The Novel a Gesture Life - Essay Example

The constant dissonance between him and the women in his life from K to Mary Burns to Sunny lead to the existent disappointments in his life. It is evident that his relationship with women is the one thing he cannot hide behind with gestures. They exhibit and to an exalted degree prove the shortcomings in his life. ‘A Gesture Life’ illustrates the life of Asian-American immigrants and the diversities inherent to their lives, living behind a life of gestures. It expressively tells of the story of being displaced and the hardship of fitting in while simultaneously being uncertain of your own identity in many respects. The main character, Franklin "Doc" Hata, tells of the many sides behind a seemingly tranquil and fulfilled life. Keeping up appearances was indubitably the underlying tone of the novel. The book was quick in its imparting of wisdom that is evident through its pages. It starts with Doc, already in the waning years of his life and the relationships he has built through the years. It showed a man who can never reconcile his past with his present. Attempting at some salvation through the aesthetics he has been adamant to keep up. He has much pride in the life that he has been bent on achieving in the community he has pertinently chosen to be part of. This is also the cause of the distance between him and Sunny. He is the proud owner of a beautiful house in Bedley Run which is a nice community in suburbia America. A home that is complete with a yard and a swimming pool. He is respected, at one level or another, by his neighbors and the people in his community. It was an endearing note that they refer to him as Doc, though he is swift to dismiss notions that he is an actual medical doctor. The house he owns sets much of the tone of the character in the novel. It was a show of what he amounted to with regard to his racial identity in a world that is surrounded by diverse households. The medical supply business he has built is another that demonstrates the ideal life he has created for himself. The business which he eventually sold to the ‘Hickeys’ and on many occasions visited to help the wife in trying to revive an already flat lining enterprise. The husband resents him for selling them the store while the woman is thankful for his help. Though the status of the business is in no length a fault of his, he feels it his obligation to help and for lack of anything better to do he spends his time there. His life is interwoven in three countries that represent three parts of his life. In Korea, his land of birth represents the fraction of his identity that he has never recognized to be his own. In Japan, where most of his transgressions occurred plays a vital role in his life. Here, in the time of the war he served in a comfort house at Burma to care for the women so they can go on in their inhumane servitude to the Japanese. This is where he met K, who identified with him as a Korean. Although he was dismissive of his nationality, she was keen in his origin and in some cases conversed in their common language. It was a job that he was opposed of, but knowing they all have no way out, he tried as hard as he could to alleviate the pains they underwent. This was also the first show of his eager desire to be liked. K was his first stab at love and probably the catalyst that led him to the decisions in the future of his life. In times they shared dreams and expectations. He was willing to commit murder for her. It was in every sense an undying and devoted love, blind of its consequences. But nonetheless something that ended in tragedy. Their circumstance was just too much to bear and impossible to escape. K was in all probability correct in assuming that it was not true love but a blind childish naivety. And that it never had a chance from the beginning. She was the first to woman to see through him and she wasn’t the last. It was the love affair that defined his life. She was the main reason that Doc adopted Sunny and devoted his attention fully to her. He saw in her a chance at salvation from all the offenses he has committed in his previous lifetime. He sees a second opportunity to correct the failed relationships he had. She served as a bridge between his self and the country he has left and the life he restrains to keep. Their relationship is strained as Sunny was the one who also sees him for who he is. She resents the façade that he is ardent in putting. She knows the reality of who he is. Careful with the relationships he builds, with his house in its immaculate state and with her and his want to keep her in a box. The ‘gestures’ he performs to ensure that he doesn’t step on anyone’s shoes and his propensity to ensure everyone approves of him. Which translates to the perfect daughter she should be to stand alongside him in his perfect picture. In the beginning of the story, it tells of her and how 13 years ago she had ran away to escape her father and all that he has imposed upon her. When she eventually returned, pregnant with child, it did not set politely with her father. He wanted her to relieve of the child, seeing it as an opportunity for her to reset her life. As an illegitimate child would not sit well in the American family Doc has in mind. It was more an indication of the many feelings he has lost from his past than a determinant that he was a bad man. Sunny awakened Doc to the reality, he was able to recognize his mistakes when he was rearing Sunny. He tried so hard to bring her up in such a way that he is the center of her universe. She served as a mirror to him that was filled with candor. She made him realize his obsession in ensuring the reputation of his name above all else. Sunny and K are the two women that shaped his life. Both of them loved him along with all his complications and rebelled against it. Later on he realized that he was to blame for his failed relationship with Mary Burns and not Sunny. While recuperating in the hospital after the fire accident in his home we see him in his best element. His ability to make small talk with people is his most winning quality. It was why the people accepted him in the community he belonged in for years. His daughter continued to be the one aspect in his life he hasn’t been able to alter in such a way that it fits through on the kaleidoscope he wants to see it. This wanting, of perfecting all that surrounds him in his own accord, he ascribes to his being Japanese. His dismay to the life his daughter has led is evident in the novel. It was a relationship that Sunny pervades through his glass box. She recognizes it and escaped from it. Their relationship that was filled with tension opens the conflict that instigates their strained polarities. Though Franklin Hata was cognizant of it, he doesn’t see that it is a negative attribute. Sunny with her youthful torment wants to break the glass coverings her father lives on. Yet the two of them showed the facets that make the novel so moving and as close to reality as we see it in the faces of the people around us. The house that symbolizes ownership and belongingness to Franklin Hata, translates to an enclosure to Sunny. The later years of his life, when Doc was already pondering on selling the house, we see the enormous value it renders in his life. It was in essence an impressive house and it was a home that he owns. It represents for significant possession that is not common to everybody, Asian or otherwise. His life was not all sunshine and rainbows and his want to live one that is according to his specific ideas are not unwarranted. He wasn’t a terrible person in so much as he was careful. Too careful to a fault in fact that in many times it has impeded his happiness. He was too bent on maintaining an all too ebullient relationship to everyone he comes across with. He would rather be content on shallow relationships filled with smiles than to make real connections that might later equate to ill feelings. Franklin Hata has almost similar relationship patterns most of his life. In the final pages he was able to recognize how his connection with K has fundamentally defined the rest of his life. It was in essence the definitive relationship that has made its mark with his upbringing of Sunny. But through the end of the story, one of them led to his deliverance from his personal notions. He learned of forgiveness through his daughter. Forgiveness was ultimately the underlying theme of the novel.  Later on, he becomes mindful of what Sunny is talking about and stated picking up the pieces and evolved to establish a better bond between him and Sunny. Read More