A Gesture Life Character Analysis

Chang-rae Lee’s novel A Gesture Life follows the character of Doc Hata, an aged Korean Japanese American, after he has sold his medical supply store. In in his old age Doc began to think back on his life and what he has experienced. His attention focuses on his experiences during World War Two in the Japanese army. Doc Hata saw many of the evils that are hidden away in humans during his experience. The biggest event that caused the true evils of humanity to be seen are the arrival of comfort women to the base that Hata is stationed at. Comfort women are women that were taken or recruited by the government that were forced to have sex with soldiers constantly to keep the base’s morale up. The women were not treated as people and were often …show more content…
Corporal Endo is first character to question whether ot not the use of the comfort women is right. He even seeks counsel with Doc Hata and tells him that “I have decided not to visit those girls. I don’t know why… But yesterday after I saw them arrive in the camp I suddenly didn’t think about it anymore” (168). The “it” is sex and here Endo is struggling with justifying the situation because the comfort women are all young women and they were scared when they arrived. One was even beaten in front of the whole camp because she hesitated when she was getting out of the truck (165). Endo does not want to be take advantage of the women and even gives up his ticket that would of let him have sex with one of the women just so they could be spared one more person. However, what Endo can do to help the women is very limited because to run away into the jungle is death from dehydration and starvation. That is why Endo kills the comfort woman that was beaten when she first arrived. He approaches the comfort women after he observed them from afar and then goes to them and picks up the woman he kills from the ground and takes her into the forest. However, she “was not fighting him; in fact, her gait seemed to lighten, as if he were an old acquaintance and she was pleased to see him” (187). This demonstrates that she was comfortable with him even though they had never met before then and this comfort or acceptance was even present in her death. When the men do find the two again the comfort woman is dead on the ground with her throat cut open and Endo is sitting beside her. However, Doc notices that “It was as though she had gently lain down for him and calmly waited for the slashing cut. The oddity was that [Endo] was unsoil as well, completely untouched” (188). The woman never fought Endo and accepted her death because her only alternative was to be constantly raped over and over everyday by the two