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Chapter 20
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
Kwang is arrested the night after Henry left him in the Korean night club. He was at the same club and left with one of the young waitresses. He then crashed the car, and though he’s all right, the young woman is in critical condition. His blood alcohol level was very high, and the waitress turned out to be just 16 years old. The media runs wild with the story, and everyone around Kwang—except Janice—starts trying to distance themselves from him, realizing there’s no way he’ll come back from this disgrace.
Kwang has now completely spun off the rails, ensuring that he’ll never be able to make a political comeback. Having been villainized by the media, he effectively abandons his image as a positive, inspiring leader and embraces the chaos of someone who has become caught up in his own power. That the waitress is underage highlights how drunk on power Kwang is: he’s abusing someone with almost no power compared to him.
Themes
Kwang is released on bail, but nobody knows where he is. Henry wakes up to the news, and though he no longer has any official reason to involve himself in the matter, he can’t help but rush to Kwang’s home. But Kwang isn’t there. Henry therefore goes back to Janice’s apartment, where the two of them make calls trying to figure out where Kwang might have gone and what they should do next. After working for hours, they decide to go pick up some Chinese food at Janice’s favorite local spot. As they watch the news in the restaurant, Henry hopes that Kwang doesn’t turn up onscreen—he doesn’t to watch as a powerful Korean man is brought to shame in such a public arena.
The fact that Henry rushes to Kwang’s house after hearing of his arrest suggests that he hasn’t fully cut emotional ties with the disgraced councilman. Although he decided to betray him by giving Hoagland the list of names in Kwang’s ggeh, he clearly hasn’t fully written Kwang off for what he did to Eduardo. This is likely because Henry still feels a strong connection to Kwang, who is not only Korean American but also reminds Henry of his own father.
Themes
A report runs on the news about the “money club” Kwang was running. The news notes that the ggeh isn’t registered with any official “banking commission,” nor does it adhere to tax regulations. The director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service is the one to deliver this information, which seems strange to Henry—until, that is, the director explains that many of the people in the ggeh are undocumented immigrants. The news anchor asks if it’s unwise to reveal this information; won’t doing so give the undocumented immigrants time to go into hiding? But the director isn’t concerned: all of the undocumented immigrants on the ggeh list were taken into custody that very morning.
Henry now realizes why Hoagland’s anonymous client wanted to spy on Kwang: not necessarily to find out information about Kwang himself, but to get closer access to the immigrant community he represents. Considering that Jack saw government officials at the Glimmer & Company office, it’s reasonable to assume that the anonymous client was the Immigration and Naturalization Service and that it wanted to find the names of undocumented immigrants in New York City. In turn, it truly is the case that Henry has betrayed his own community, at least insofar as his work has caused trouble for other immigrants. Those immigrants will now most likely be deported and thus removed from their families and lives in the United States.
Themes
