At the end of Native Speaker I want to talk about where Henry wears the monster mask while he is teaching kids speech. In class we all weren’t sure if the mask was real or if the the mask was hypothetical. But indeed it was real, but regardless wouldn’t have made a difference. Henry had the mask on all throughout the book, he wanted to hide his Korean looks from the American world and he tried so hard. He perfected his speech in order to not sound Korean, although Lelia could still tell. He felt bad for his son that he gave his looks to, and felt even worse that he couldn’t mask it from the world.
But now at the end of the book, he is helping other people with the things that he struggled with, and things that he battled with. Lelia and Henry are speech thereapists and helping kids with the same problem that Henry had with speech. At the speech class he wears the mask, but he work the mask all through his life.
April 30, 2007 at 12:51 am
It’s true that he ‘wore the mask all through his life.’, but what I find impressive is that he can reveal himself to the world now- the world being all the different ethnicities of the children. They are shocked at first that he
isn’t a monster at all- and actually a man who looks like he would have about the same amount of English speaking skills as they!
Because he was embarrassed a bit by his heritage, this is a nice big step in the positive direction for Henry.