1. Sunny is one of the most memorable characters in A Gesture Life, not the least because of her complex background and role in Hata’s life. How does her presence in the novel develop its major themes? What is the significance of her return to the Bedley Run area in the middle of the novel? Does her return enable Hata to regain a kind of family life?

When she moves away into Gizzi’s house:- she moved to the dormer over the garage (113)- description of her was rather odd; portrayed her as a still, ‘flat’ character, ‘standing in the middle of the squarish room, her figure in profile.’ (113)- the scene she put on was like that in a hooker’s place; ‘she was simply there, moving without music, hardly looking at them as she swayed and twirled and pushed out her hips, her chest. (114)

1. A Gesture Life depicts scenes of extraordinary violence, but filters them through Hata’s voice. How does Chang-rae Lee use his narrator to communicate the horrors of war? How does Hata’s personality affect his ability to recall such events? Does the novel provide ways for the reader to assess the nature of the atrocities in which he took part?

Effect of Filtering:- make everything seem ‘alright’, less tensioned- justifies some of the situations, rectifies the wrong to the right- flashbacks are used mainly; because flashbacks depend entirely on a single perspective, usually skewed, it is hard to differentiate the truths from one another- it is only up to the audience to decide which is the truth being communicated to the readers- as Hata proudly says that ‘it was an august time, those first years of the war, and everyone to the man was supremely hopeful of a swift and glorious end to the fighting’ (105)- Jiro Hata (Doc Hata) never participated in one of their ‘rituals’, but in the glory of fighting, this seems to be justified; the act of prostitutes seems to be allowed- a young prostitute dies when one of the soldiers are having her; it seems as her death is natural; everyone acts non-chalant and undermines the situation- the young girls being exploited for men’s entertainment brings up serious issues of ethics- whether or not the ‘dying’ men should enjoy their last moments of entertainment at the expense of other women seems to underline a growing problem of women in society and their characters which they play‘Please, she said, crying even harder now. “I beg you”. [...] I beg you, Oppah, let me go!” (112)

Violence:- exemplified in war scenes; yet in the midst of war scenes, the effect of violence is dampened, as if

it is alright to beat up someone in the context of a war- ‘a week earlier however, he had beaten a private nearly to death for accidentally brushing him as he

passed [...] beaten viciously with the butt of his revolver to the private was bloody and unconscious. He treated the same man soon thereafter...’ (160)

- ‘Endo looked terribly small and frail; he was so frightened he could hardly walk. They had to help him to the spot where he would kneel. By custom he was then offered a blade, but he dropped it before he could pierce his belly, retching instead. The swordsman did not hesitate and struck him cleanly, and his headless body pitched forward lightly, his delicate hands oddly outstretched, as if to break his fall’ (189)

- the very scene of violence would be deemed inappropriate, but because it was in the context of war, it was seemingly justified, rectified for his violence; an eye for an eye

- ‘after the killing, and the execution of Corporal Endo, it was unusually quiet in the camp.’ (222)- shows that the death of someone indeed did subconsciously affect the mentality of the men- ‘but before he could finish speaking I tackled him square in the gut and the force of the blow

knocked the wind out of him. He lay for a moment beside me trying to get back his breath, then rose

slowly to his knees [...] I watched number we estranged from myself as he unholstered his service revolver and struck me again.’ (270-271)

Rape:- ‘it was nothing, or less than nothing, not even something to be thrown away. His fellow would certain just push and jostle for their place when the time came, chits or not. But the corporal handed the scrap to me as if it were the last ash of an ancestor, and somehow I found myself cradling it.” (169)

3. Hata’s house is one of the most important settings in A Gesture Life. Over the course the novel, Chang-rae Lee uses this setting to develop several characters including Sunny, Mrs. Burns, Liv, and Hata himself. Choose one of these characters and offer a detailed description of how they interact with Hata’s house. How does this relationship illuminate some of the main themes of the novel?

