Native Speaker

“What I found was this: that she could really speak. At first I took her as being exceedingly proper, but I soon realized that she was simply executing the language. She went word by word. Every letter had a border. I watched her wide full mouth sweep through her sentences like a figure touring a dark house, flipping on spots and banks of perfectly drawn light.”

This quote emphasizes Henry’s hyper-awareness of speech mannerisms. When he first meets Lelia, he is struck by how she executes language, how every letter has a border. The use of the term “border” here is especially notable, because it implies that Henry’s speech is borderless, emphasizing not only the inherent difference between a Korean husband and his white American wife, but also his careful study of his own accent. He characterizes Lelia’s speech as able to draw perfect light, a beautiful metaphor that juxtaposes with the harsh self-criticism implied in Lelia's white American speech.

“I had begun to think that each of us was leading the life of a career criminal, in which the commission of acts was not by a single man but a series of men. One Jack killed the boy guard in Cyprus, another Jack seduced Mrs. Ochoa-Perez, and so on. Our work is but a string of serial identity. But then who was the Jack that loved and buried Sophie; was he just another version in the schema, or the true soul, or could he have been both?”

Here, Henry expresses acknowledgement that the nature of his job is a paradoxical juxtaposition between deception and honesty. Though it is true that he and the other spies, like Jack, must create new personas, it can also be true that fake personas are real because they are indicative of human nature and imitative of natural human behavior. But these strings of “serial identity” pose a challenge to Henry’s already fragile understanding of his selfhood. The question at stake is how to know which identity is doing what, and which is more real than the other. These difficult boundaries create blurred lines between Henry’s challenging job and his out-of-work identity formation.

“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.”

This quote characterizes Henry’s father’s version of the American Dream, the ethos that informed Henry’s upbringing. This version of the American Dream dictates kindness but no generosity, living for your family without actually being with them, and self-pride. The conceptual beliefs of capitalism and religiosity is important in this American Dream—notably missing here is the inclusion of love, respect, and other people. Also notable in this quote is Henry’s acknowledgement that he inherited this ethos. It’s not an inheritance that Henry particularly wants, but he is bound to it, highlighting the nonnegotiable influence of family and Henry’s lack of control over his own values.

“I knew I could have tried to comfort her, perhaps telling her how John Kim was probably just as hurt as she was and that his silence was more complicated than she presently understood. That perhaps the ways of his mother and his father had occupied whole regions of his heart. I know this. We perhaps depend too often on the faulty honor of silence, use it too liberally and for gaining advantage. I showed Lelia how this was done, sometimes brutally, my face a peerless mask, the bluntest instrument. And Janice’s John Kim, exquisitely silent, was like some fault-ridden patch of ground that shakes and threatens a violence but then just falls in upon itself, cascading softly and evenly down its own private fissure until tightly filled up again.”

Janice dehumanizes Henry by asking him about the reasons why her Korean ex-boyfriend broke up with her and didn’t tell his family about her. Despite her lumping all Koreans together, Henry finds empathy for Janice’s ignorance. He humanizes John Kim by pointing to the complexity of human emotion and action. He can also relate to John Kim’s use of silence, a silence that Janice and Lelia don’t understand, appreciate, or sympathize with. Henry calls his face “a peerless mask,” emphasizing how he protects himself against the world by refusing to betray his emotions on his face. This form of expression is rare in American culture, but common to Korean culture. Here, Henry emphasizes that silence does not mean passivity; rather, silence can be its own form of violent communication.

“In the bed, in the space between us, it was about the sad way of all flesh, alive or dead or caught in between, it was about what must happen between people who lose forever the truest moment of their union. Flesh, the pressure, the rhymes of gasps. This was all we could find in each other, this the novel language of our life.”

This quote highlights the way the pain of Mitt’s death ruptured Henry and Lelia’s marriage. The space between their two bodies in bed is symbolic of the many spaces that divide Henry and Lelia, such as their races, upbringings, and means of expression. Here, Henry identifies that Mitt was “the trust moment of their union.” This mean that with Mitt’s loss, Henry and Lelia lose the trust in their union. Their pain is all they can find in one another, implying that their separation will be permanent.

