A Gesture Life

In Chang-rae Lee’s novel A Gesture Life, Franklin "Doc" Hata has lived what appears to be the American Dream.  He is an immigrant from Japan who came to the United States, created a successful medical supply business, owns a beautiful home and yard, and adopted and raised a beautiful daughter.  He becomes a well respected community leader, earning the nickname "Doc" even though he quickly dismisses any suggestion that he might be an actual physician.   He is noble, honest and hardworking.  But despite the success he achieves and the adoration he warrants from the suburban community of Bedley Run, his life, as his troubled daughter Sunny suggests, is a life of "gestures and politeness".  Doc does not dispute this.  He attributes it to being Japanese.

Doc’s first friend in Bedley Run, and eventual love interest, Mary Burns, also points out his life of gestures.  Mary Burns had tried very hard to maintain a relationship with Doc, and with Sunny, but young Sunny’s dutifully spent time with her strains it.  Doc is helpless to change his daughter’s feelings—that she is pleasant, polite and enjoyable in Mary’s company but quickly departs from it after “time served”.  An additional strain between them is that Doc is passive and agreeable, and while Mary has trouble defining what it is she wants from him, he has even more trouble obliging it.  Doc cannot return the intimacy and affection she shares with him, perhaps because of his untold story of life as a war medic.  

The novel's present is the time of Doc's retirement.  He has sold his business to the Hickey's, for whom it quickly begins to fail.  Doc continues to visit them, and finds himself volunteering to sort out the financial documents and bank arrangements.  He does this out of kindness, not guilt, although he does feel guilt for the Hickey's situation (complicated by the hospitalization of their son who is waiting on a donated heart) even though he knows he is not responsible for it.  Mrs. Hickey loves Doc and expresses her sincere gratitude for his generosity and nobility, while Mr. Hickey, more frustrated every day, hates Doc, as he blames him for selling them a "lemon" knowing it was a doomed business.  When Mr. Hickey asks Doc to stop coming around to help, Doc is hurt, not only because of his mutual admiration for Mrs. Hickey and desire to help her, but also for his need to keep busy. 

Doc’s life has happened in three worlds:  Korea, Japan, and the United States.  In the present he has embraced America and American values, but his identity is still very much Japanese.  When he left Korea to be educated and moved into his adoptive parents’ household in Japan, truly becoming Japanese was his struggle and his goal.  Now, in America, he has also struggled towards the goal of fitting in.  Renny, an Indian immigrant and friend of Doc, observes that a subtle bigotry has been rising in Bedley Run towards those in a “minority situation”.  Liv, the feisty real estate power-broker and also a friend of Doc, points out that Doc has done quite well in his “situation” as an immigrant and a minority.  While Doc has made it a point to fit in, and succeeded in doing so, he is reminded of Sunny’s telling revelation that, in fact, the word around town is that Doc is just a “good Charlie”.

Doc is haunted by his memories of war, but in many ways they mirror his present.  His daughter, the Hickeys, Renny and Liv, Veronica and Officer Como, and other townspeople are constantly reminding him of the events that transpired.  Even in the dangerous jungles of wartime, where victory, survival and attempts to achieve some level of comfort were the main interests of soldiers, Doc’s relationships with his superiors and his patients were formal, and carefully geared towards keeping the good reputation of a well educated medical officer.  As a loyal officer he has little choice anyway but to follow orders and protocol, even when he witnesses cruelty, suicide, and manslaughter.

Doc’s “gesture life”, as revealed in the first half of this novel, is often a cover for the pain he feels in the present and remembers from the past.  However, his gestures never seem insincere.  His kindness towards the Hickeys, his compassion for the sexual “volunteers” and dread for what they endured, his desire to Sunny successful and happy (even though both his and her reputations are important to him), and his good rapport with everyone in town are examples of the good, if tortured, person that he is.