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Chapter 14
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
Lelia moves back into her and Henry’s apartment. Despite Henry’s difficulty with the Kwang operation, they enjoy a relatively happy period together. Lelia starts seeing students in the apartment, working with children who have trouble speaking English for various reasons. The students that stand out most to Henry are two Laotian cousins whose immigrant parents drop them off so they can work on their pronunciation. The boys remind Henry of himself when he was a child. He had one teacher who was particularly strict, slapping his hands with a ruler when he mispronounced words. When the Laotian boys get picked up one day, Henry talks to their fathers, who barely speak English. Still, they recognize that he’s Korean and enthusiastically voice their support for Kwang.
By speaking openly about his troubles at work, Henry has come a long way in mending his relationship with Lelia. They not only have sex on the night he embraces this honesty but also move back in together. Perhaps for the first time since Mitt’s death, then, they’re relatively happy and are able to coexist in a pleasant way in the same apartment. Meanwhile, Kwang’s reputation continues to soar in the city’s immigrant community, as evidenced by the way the Laotian men praise Kwang when they find out that Henry is Korean.
Themes
After the Laotian boys leave, Henry and Lelia decide to take a ferry trip to Staten Island, where they’ll stay in a small hotel. On the ferry, they talk about what it feels like to leave home on a boat, which leads to a conversation about Lelia’s father’s time in World War II. He’s never mentioned it to Henry, but he fought in Korea. But Henry isn’t surprised—Stew has the look of a white man who might call a Korean a “gook.” Lelia has never understood that term, so Henry explains that it came from a misunderstanding. When American soldiers arrived in Korea, villagers would yell, “Mee-gook!” The Americans thus thought they were calling themselves “gooks.” In reality, though, “Mee-gook” means “American.”
The word “gook” is a racist term for people of Asian descent. Despite Henry presenting his story as fact, there’s no historical consensus that this is actually how the term rose to prominence. Still, it is the case that miguk (pronounced “mee-gook”) is the Korean word for America, so it’s quite possible that Henry’s story is correct. For a novel interested in language and communication, this is an especially fascinating story, since it highlights the difficulties of misinterpretation—difficulties with which even Henry and Lelia are familiar, since they’ve had to navigate the complexities of differing cultural norms.
Themes
Lelia laughs at the ignorance of American soldiers like her father. But then she says she would have lost her mind with anger if any of the neighborhood kids in Ardsley had called Mitt a “gook.” She erupts into fury, but then she chokes back a cry, suddenly unable to contain her emotion.
This conversation between Lelia and Henry isn’t particularly heavy in an emotional sense, but it takes a turn when Lelia mentions Mitt. Suddenly, she can’t hold back her emotion, suggesting that this kind of grief is always lurking just beneath the surface, liable to rise up at any moment.
Themes
That night, Henry and Lelia stay at a rundown hotel. They have sex while corny spy movies play on the television. Later, they switch to the news and learn that something terrible has happened: the Kwang offices have been bombed. Henry knows that Kwang himself is in D.C. tonight, so he’s safe. But it’s unclear whether or not anyone was in the building at the time. Lelia is overwhelmed by the news, understanding that Henry could have been there when the bomb went off. She runs to the bathroom and throws up, and then she comes back to bed and lies next to him, asking questions about who could have planted the bomb. But he has no idea. All he knows is that he’s frightened.
It’s now quite clear that Henry’s assignment to spy on Kwang isn’t something he should take lightly—after all, Kwang clearly has powerful enemies. Henry therefore has to consider the possibility that he's in danger whenever he’s around Kwang. Perhaps even more disconcerting, though, is the possibility that Henry is actually working for Kwang’s enemies. Indeed, it’s feasible that the client who hired Henry’s company is also the person (or organization) who planted the bomb at the Kwang organization.
Themes
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