“It wasn’t that I was afraid of him, or worried by what he might somehow be able to see. A beginner thinks this, despite many hours of painstaking preparation. It is unavoidable. For the first few assignments you feel perfectly transparent, as if the man or woman in question can witness every leap of your heart. You think they can sense every false move. But in successive turns you grow an opacity, a pearl-like glow whose surface can repel all manner of heat and light.”

This quote emphasizes the deterioration of Henry’s moral code at the hands of his job. The worry that his subject might suspect him of espionage suggests that Henry was once cognizant that his role as a spy hurt other people. He wouldn’t worry if he believed that what he was doing was right or neither right nor wrong. The “opacity” he describes here shows that Henry has suppressed that cognizance, has committed himself to rejecting any moral questioning of his work. He is numb to the destruction his work wreaks on other peoples’ lives.

“My necessary invention was John Kwang. This must sound funny, I know. He had always existed in his own right, and he lives at this very moment in a distant land that must seem to him like a great vessel of strangers. I do not know what he does now. I do not know the first or last iota of him. I do not know whether he has taken up a vocation or an art to pass the solemnity solemnity of the hours. I know only that I will never see him again, and that anything I can say or offer by way of his present life might well be taken as reductive and suspect. So be it. I intend no irony or special mode. The fact is I had him in my sights. I believed I had a grasp of his identity, not only the many things he was to the public and to his family and to his staff and to me, but who he was to himself, the man he beheld in his most private mirror.”

Henry calls Kwang his “invention” because Kwang must necessarily be a projection of Henry’s perceptions of him, otherwise Henry would be too compromised by his morality. In creating an invention out of the person that is Kwang, Henry can keep distance between him and Kwang. In observing and analyzing Kwang’s life and personality, Henry creates a narrative of Kwang that could be wholly true or slightly false, because ultimately, he observes Kwang in order to find something out about him that he can use to pass on to his employer. This quote also foreshadows that Kwang's career will be destroyed, that the ending of this story is not that Kwang and Henry develop a friendship that changes Henry’s mind about his job.

“Although I had seen hours of him on videotape, there was something that I still couldn’t abide in his speech. I couldn’t help but think there was a mysterious dubbing going on, the very idea I wouldn’t give quarter to when I would speak to strangers, the checkout girl, the mechanic, the professor, their faces dully awaiting my real speech, my truer talk and voice. When I was young I’d look in the mirror and address it, as if daring the boy there; I would say something dead and normal, like, ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance,’ and I could barely convince myself that it was I who was talking.”

In this quote, Lee emphasizes Henry’s obsession with the use of language. Though there is much for him to admire in Kwang, he can’t help but criticize his English, highlighting how Henry searches out the way people assimilate to America. He sees a “dubbing” in Kwang’s speech that disappoints Henry because it reminds him of his own accent and anxieties around inclusion.

“I wasn’t overly concerned in the beginning—nor were Dennis and Jack, for that matter—that I was employing my own life as material for my alter identity. Though to a much lesser extent, a certain borrowing is always required in our work. But this assignment made it, in fact, quite necessary to allow for more than the usual trade. When the line between identities is fine (and the situation is not dangerous), it’s preferable not to build up a whole other, nearly parallel legend.”

In this quote, Henry says that he wasn’t concerned with using his own life as material for his alter identity – but notably, he says that he wasn’t concerned “in the beginning.” This quote foreshadows that, despite the benefits of using his real life in his assignment, doing so will blur the lines and boundaries necessary to doing his job well. Part of the reason he failed his last assignment was because his lies were too numerous that he couldn’t keep up with them. But if using his real life and not lying about everything also makes him fail, then Jack is correct in identifying that Henry needs to quit the firm.

“I wasn’t overly concerned in the beginning—nor were Dennis and Jack, for that matter—that I was employing my own life as material for my alter identity. Though to a much lesser extent, a certain borrowing is always required in our work. But this assignment made it, in fact, quite necessary to allow for more than the usual trade. When the line between identities is fine (and the situation is not dangerous), it’s preferable not to build up a whole other, nearly parallel legend.”

