Native Speaker Conflicts

Throughout Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker, the main character Henry Park faces challenges that test his ability to problem solve. He has multiple conflicts in his life, his wife left him, he is struggling to find himself, his Korean background becomes an issue, and he feels that his dad doesn’t accept him.
“You are a surreptitious, B+ student of life, illegal alien, emotional alien, yellow peril: neo American, stranger, follower, traitor, spy” (Native Speaker 5). This is part of the list that Lelia wrote in hopes to describe Henry the way she viewed him.
Henry Park has also been known to be shy and conceal his feelings, which was eventually clouding his ability to find himself. He went to speak to a psychologist where we can find the quote, “I genuinely began to like him. I looked forward to our fifty-minute sessions on Thursday mornings” (22). Through this quote we see that Henry is willing to separate from his Korean ways to try to become more American.
Henry’s conflicts also involve his father, and the “immigrant ethic”. The immigrant ethic involves hard work all day for your family, faith in Jesus Christ, and never missing a mortgage payment (47). Henry lives quite differently from his father and his father viewed him as a typical American, which Henry couldn’t accept because his main struggle was between his Korean blood and his American Ethnicity.