I liked the way the author created his protagonist as the epitome of identity to show that identity is many things including the understanding of oneself. Native Speaker allegorically unmasks tribalistic identity to reveal the individuation function of the psyche. Through Henry’s ability to manipulate language in conjunction with his outward appearance as Korean, he fools his closest associates into thinking that he is someone other than who he is. But, the trick played on others through the manipulation of his persona cost his friends dearly, as in the case of Luzan. At the time when Henry realizes that he might put Kwang through the same outcome as Luzan, identity plays the critical role of defining who Henry is to himself. His decision to withhold information about Kwang from Hoagland personally redefined Henry’s identity as someone more worthy to himself. Once the, what I call moral, decision materialized Henry further solidified his commitment to himself and his direction in life by quitting the company. To me, as a long-time adherent to Jungian psychology, I understand Henry’s decision, and for that matter, Lee’s exposition of identity through the character of Henry, to be a work that illustrates the function of the process of individuation. Lee shows that things such as identity politics, cultural heritage, sociological identification are subordinate in meaning when compared to what the psyche demands of us as individuals.
In her essay “‘This doesn’t Mean What You’ll Think”: Native Speaker, Allegory, Race’” Tsou states “Henry’s various endeavors . . . illuminate the novel’s use of allegory and Asian America to vex normative expectations about referentiality” (577). My interpretation of her statement is that Lee makes fools of those that surface read the novel and then go on to critique it according to “normative expectations of referentiality” (577). She states that "Native Speaker makes a commentary on seeing and reading that exceeds the specific context of Asian America because it gives these questions a particular form (racialized, gendered, and classed)” (577). She goes on to say “Reading for allegory “denaturalizes the assumption that race and ethnicity are a priori facts reflected by language” (578). I agree with Tsou, that whiteness [Leila] disguised as the abstract citizen in opposition to the Asian American figure [Henry] “destroys the normal expectation we have about language, “‘“that our words mean what we say”’” (578), but I believe this to be Lee’s style to say let us not take identity so seriously or abstractly that we overlook the qualities that make us human. By “speaking literally” the novel “contrives to speak otherwise” (580). It narrates great detail about Korean culture and identity connected to ethnicity but uses the language allegorically to get to the message of the meaning of personal identity and the moral choices that personal identity requires of us. Tsou further states that “[c]alling back is a movement that resembles looping, in the sense that it too doubles back on (betrays) its original referent. The referent for these modes is not the Asian American subject but that abstract, forgotten antecedent--you?” (584). Tsou’s essay emphasizes how Lee’s narrative turns and loops back on itself like Henry’s and his father’s exploitation of Asian Americans. To me, this is how Lee unmasks identity to show that individual identity, the “you?” takes precedence: decisions acted upon that one might call “moral” in their ability to provide the way to a more dynamic personality.
Ultimately, human relationships define who we are to ourselves. But, without having an identity true to our nature, the conflicts within often prevent further dynamics of psychological development from unfolding. This is not to say that a person should be any one way or another only that in the case of Henry the conflicts that arose in his life began to detract from the dynamics of his character qualities. He could have unfolded as a different identity to himself by choosing to have a hand in Luzan’s boating accident, and by providing the information to Hoagland about Kwang. Later in the story, he could have gained ownership of Hoagland's company. And, for some such-like version of Henry, these kinds of choices might be considered “moral” because they allow for the unfolding of that type of individual to achieve the full potentialities of their process of individuation. The “moral” choices that I’m speaking about have only to do with the decisions and actions one takes to reach a complete state of psychological development. In Henry’s case, he realizes that cultural, financial, patriotic, ethnic, qualities and so on, are not as important as the qualities that he needs as an individual to proceed down life’s path. And, at the end of the book, as Henry helps Leila with the school children that is the image that we get--human relatedness as the result of Henry’s individuated identity. Henry needed to know himself, to become conscious of himself, to continue down life’s path. He dismantled the abstractions of identity, relied on his personal moral decision, carried that weight and finally settled for human relations which are the most important and real things that a person can know.
