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
Henry meets Lelia in Ardsley to start clearing out his father’s house. Lelia has already started the task, since she went up shortly after Henry’s father died. Henry was working out of state at the time, and she jumped at the opportunity to get out of their apartment. Now, Henry cooks her favorite dinner in his father’s kitchen. It’s a meal they used to have all the time when they were first married. They used to start making it and then have sex while it was cooking, always looking forward to eating it after they were finished. This time, though, they don’t have sex. They do, however, talk relatively easily and share some wine before getting to work.
Henry and Lelia used to have a very intimate bond. But then Mitt’s death put a terrible strain on their relationship, and Henry’s tendency to withhold his emotions drove them apart. Now, though, they slowly work their way back to each other, largely because Henry finally managed to open up about his feelings after listening to the tapes of Mitt’s voice. Their newly honest and open communication style, the novel suggests, is helping them heal.
Themes
As Henry and Lelia sort through old family photos, Lelia asks him how he’s doing at work. The question surprises him, but he soon learns that she talked to Jack recently. He told her that Henry is getting hung up on his current case—actually, he didn’t say anything specific, but Lelia could tell that he was worried about Henry. He kept bringing him up, so Lelia asked what was going on, and Jack simply said that she should talk to him herself. She therefore urges Henry to tell her what’s going on. In fact, her desire to have this conversation is the main reason she suggested they come up to Ardsley for the weekend. They can clean whenever they want, but she knew this would be a good way to get him talking.
It’s unclear what Jack’s motivations were for alerting Lelia to the troubles Henry is having at work. On the one hand, it’s possible that he’s genuinely worried about Henry and knew that telling Lelia would make it possible for her to help and support him. On the other hand, though, he might have told her simply as a way of motivating Henry to start taking the job more seriously. Either way, his conversation with Lelia gives Henry a chance to be honest with her—and considering that he often seems to need a push to start talking about his troubles, he may actually open up.
Themes
Henry admits to Lelia that he’s struggling. She wants to know what, exactly, Hoagland expects of him, and he explains that he needs to deliver something “damning” about Kwang (though he doesn’t actually say his name). But he doesn’t have anything damning. If that’s the case, Lelia insists, then Henry should call Jack right now and tell him there’s nothing to report. But Henry knows doing that wouldn’t make a difference—Jack isn’t the person who cares what happens. It’s Hoagland who’s calling the shots. When Lelia suggests that Henry should quit, he explains that he can’t leave in the middle of an operation. Nobody has ever done that before, and doing so could be dangerous, since there’s no predicting what Hoagland might do.
The way Henry talks about his job indicates that there’s some real danger involved—not because he’s in danger as a spy, though, but because the very people he works for are unpredictable and manipulative. Hoagland can’t be trusted, and though Henry has seemingly enjoyed his job until the last two assignments, he is now more or less trapped in his role, basically unable to do anything but carry out Hoagland’s commands. And yet, Henry doesn’t want to work against Kwang, with whom he identifies so closely. Plus, there’s not much to report: Kwang is running what is, in Henry’s mind at least, a very clean, above-board organization. On another note, the mere fact that Henry tells Lelia about his predicament suggests that he’s getting used to speaking more openly about his life—something that will likely help strengthen their relationship.
Themes
Understanding the difficulty of Henry’s situation, Lelia suggests that he should just give Hoagland what he wants—that is, he should dig up some dirt about Kwang. But Henry says that “someone could get hurt” if he were to do that.
Henry finds himself unable to look for dirt on Kwang because his conscience won’t let him. After all, he knows that Luzan died shortly after Henry stopped seeing him, and though the circumstances of his death remain unclear, it’s implied that the people who hired Hoagland’s company (Glimmer & Company) are responsible for what happened. In turn, Henry can’t bring himself to give Hoagland anything that could be used against Kwang, especially since he feels so connected to him as a fellow Korean American.
Themes
Get the entire Native Speaker LitChart as a printable PDF.
The conversation comes to a sudden halt when Lelia spills a glass of wine on the rug. Desperately trying to blot it up, she says that she doesn’t care what Henry does, as long as he doesn’t get hurt. This outlook might make her a bad person, she says, but that’s simply how she feels. Henry then lies down next to her on the carpet and tells her that the person he’s spying on is John Kwang. After a moment of silence (which surprises Henry), she tells him to say whatever he wants to her. Later that night, they have passionate sex in the room above the garage.
It's no coincidence that Henry and Lelia have sex on the very night that he opens up to her in a way he never has before. Until now, he has never told her any details about his job or his various assignments. Tonight, though, he tells her everything, thus demonstrating a new willingness to let her further into his own internal world. As a result, it’s possible for them to rekindle their romantic flame, which had only been snuffed out because of their inability to connect in the aftermath of Mitt’s death.
Themes