Hata’s House:- is paramount in value, people desire it; symbol of the model thing everything wants to go after, as in contrast with Gizzi House on Turner Street; derelict owned by Jimmy Gizzi- ‘For some moments I stood before the door. When I finally opened it I was surprised by the sudden chill; the heating ducts had long been shut, and an icy curl of air lapped.’ (14)

- ‘My house isn’t the grandest in our town, but it’s generally known that of the homes on Mountview, [...] one of the special properties in the area’ (16)- You do live in a doctor’s kind of house [...] but I think it’s more that you have the movements and gestures of one. I haven’t been spying on you, but I have noticed that you work like someone assured, confident, even as you put in your ground cover.’ (46)- ‘the same way she entered the ruined family room of my house and saw what was needed and lighted up the touchpad of her cellular phone, to call forth restorative good order’ (118)- ‘door to my prime vintage home, every last hint and scent of offending smoke steam-cleaned from the carpets, from the draped [...] appearing just as though I have not lived there every day for the last thirty years of my life’ (119)- in reference to the Model Minority, Doc Hata truly embodies the sense of hominess, the sense that all is great within his own reach; he is the shaper of his life, by appearances and mannerisms- simplicity seems all [...] which are my house and morning swims in the pools and my strolls down to the village” (123)- ‘I know again why I favor it so much here, how I esteem the hush of this suburban foliage in every season, the surprising naturalness of its studied, human plan, how the privying hills and vales and dead-end lanes make one feel this indeed is the good and decent living, a cloister for those of us who are modest and unspecial’ (130)- the red maple reflects ‘everything else [he’s] invented in the last thirty years - the values of the property itself, the blue-chip stock [he] bought intermittently’ (138)- his house is a museum she ‘curates for this visitation and the many that will follow’ (139)- the piano is the symbol of Sunny’s presence; whenever music plays, she’s there

Bedley Run- suburban village, neighboring Eddington and Highbridge (12)- ‘The contact surprised me. And then I realized at that moment how unusual it was that we were standing [...] there is too much buffer of fine landscaping and natural vegetation [...] that it’s rare to see anyone outside, much less two people on the perimeter of a property, talking or socializing.’ (47)

- ‘it’s not that I believed that the shop would be there forever, or become a village institution, but I did hold out hope of the store’s being passed along in the coming years’- reinforces the fact that Doc Hata is Bedley Run- he is the sole essence, or character for that matter or Bedley Run, defining the very character that embodies the village (192)

What is Turner Street like? ‘a mix of cheaper apartments and small one-story houses, and had been left the way it was to

satisfy a county requirement for lower-income housing units in towns like ours’ (98)- decent people live there, entrenched working class and new younger couples (present)- to Doc Hata, it gave the impression of ‘boarded -up places with weeds and saplings overtaking the porches, the ivy growing through the broken panes of the windows, and among these were the derelict places...” (99)- imagery painted by Doc Hata makes it seem quaint, broken down, like a ‘Bronx’ neighborhood

‘what struck me the most was that a number of the partygoers were black and Puerto Rican; colored people were a rare sight in Bedley Run.” (101)

- he also is a minority, yet he sees them filtered as if he’s part of the superior ‘clan’ in Bedley Run- the house struck to him as ‘unbearably small and stifling’ (104)

Sunny- she was, to Dr. Hata, ‘from Japan, many years ago, and stayed for some schooling. and then she went back’ (13)- ‘I didn’t feel I could explain things without further complication and embarrassment’ (14) - ‘Sunny, I’m afraid, always hated the house’ (26)

- explicitness, Doc Hata knows- ‘the helpless black of her eyes, and I could do little else but bend down and hold her until she stopped’ (27); stark contrast, they never acquainted with each other- ‘Yes, Poppa’ (28)- the locality of the house, vastness augmented their distance from each other

- ‘perhaps I grew too accustomed to our distance [...] with more a taste of sorrow than spite (30)- ‘Sorry, Doc’, ‘ I wish you wouldn’t call me that’ ‘I won’t then,’ she said, with some finality. Then she rose from the chaise. [...] (32)- ‘As she grew older, Sunny had a way of speaking unusually crisply, and with gravity, as if she were somehow in charge’ (57)- ‘Yes she is,’ she replied. ‘But it’s as if she’s a woman to whom you’re beholden, which I can’t understand. I don’t see the reason. You’re the one how wanted her. You adopted her. But you act almost guilty, as if she’s someone you hurt once, or betrayed, and now you’re obliged to do whatever she wishes, which is never good for anyone, much less a child.’ (60)- the young woman was certainly there to the near adultness of her in the sight of that shape made me realize why she had asked me to remain at home. […] But it was also the other character of her beauty, its dark and willful visage, and with it, the growing measure of independence she would exercise over her world and over me, that she had hoped to keep hidden a little longer’ (62)- she willingly leaves (96); rendering the house ‘useless’ to her

