Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in ‘A gesture Life’ by Chang-rae Lee

Post-traumatic stress disorder which is commonly referred to as PTSD is a condition that affects persons that have been experienced traumatic happenings in their past. For an individual to be diagnosed with PTSD, he or she must have been exposed to an event that involved intense fear, helplessness and horror (Workman, 251). This individual at the present is a result of the extreme trauma experiences, persistent memories of the traumatic event, and persistently avoids any stimulus that is associated with the trauma. PTSD is a theme that Chang-rae Lee explores in his work ‘A Gesture Life’ through the protagonist Franklin Hata.

Trauma is a theme that defies the element of stories being told in a chronological order. The characters that are used to help explore the concept of trauma are not able to address the nature of their trauma and so their autobiographical accounts are always disjointed as they try to subconsciously avoid their past experiences (Workman, 254). Hata in ‘A Gesture Life’ represses various traumatic events in his life including his responsibility to the death of K and also his lack of clarity on his origins, to present a narrative of a successful assimilation that through the voices of other people around him turns out to be a lie. Hata’s evasive voice is an attempt to narrate himself into a reputable identity that he wishes to have, but the memories of his trauma and the voices of Sunny and K create a conflicting concept that force him to realize the fictitious nature of his assimilation.

Hata is presented a self-proclaimed Japanese immigrant who now lives a seemingly fulfilling American life. Through his evasive voice and his involuntary intrusion of his past, his narrative is brought out as a structural representation of both adoption and trauma. One of Hata’s most traumatizing memory is the death of a comfort woman he during the war known as K. His lack of clear origins also greatly traumatizes him even before the chronological beginning of the novel. All throughout the novel, Hata perceives himself to be Japanese, but when he is asked for his Korean name by K, he explains that he had one during birth but no one ever used it, even his real parents because they wanted him to become wholly Japanese (Lee, 235). He later goes ahead to illustrate that his Korean birth name was used by the administrator when he was joining the war, he says on page (236) ‘the last time I heard their….birth name for me’. This is an indication that his Korean name was used despite his claims and it is an illustration that the story he told K about his birth parents not wanting him to have Korean origins was just a story that he had created to try and distance himself from his Korean Origins ((Workman, 260). This concept opens up the character of Hata as being an unreliable narrator through creation of self-deceiving stories to forget his traumas.

Hata as a ‘hidden’ Korean in the Japanese army makes him an oppressed object and this can also be considered to be a traumatic element for him. Hata felt lost in the Japanese army as a Korean, it is for this reason that he wanted to be close to K who was a Korean. His hope was that being close to a Korean would help him find a sense of belonging. K in Hata’s narrative is not only a link to his Korean roots, but also a device to help ensure the future of his identity narrative (Caroll, 592). Hata requires a family to help him to become fully produced Japanese and he sees K as his link to help him achieve that. Hata renders K mute to favour his narrative, her story is too heinous for him to address and he thus renders her mute through his fictional narrative. Hata greatly dissociate himself of the past events in his narrative as an attempt to try and distance himself from his trauma.

Hata constantly has memories of K in his present life, though the K of his imagination is very different from the one in his flashbacks. The K in his imagination is one crafted to fit in his self-deceiving narrative; he creates K as his perfect wife, submissive and one that is only concerned with his wellbeing  (Cheng, 558). This is a K that is very different from the woman that in his past demanded that he kill her. By creating a different K in his memories, Hata tries to force her memory to solidify the fictional narrative that he has created. This is a clear indication that the trauma of K’s death is still very relevant, and Hata cannot really escape from his traumatized past as long as he is still holding onto his fictional narrative.

While Hata wishes to let go of K’s memory, letting it go is impossible because it would require him to address his traumatic responsibility for her death and this would unravel his fictional narrative. Hata is no able to give psychic meaning to the K’s memory because he is caught between two opposing narratives (Cheng, 572). There is the narrative that he presents in the text and the other one of his traumatic past that keeps intruding. Hata in this story is brought out as an individual that is too traumatized to even recognize his own trauma ‘he “could not smell or hear … could not … sense that other, tiny, elfin form … and [he] could not know what [he] was doing, or remember any part” (Lee, 305). The use of the word ‘Could’ instead of ‘did’ greatly helps to illustrate the concept of trauma for Hata. He admits his inability to properly understand his memories that he is not even able to access. His experiences become almost dormant in his mind, which leaves it to b ever present but beyond his control and the result is his entrapment.

Hata’s entrapment with his failed narrative with K is made evident by his interactions with his adopted daughter Sunny, whom he tries to narrate into the role that was to be filled by K. Hata used K in his narrative to help him to obtain his Japanese identity through family. Hata hence uses Sunny to try and rewrite his failed past and he uses Sunny to replace the traumatic end of K. Sunny is perceived as Hata’s chance to begin a fresh and to right the wrongs in his past (Caroll, 600). Hata refuses to accept his responsibility in K’s death and it only comes out subconsciously through how he reacts with Sunny. He feels that doing what Sunny asks her to do is the best, because if he had done the same with K it would have prevented her from being gang raped and killed. Hata is subconsciously haunted and traumatized by the fact that he did not agree to kill K as he requested and that is what led to her being gang raped and her death. Even though he does not admit it openly, Sunny was his chance to make up for not having ‘surrendered just once when it mattered’ (Lee, 321). Hata’s thinking was wrong because this only led him to become more entrapped in his trauma. All this is evidenced in his failed relationship with Sunny that helps to show his inability to move on from his traumatic past.

There is a shift in Hata as the novel is coming to an end in regard to showing remorse and taking responsibility. Unlike the inaccessible guilt of K’s death, Sunny realizes the consequneces of his actions with Sunny and shows some signs of remorse and actually admits his lack of understanding. This is a contrast to his normal evasive voice; he directly states his mistake with the adult Sunny that is no longer a part of his narrative. It this growing realization of responsibility that ends this novel, Hata now acknowledges his trauma and his responsibility towards it. This is seen in his decision to ‘fly a flag’ (356), which is a symbol of contamination.

A gesture Life is a testament to the issue of trauma and traumatic events in one’s life can affect their life decisions. Hata is brought out as a respectable, well assimilated Japanese citizen in America and it is only after understanding the narrative that a reader realizes the underlying trauma in his life. This story offers an insight into the life of a traumatized individual and it challenges the accounts of trauma pose to the victims.

 

Works cited

Caroll, Hamilton. “Traumatic Patriarchy: Reading Gendered Nationalisms in Chang-rae

Lee’s ‘A Gesture Life.’” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 51, no. 3, 2005, pp. 592-616. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26287049.

Cheng, Anne Anlin. “Passing, Natural Selection, and Love’s Failure: Ethics of Survival from

Chang-Rae Lee to Jacques Lacan.” American Literary History, vol. 17, no. 3, 2005, pp. 553-574. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3567909.

Lee, Chang-rae. A Gesture Life. Granta Books, 2001.

Workman, Mark E. “Obscured Beginnings in Personal Narratives of Sexual Jealousy and

Trauma.” Narrative, vol. 12, no. 3, 2004, pp. 249-262. Project Muse, doi:10.1353/nar.2004.0017.