
Themes