The issue of identity is an important thread throughout this novel. Henry’s identity is skewered by his job as a spy. He must balance between his real-world self and his spy alibis, even though Lee demonstrates that it is basically impossible for Henry to uphold these boundaries. Ironically, using his real name and family facts helps him do his job better because he doesn’t have to remember the lies he tells. The issue here, however, is that if Henry works with Kwang in order to destroy Kwang, then which Henry is doing the destruction?

“In hindsight, one could view my actions as solid textbook. Inelegantly executed, perhaps, but effective. I wasn’t employing employing a technique so much as my own instant live burial. It’s the prerogative of moles, after all, which only certain American lifetimes can teach. I am the obedient, soft-spoken son. What other talent can Hoagland so prize? I will duly retreat to the position of the good volunteer, the invisible underling. I have always known that moment of disappearance, and the even uglier truth is that I have long treasured it. That always honorable-seeming absence. It appears I can go anywhere I wish. Is this my assimilation, so many years in the making? Is this the long-sought sweetness?”

In this quote, Lee directly reveals that Henry’s role as a spy acts as his “own instant live burial.” In being employed to manipulate and take advantage of fellow Asian Americans, Henry is destroying his own comrades, his own people, and therefore his own self. Henry’s employment with the firm was always designed as a way of invading Asian American space and minds, and his aptitude as “dutiful,” “invisible,” and a “good volunteer” are the exact stereotypes of Asian American model minority myths that Dennis preys on. In his job as a spy, Henry fulfills these stereotypes while betraying people he intimately understands. Henry’s job is suitable for his personality, but it is also deteriorating his sense of self.

“I am to be a clean writer, of the most reasonable eye, and present the subject in question like some sentient machine of transcription. In the commentary, I won’t employ anything that even smacks of theme or moral. I will know nothing of the crafts of argument or narrative or drama. Nothing of beauty or art. And I am to stay on my uncomplicated task of rendering a man’s life and ambition and leave to the unseen experts the arcana of human interpretation. The palmistry, the scriptology, the rest of their esoterica. The deep science.”

This characterization of the reports Henry writes up for his job is in juxtaposition with the narrative voice that Lee develops. Henry’s internal voice, the one the reader has access to because of the first-person point-of-view, is introspective, metaphorical, deeply intense, and battles with themes and morals. But Henry’s job is to employ the opposite type of voice: scientific, direct, nonteleological. This further emphasizes the unsuitability of Henry’s job, despite how good he is at it. Henry must repress his inner voice in order to do his job well, yet another example of how he degrades his own voice and self.

“I will always make bad errors of speech. I remind myself of my mother and father, fumbling in front of strangers. Lelia says there are certain mental pathways of speaking that can never be unlearned. Sometimes I’ll still say riddle for little, or bent for vent, though without any accent and so whoever’s present just thinks I’ve momentarily lost my train of thought. But I always hear myself displacing the two languages, conflating them—maybe conflagrating them—for there’s so much rubbing and friction, a fire always threatens to blow up between the tongues. Friction, affliction. In kindergarten, kids would call me ‘Marble Mouth’ because I spoke in a garbled voice, my bound tongue wrenching itself to move in the right ways.”

This quote emphasizes Henry’s obsession with language and speech. He internalizes the shame of seeing his parents struggle with English onto himself and believes that he is misunderstood. While Henry believes this is true in the context of his speech mannerisms and accent, it is actually true as a metaphor. It is true that people misunderstand him, but no other secondary character has given the reader a hint that Henry is difficult to literally understand. Henry is self-conscious about his speech because he is self-conscious about being an immigrant and about being different. This quote utilizes imagery to evoke the physical difficulties of learning new languages, and the metaphor of the fire implies that Henry is in a constant state of war between his Korean self and his American self. Henry has not yet learned, even well into his adulthood, how to accept that he is both and neither, in part because there isn’t enough language in American culture to analyze the importance of his intersectionality.

