Essay Chang-rae Lees novel A Gesture Life - 1117 Words

Chang-rae lee, in A Gesture Life, pictures a Japanese immigrant named Franklin Hata. Hata have been seeking assimilation into the American society. To become part of the society, Hata tries to become the perfect citizen in the society, a mascot who everyone knows and respects. To further his assimilation, he tries to complete the picture of a whole and healthy family as many ideal Americans. Through adapting Sunny, Hata wants to assimilate through a parental figure. Through parental figure that is caring, a good parent and good heritage, supremely suggesting that a parent that is successful in all is a parent that is successful in society. But Sunny plays a different character in his life, a character that alters Hatas idea as she is a†¦show more content†¦Sunny cant be the innocent symbol of benevolence and discipline related as Hata wanted. Almost a year after Sunny left Hatas home and moved to the city to live with her boyfriend, Lincoln Evans, Sunny contacts Hata because she is pregnant and she needs help. This difficulty is another instance of Hatas desperate wish to gain control of his own life by policing the bodies of women. Sunny is not only pregnant, but near full-term and Hata finds himself taken back by the broad, curving shape of her. Although anyone else would have thought that she was too long with the child, that it was much too late, that there was nothing left to do(p.339), Hata not only arranges an illegal abortion for Sunny but also assists the physician, whose nurse would likely not agree to assist such a procedure(p.343). What Hata wishes to prevent in this instance is to breed miscegenation and keep his reputation. For Sunny wants to ensure the success of Hatas assimilation, the racial makeup of her future children is essential to his success. Hata