earticle

영어

This study aims to examine trauma and passing in Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture life. Through the first-person narrative of Franklin Kurohata(Doc Hata), Lee shows us how both social and psychological forces enmesh the transnational diaspora in a fine web that keeps self-determining choices tantalizingly out of reach. Multilayered complications of identity traumatize Hata. He cannot acculturate fully into either the adopted cultures of Japan or America, making him feel out of place in his environment. In both places, race is the limiting factor that impedes social acceptance. So Hata has no choice but to reject anything that might prevent him from being wholly and thoroughly Japanese or American. The craving to be an authentic member of his local community results in abstracting or hiding the women characters Sunny and K, who prove to be fatal flaws to Hata’s racial purity. Hata has spent his entire life masking his uncomfortable position in society, and his life is structured by the struggle between guilt and desire, between self-erasure and self-assertion. But his introspective journey toward a revitalized and reimagined identity begins with improved relationships with his daughter and grandson. In his seventies, Hata breaks his old tendency of, 'doing nothing' for the sake of his beloved, Sunny and Thomas. Simultaneously, he heals himself, physically and psychologically, from various afflictions he endures. Hata can rectify past ills through explorations of memory and reconnections with history and family. Memories play a key role to cope with loss and provide a chance to discover and promote self-healing.