“I don’t need you” she aid softly and without remorse. “I never needed you. I don’t know why, but you needed me. But it was never the other way.” (96)- for Sunny, the house is rendered useless, just a compilation of unhappy memories; moves to Gizzi house, on Turner Street ‘ an unpaved dead-end road on the far east side of town’ (98)- she never indeed fitted in in the suburbia, Bedley Run; it was, in essence, hell- it finally reveals that ‘in fact, Doc Hata is Bedley Run. He is what this place is about. Not the doctors [..] Doc Hata has it right. You come to a place like this, Renny; you don’t make it yours with money or change it by the virtuous coffee color of your skin...’ (136)

- she becomes the image of ‘where young women who strayed from the security of their families, how they would inevitably be sent to the lowest level of human society and be forced to sell every part of themselves, in mind and flesh and spirit’ (144)- distant and separated are their distances from each other; ‘she visibly paused at the notion, which was new to her’ (145)- “Where was I” she asked not looking at me directly. I sensed she was feeling vulnerable, even ashamed, the latter emotion something I have rarely seen her, and this took strong inside and sudden hold of me.’ (146)- ‘yes, here we go, I answered, following her out and into the kitchen. She sat down at the table, the basket at her feet, almost waiting for my lecture. (148)- when she’s in the house, she reveals part of her history; ‘your cop friends all think I’m a whore, and they’d do anything to get their hands on Lincoln. They don’t want to hear that he was helping me.’ (149)- ‘a skinny jointy young girl, with thick, wavy black hair and dark-hued skin. I was disappointed initially; the agency had promised a child from a hardworking, if squarely humble, Korean family.’ (204);

- ‘I had assumed the child and I would have a ready, natural affinity, and that my colleagues and associates and neighbors, though knowing her to be adopted, would have little trouble quickly accepting our being of a single kind and blood.’ (204)

- ‘when Sunny returns to Eddington; ‘she looks almost exactly the same, except her figure is fuller and her hair pulled neatly back with a band. [...]’ (208-209)

2. Both Hata and Sunny are adopted characters. As a result, their ethnic identities and family relationships are rendered ambiguous from the start. Why does Chang- rae Lee emphasize this theme throughout A Gesture Life? What aspects of adoption are the most relevant to the development of main plot lines and characters?

Relationships:- Hideo Enchi and Fujimori are his comrades in fighting- Sunny, as in Sunny Medical Supply- Mr. Stark, ‘who seven years ago bought Murasan’s Smoke and Pipe’ (18)- Mr. Harris, ‘a retired insurer who seems to pass most of his waking hours in Murasan’s’ (18)

- from Wales- Renny Banerjee, ‘the hospital purchasing manager, who comes by my room every few hours to see

if I need anything’ (36)- Renny Banerjee, ‘though East Indian of blood, is what I often think of as a very American sort of man - barrel-chested, tall, with an easy, directive way of gesturing.’ (37)- ‘I have always admired his unflinching forthrightness, more intimate than emotional, which the long hiatus in our friendship doesn’t seem to have dulled.’ (39)

- Mary Burns, ‘died from liver cancer’ (41)- suburbanization vs. ‘anything that falls into a more personal realm is only tentatively welcomed’

(44)- But ever since my decision to leave Japan for good, I hadn’t wished to think at length about women

and intimate relations and companionship, for I knew there would be myriad difficulties ahead of me, setting up my small bit of commerce, and other things life’ (48)- ‘But the need had not arisen, at least in such a situation, and all I could do was speak with expedience. Later on, I did remark to her on once having a wife, this many years in the past, but I made cleara by my tone that it wasn’t a subject that was very pleasing to me’ (49)- Liv and Renny are his only ‘true’ friends --> those two are a couple (118)- ‘there is silence between us, not so much because I’ve said anything profound or true but that we’ve gone much further in the conversation than either of us had anticipated’ (126)

- shows that Hata doesn’t go into further relationships; ambiguity and distantness is all surrounding him; he cannot get to another person without severing his original ones- Liv describes him as the ‘noble Japanese’ (134)- ‘in fact, I think I have never enjoyed such a range of dishes [...] for a long time, particularly after Sunny left, I was certain that I would never get to enjoy the pleasantness and warmth of this kind of filiation and modest indulgence, and had resigned myself to a bachelor dotage [...] (193)- ‘ he was ‘warmly taken up, in some manner adopted by Liv and then also by Renny’ (193)

- ‘But you can’t say anything like you’re his grandfather, or related to him in any way. I don’t want you to tell him there was a connection. I’m having trouble enough with all his questions about his father and me.’ (212)- Annie Hickey, James Hickey, Patrick Hickey - predecessors of the Sunny Medical Supply Store

