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Chapter 21
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
An angry mob gathers outside of John Kwang’s house. It’s mostly made up of white people yelling about undocumented immigrants, asking how many people in Kwang’s “money club” have “stolen” jobs from Americans. Kwang himself is set to arrive at any moment, having just been questioned by federal agents.
The backlash to the news about Kwang’s “money club” highlights the xenophobic intolerance that many immigrants face in the United States. Although Kwang was quite popular before this scandal broke, it’s clear that there are many white constituents who are eager to villainize him as some sort of threat to American society, despite the fact that the only point of the ggeh was to harness a community’s sense of unity to empower people as they strive toward success.
Themes
As Henry waits in the crowd, he imagines what his mother would have thought of Kwang. He’s sure she would have found him foolish for trying to create such a large ggeh. Why would he want to do something so enormous when he could have focused on his own affairs and contented himself with his own success? Henry’s mother surely would have pointed to his father as the perfect example of a successful Korean man, celebrating the sacrifice he made by giving up his education in Korea to provide for his family in the U.S.
Even though Kwang comes from the same cultural background as Henry’s parents, his ambition extends beyond what the novel suggests most older Korean immigrants envision when they think of success. For Henry’s parents, for example, it was enough simply for his father to become a successful businessowner with enough money to move out of the city and support his family. Kwang’s broader, more ambitious dream would therefore have seemed foolish to Henry’s parents, perhaps because they never would have believed that it’d be possible to use Korean traditions (like the ggeh) in the context of American society. In other words, they didn’t fully embrace the multicultural outlook that Kwang and even Henry have embraced.
Themes
Henry now understands that the ggeh list must have been the only thing Hoagland was interested in when it came to Kwang. Neither Hoagland nor the client who hired his firm ever cared about Kwang as an individual. Rather, they cared about what he represented and the information he might lead them to. But Henry also understands that Kwang himself never would have thought to view the formation of a ggeh as something malicious or illegal. He didn’t know which community members were undocumented, since such a matter didn’t seem important to him.
Kwang saw the ggeh as simply a way to empower his constituents. It was a communal effort to help people—nothing more. As a result, he didn’t think about how the ggeh might be viewed from the outside, failing to recognize that immigrants like himself in positions of power tend to attract all kinds of suspicion and scorn from American authorities who are hesitant to welcome outsiders into society’s power structure.
Themes
Henry is still in the crowd outside Kwang’s house. That morning, he left Lelia in the apartment to go to Hoagland’s office for the final time. As soon as he got onto the street, he encountered Jack, who said he’d give him a ride. On the way, Jack admitted that he knew Eduardo was a spy, but he didn’t know this until after the bombing. He seemed apologetic, but he emphasized that he’d gained nothing from the entire affair. Hoagland has, he said, but Hoagland always wins. As for Jack himself, he can finally retire now, but he doesn’t know what he’ll do with himself. Still, he told Henry to be well, urging him to forget all about everyone at Glimmer & Company and to enjoy the rest of his life.
In the end, Jack isn’t such a terrible friend—he certainly isn’t someone Henry can fully trust, but it’s also clear that he has a certain fondness for Henry. Throughout the Kwang case, he has been doing whatever Hoagland tells him to, but only because he’s desperate to retire. In this moment, it seems that he genuinely wants the best for Henry, which is why he urges him to move on with his life in the aftermath of this chaotic episode with Kwang.
Themes
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Finally, a police car pulls up, and Kwang emerges. The crowd swarms around him, trying to get close. People scream, but Kwang doesn’t seem to care. In fact, Henry realizes that he’s deliberately walking slowly, as if to taunt the crowd—as if to show them that they can’t rankle him. As soon as the angry mob realizes this, though, they try even harder to get at him, swarming him as best they can. In response, Henry fights toward Kwang and finally gets close to him, at which point he starts fending off the angry white people, fighting them so they can’t get at Kwang. But it’s no use, because for every blow he lands, another one comes back. And then he makes eye contact with Kwang, who sees Henry and immediately looks down “like a broken child.”
By trying to fight off the angry mob, Henry aligns himself with Kwang one last time. His clash with the angry white protestors is, in many ways, a metaphor for what it’s like to be an immigrant of color in the United States. In the same way that Kwang tried to empower the immigrant community by pushing a message of unity, Henry now stands with Kwang to fend off the xenophobic protestors. But when he looks at Kwang, he realizes that their relational dynamic has changed; whereas Kwang used to be the powerful, dominant one in their conversation, he now looks down in shame when he sees Henry, thus acknowledging how far he has fallen.
Themes