“Mitt always spoke beautifully, if I remember anything. Lelia read to him every night since he was a year old. She wanted me to read him stories, too, but I never felt comfortable reading aloud, even when I was in high school and college, and I didn’t want to fumble or clutter any words for the boy just as he was coming to the language. I feared I might handicap him, stunt the speech blooming in his brain, and that Lelia would provide the best example of how to speak.”

This quote reveals how Henry passed on his anxieties about his language to his son. He projects his insecurities onto Mitt by allowing Lelia to be the primary raiser of their son so that Mitt can learn Lelia’s native speaking intonations as opposed to Henry’s nonnative speech. This quote highlights the depth of Henry’s insecurity because he allowed it to interfere in bonding with his son. It further highlights the insecurity because it reveals that his dreams for his son’s future included being less like himself, which is a poignant and sad desire for a parent to have.

“But I thought that Mitt was beginning to appreciate the differences in the three of us; he could mimic the finest gradations in our English and Korean, those notes of who we were, and perhaps he could imagine, if ever briefly, that this was our truest world, rich with disparate melodies.”

Despite Henry’s anxieties about Mitt’s language, Mitt turns out to be not the perfect American that Henry wants but the mirror that celebrates diversity. Mitt had an appreciation of the differences in the many speeches and accents around him, demonstrating that Henry was wrong to feel embarrassed by his and his father’s accents. Mitt doesn’t think of these accents as shameful, instead they are delightful ways of getting to know his father and grandfather. This expresses Lee’s message that language should not be a source of shame, rather, it should be a source of celebration for the diversity that imbues the contemporary American family. Mitt’s mimicry is a sign of love, and a reminder to Henry that his insecurities are in some ways unfounded.

“Like John Kwang, I am remembering every last piece of them. Whether I wish it or not, I possess them, their spouses and children, their jobs and money and life. 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.”

Kwang and Henry both memorize the list of thousands of contributors, as well as the details of their family and personal lives. Their memorization comes easy because Kwang and Henry can both see a version of their own pasts and presents in the lives of these contributors. This quote emphasizes the similarities in the American immigrant experience, no matter where the immigrant originated from. Every person on the list has a story of struggle, sacrifice, and dreaming. This places Henry in an even more problematic position as handing over the list of names to Dennis might endanger the people who give Kwang under-the-table money. Therefore, Henry would be betraying his own people, in a sense.

“[D]ead exhausted and only casually speaking, wondered aloud how she could pass him so little of herself. Of course it didn’t concern her further. Though I kept quiet, I was deeply hurting inside, angry with the idea that she wished he was more white. The truth of my feeling, exposed and ugly to me now, is that I was the one who was hoping whiteness for Mitt, being fearful of what I might have bestowed on him: all that too-ready devotion and honoring, and the chilly pitch of my blood, and then all that burning language that I once presumed useless, never uttered and never lived.”

Lelia’s subconscious bias about the race of her son highlights a major conflict in her relationship with Henry: Lelia is a constant reminder of whiteness and the privilege that comes with being white in America while Henry is the embodiment of the pressures of assimilation and the American Dream. As always, Henry doesn’t confront Lelia with his feelings, which might have helped Lelia better understand and respect Henry. Instead, he keeps his anger to himself, in part because he recognizes the anger as his own. Henry also wants his son to be more white than Asian, revealing a subconscious self-hatred that informs Henry’s other anxieties and insecurities around speech and language. Mitt represents hope for Henry, but he also represents a fear that his son will be too much like himself, emphasizing Henry’s lack of self-confidence.

“Perhaps for the first time in his public life he mumbles, his voice cracks, and even an accent sneaks through. He doesn’t seem to be occupying the office, the position. He gazes listlessly at the cameras and responds like a man stopped on the street, dutifully answering each part of each question, answering the follow-ups, searching through the mess of his emotions for reasons this could happen.”

When Kwang final reveals himself to the public, he is a broken version of his admirable, charming self. In this quote, he is characterized as “listless,” “dutiful,” and not up to the occupation of his office. This characterization parallels Henry’s own degraded psyche. In the same way that Henry’s job has made a shell of himself, so has Kwang's job. This characterization is yet another similarity between Henry and Kwang.

