The Meaning and Impact of Silence in Native Speaker by Chang Rae-Lee
In "Native Speaker," Henry Park, a Korean American spy, faces challenges in his personal and professional life while navigating his complex identity. His strained marriage to Lelia reveals deep emotional disconnection and highlights their struggles through Henry’s experience of racialized silence. The idea of silence, or non-verbal gestures, is foreshadowed at the beginning of the novel when they first meet each other, and Lelia admits to Henry she can tell he’s not a native speaker of language, despite his perfect American accent. She continues to say that his body language gives away a part of his identity he tries to mask: “Your face is part of the equation, but not in the way you’re thinking. You look like someone listening to himself. You pay attention to what you're doing. If I had to guess, you're not a native speaker” (Lee 12).
This observation Lelia makes of Henry stems from the communicative issues they face in their marriage, as Henry’s view of silence as a form of communication is challenged. From Chang-Rae Lee’s development of their relationship, how can we analyze Henry’s silence in their marriage as illustrating the tension between traditional cultural values and the pursuit of the American culture that Henry tries to assimilate to? How can we observe intersectionality playing a role in this tension? It’s very clear the pressure Henry faces to conform to both his Korean and American identities; to simultaneously preserve his Korean traditions while assimilating to American expectations, leading him to have a melancholic relationship with the U.S.—feeling separated from and bound to the dominant (white) norms.
Throughout the novel, Lelia and Henry’s unstable relationship is deeply rooted in their differences in emotional expressions, causing misunderstandings between them. Lelia is more open and blunt with her feelings, whereas Henry is reserved, leading her to see him as secretive and closed off. With their ongoing struggles, Lelia writes a list describing what she finds wrong with Henry after their son Mitt's death. She writes that he is a "stranger" and "foreigner," indicating her perception of his emotional distance and cultural difference: “illegal alien / emotional alien / Yellow peril: neo-American / anti-romantic / Stranger” (Lee 7).
While this list appears to be an insult, it is also a list of her grievances with Henry and feelings of alienation from him, implying her search for a stronger emotional bond she feels is lacking. The list she hands to Henry before leaving for her trip highlights her emotional labor in attempts to mend the emotional gap between them.
The struggle within their multiracial relationship illustrates Henry’s growing tension between traditional culture and American culture, as the way he was raised by his immigrant parents—to remain quiet, which is partly due to socioeconomic inequities—clashes with Lelia, whose expressive traits come from her father as well as her different status in America. Henry’s learned ways of remaining silent take place at home and in his father’s grocery store. The father’s work life remained separate from their home life; even his mom wouldn’t ask about his day at work despite his late and tired returns: “She never asked about the stores themselves, about what vegetables were selling, how the employees were working out, nothing ever about the painstaking, plodding nature of the work” (Lee 55).
Following this, Henry recalls being six or seven when, one night, he decided to ask his father about the business but was immediately called back to his bedroom by his mom, who closed the door shut to scold him for his actions. She asked, “Why are you asking him about the stores?” and told him, “Don’t ask him. He’s very tired. He doesn’t like talking about it.” She proceeded to interrupt Henry with “Shh!” when he tried to explain the innocence in his question to his father (Lee 56).
His parents’ action of silencing the talk of business from their home shows their way of preventing burdens of stress in their family lives. Additionally, the mom implies it was best not to talk about something that is below the father, as she explains he was running the grocery stores mainly for Henry. She proceeded, “Don’t shame him! Your father is very proud. You don’t know this, but he graduated from the best college in Korea, the very top, and he doesn’t need to talk about selling fruits and vegetables. It’s below him. He only does it for you” (Lee 56). Hushing Henry to be silent about this side of his father’s work may highlight the different, unequal opportunities between Korea and America; that to be known as a grocery owner would be shameful for the father if others discovered this. Despite his success, this implies the burden it causes upon the family, despite it also supporting Henry.
Although Henry never fully understood his parents’ dismissive attitudes toward his questions, we can see how this carries with him in his later life with Lelia, as he keeps his work life private—secretive in Lelia’s perspective—from his personal life. Like his father, he doesn’t bother bringing the stress of work into his personal life with Lelia to avoid the burdens. Another significant example of Henry’s childhood developing his silence is when Henry was working in the grocery store and noticed a wealthy woman taking a bite from an apple, then putting it back in the pile. He is restrained by his father when he starts toward her and is told, “She’s a frequent customer” (Lee 54), then sent back to the station he was working at. In this scene, the father’s silence is getting passed down to Henry, as silence was a survival tactic to keep their business running and good relations with customers. The need for silence to benefit themselves at the cost of moral business rights speaks to the imbalanced power in America, such as socioeconomic inequities, and how it forces individuals like Henry and his father to rely on silence to survive life in America.
Furthermore, the racialized silence he experiences and witnesses from his own family creates the distance and tension present in his and Lelia’s marriage. The silence in his marriage—his hesitancy to openly express himself—is developed not only throughout his childhood but also due to feeling inferior in the English language. Thus, being silent is a protective way of reducing the chance of being viewed as foreign. Lelia is seen, in Henry’s perspective, as someone who is an example and reminder of American culture. Of the many things Henry adores about Lelia, it’s hardly about them together but more about Lelia’s perfect execution of speech, as “Every letter had a border” (Lee 10), hinting at a sense of security that contrasts with his own internal feelings. While language is a tool that unites them, it also creates the emphasis of their different experiences and Henry’s perception as a “stranger.” He notes:
“What I found was this: that she could really speak. At first, I took her as being exceedingly proper, but I soon realized that she was simply executing the language. She went word by word. Every letter had a border. I watched her wide full mouth sweep through her sentences like a figure touring a dark house, flipping on spots and banks of perfectly drawn light” (Lee 10).
Henry’s view of Lelia developed when they first met, as she told him that she was the “standard-bearer” of the English language. Adults and children, who were deemed as different because of the way they spoke English, came to America and looked to Lelia as an example. Many of the children came to her to correct their “broken” English, as her job was to teach the children how to speak English properly. While we see language as a form of communication between Henry and Lelia, it’s also a painful reminder of Henry’s struggles in English, as he recalls his tongue tying and struggling to articulate thoughts, likening his efforts to a “trapped animal.” His attempts to communicate often resulted in social ostracism, as he is ridiculed for his speech impediments and perceived as "Marble Mouth."
The silence that permeates Henry’s marriage to Lelia is not merely a personal failing or a character flaw; it is deeply rooted in his upbringing as a child of Korean immigrants who faced the complexities of navigating a world that often rendered them invisible. This learned behavior manifests as a protective mechanism in Henry’s adult relationships, particularly with Lelia, who embodies assertive and expressive traits and stands as a symbol of the American culture Henry is conflicted with. Moreover, Lee invites readers to consider how silence can reflect systemic inequalities. Henry’s reliance on non-verbal communication reflects the broader American societal tendency to overlook the experiences of those with marginalized backgrounds. The tension in Henry and Lelia’s marriage becomes a microcosm of the larger immigrant struggle—one that challenges the notion of belonging in a country where cultural and racial divides often dictate the terms of connection.
Works Cited
Lee, Chang-Rae. Native Speaker. Riverhead Books, 1995.