Important Quotes‘ which is that not only should one always be wary when buying into a situation, but once committed, graciously accept all realities’ (127)‘it makes me think again how the conservational laws apply to human beings and their endeavors as well as to energy and matter, and that for us, those laws are often ironical and cruel’ (127)‘For it is the vulnerability of people that has long haunted me: the mortality and fragility, of the like I witnessed performing my duties in the war, which never ceased to alarm, but also the surprisingly subject condition of even the most stolid of men’s will during wartime, the inhuman capacities to which they are helplessly given if they have but ears to hear and eyes to see.’ (220)‘I shook my head, knowing that it would not have. Nonetheless it explained her speech, her education, what I finally understanding to be her class, which I haven’t quite fathomed until then, haven’t had no contact with such Koreans. In fact she had poked fun at my own talk which was to her rough and slangy of the streets the twisty, cramped ghetto alleys of Kobe and it seemed incongruous as well how cool is that I only child of the hide tanner and a rag maid, should come to wear a second lieutenant’s uniform on the Ocean Sky Battalion of the [...] would have to sleep in a surplus closet of a far-flung military outpost.’ (257)

Hata- ‘People know me here. It wasn’t always so.’ (1)- ‘I will call Bedley Run [...] even the town had another name, Bedleyville (this my attribution)’ (2)

- why? because ‘the town board decided it wasn’t affluent-sounding enough. The town in fact wasn’t affluent at the time, being just a shabby tan brick train station and the few stores that served it...’ (2)- ‘I suppose it was because Bedleyville was still Bedleyville then, and not yet Bedley Run (although desperately wanting to be...’ (3)- This is just information. Mr. Hata appreciates knowing what’s happening in his town. We don’t need a mayor because we have Mr. Hata. I’m sorry - Doc Hata. I never understood why you’re called that when it’s obvious you’re not a doctor’ (11)

- putting on a façade, something he isn’t, he is Bedley Run - a façade of ideality, but just not what they really was what it was- He is around 70’s (‘But how are you going to feel twenty years from now?’ (17))- I don’t fish, for examples, and I don’t play bridge. I’m not a collector of figurines, or exotic birds, or antique toys. I’m not a connoisseur of drink. I don’t really dance, and the related idea of companionship for someone like me seems at once complicated and vague.’ (19)

- why did he date Mary Burns? What about the relationship with K?- fitting in seems to be a problem with Doc Hata, he only seems to fit with some people, if not none

- ‘for a moment, our sudden and unmistakable sense of not fitting in’ (20)

- ‘it’s not that I feel I’ve used up this house, this town, this part of the world, that I’ve gotten all I’m going to get, but more that this feeling I’ve come to expect, this happy blend of familiarity and homeyness and what must be belonging, is strangely beginning to disturb me’ (21)- ‘what used to concern me greatly about leaving was the awkward impression you can sometimes have, say when you find yourself on an everyday street, or in a store, or in what would otherwise [...] I’m at least a quantity known, somebody long ago counted [...] Doc Hata, they ca say with surety, he comes around’ (21-22)- Liv molds him into the guy who played the piano, something he was not, just like how he molded Sunny into becoming the ‘model minority’ something she did not want part of (142)- ‘should I be killed and those items along with my remains be tended to my family in Japan, as was customary. Most all cases the officer in charge of such transferral check the package to include only the most necessary effects, but one heard of embarrassing instances when grieving elders were forced to contend with awkward last notions of the dead. I feared it would be especially seeming to mine, for adoptive parents they might shoulder the burden of my prices even more heavily than I had born to them, blood of their blood, as they would be no excuse but the raising of me. (155)- I’ve gone from being good Doc Hata to the nice old fellow to whoever that ancient Oriental is, a sentence (I heard it whispered last summer while paying for my lunch at the new Church Street Diner) which carries no hard malice or prejudice but leaves me in wonder all the same (201)- ‘Hata is, literally, ‘flag,‘ and a ‘black flag’, or kurohata, is the banner a village would raise by its gate in olden times to warn of a contagion within.‘ (224)- ‘[...] I have feared this throughout my life, form the day I was adopted [...]‘ (229)- ‘[...] I felt a certain connection to her, not in blood or culture or kind, but in that manner, I suppose, that any young man might naturally feel for a young woman‘ (239)- the yearning to belong- ‘I told her I believed the Kurohatas felt a strong bond with me that they had provided me with every advantage of opportunity they can muster, respectable house and schooling and outside lessons, and had always treated me like a son.‘ [...] ‘but I was wondering if they love you like a son.‘ ‘ I think so. But i am not sure if there is a difference,‘ I said, ‘if they have always treated me like one.‘ (re-examine conversation) (244)