Paolo Sardinas
Professor Lempert
English 202 December 12, 2013 Isolation and the search for self-identity in Native Speaker and The Conversation The quest for self-identity is often one that is complicated and filled with roadblocks. No matter what the time, place or cultural background of a person it is often difficult to be fully at peace with oneself and wholly embrace all aspects of one’s background and identity. Often it is even more difficult for people of mixed cultural and national backgrounds to find a common ground on which they are comfortable planting both feet and feeling as if they have honored the two worlds which they have been exposed to. Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker is an intense novel that does not only deal with issues such as self-identity but gets at the very heart of the conflict that children of immigrants feel and attacks issues of loss and the quest for self-discovery. In Native Speaker, the main character, Henry Park, suffers an identity crisis as he grows up in a Korean household versus growing up in an American world. This paper will discuss the causes and extent of Henry’s crisis. Henry Park has his feet planted in two worlds but feels as if he does not belong to either world. First, is the Korean world in which he was born and raised. Second, is the American world in which he is forced to live in and abide by. To Henry, the conflict of the two worlds is at first seemingly separate and he is able to move carelessly between the two. As a child his parents taught him the Korean way. As a man he was expected to be firm and somewhat emotionless, “I remembered how I sat with him in those restaurants, both of us eating without savor, unjoyous, and my wanting to show him that I could be as steely as he, my chin as rigid and unquivering as any of his displays, that I would tolerate no mysteries either, no shadowy