“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. You are the world. I am telling you so the world can know. I would bring him back if I could. Bring him back right now. Say the world knows this. Say it knows, Henry, for me.”

This quote marks a major plot twist in the novel. The revelation that Kwang was behind the bombing and Eduardo’s killing is a shocking piece of character development. His vindictiveness highlights a vengeful and arrogant character, and the violence and destruction of his plan emphasizes a lack of empathy. Considering that Eduardo was known to be Kwang’s favorite, the murder highlights Kwang’s depth of emotions and his extreme expectations of loyalty.

“For even Dennis Hoagland understands that in every betrayal dwells a self-betrayal, which brings you that much closer to a reckoning.”

This quote is important because it epitomizes the denigration of Henry’s psyche through his work. His job is to betray peoples’ trust, and if it is true that every betrayal is also a self-betrayal, then Henry betrays daily. Betrayal against others is difficult but can be numbed, such as in Peter’s apathy for his subjects or in Dennis’s depersonalization of the job. But self-betrayal chips away at Henry’s soul and confidence.

“My ugly immigrant’s truth, as was his, is that I have exploited my own, and those others who can be exploited. This forever is my burden to bear. But I and my kind possess another dimension. We will learn every lesson of accent and idiom, we will dismantle every last pretense and practice you hold, noble as well as ruinous. You can keep nothing safe from our eyes and ears. This is your own history. We are your most perilous and dutiful brethren, the song of our hearts at once furious and sad. For only you could grant me these lyrical modes. I call them back to you. Here is the sole talent I ever dared nurture. Here is all of my American education.”

Here, Lee parallels Henry with his father, a parallel Henry has long tried to avoid. Henry’s father exploited his own through low wages in his grocery store, while Henry has exploited his own through making money off of turning them in. In this quote, Henry (and by extension, Chang-rae Lee) directly addresses his white American reader and places Henry’s burden on white America. Henry is a product of white American in his internalized racism, desire to assimilate, and internalization of American messages about fitting in and getting ahead. The reader cannot blame Henry without blaming his society, which includes the reader.

“A part of me doesn’t want him to show up again. Not only for the television, for the public, but for me and Janice and the rest. Whoever is left. It is not that I don’t wish to face him. I think we can both bear that burden. What I dread most is the feeling that might come out in him on his return, the expression of self-loss and self-doubt on a face that I have known as almost unblemished, resolute, magically unweathered by strife and time. For so long he was effortlessly Korean, effortlessly American. Now I don’t want him ever to lower his eyes. I don’t want to witness the submissive dip of his brow or the bend of his knee before me or anyone else.”

Despite knowing the truth about Kwang, Henry still wants to put him on a pedestal. In spite of Kwang’s cutthroat and diluted moral code, on the outside he is still a version of Henry’s American Dream. There are few, if any, role models for Asian-America, and Kwang represented a new level of status and respect for the Asian American community. Kwang’s public scandal and fall from grace is therefore also a fall from grace for the community he represents, fairly or unfairly. Henry sees Kwang's failure as his own, highlighting the kinship Kwang and Henry have as two men with shared backgrounds and tribalism.

“But now, I think I would give most anything to hear my father’s talk again, the crash and bang and stop of his language, always hurtling by. I will listen for him forever in the streets of this city. I want to hear the rest of them, too, especially the disbelieving cries and shouts of those who were taken away. I will bear whatever sentence they wish to rain on me, all the volleys of their prayers and curses.”

This quote reveals Henry’s character development. For the majority of the novel, Henry has been embarrassed by the accents of immigrants, including his own and his father’s. Now, he understands the beauty and strife that informs those accents, the histories that should be honored behind the accents. Henry’s father is dead, so he can’t hear his voice again, and the “those who were taken away” refers to the arrested undocumented immigrants, all voices Henry can’t hear again. But Henry has learned that he can be more open, accepting, and loving of these voices in the future. He moves past his self-hatred and extends compassion.