Forgetting about the past is often a way for people to move on into the future. Erasure in life is something that many people will do in order to move forward but never really succeed in doing. In A Gesture Life, Chang-rae Lee’s character, Franklin “Doc” Hata, strives to cover up past events in his life through this process of abolishment of past events. He does this in the hopes of achieving a seemingly perfect lifestyle to the bystanders in his neighborhood. With this, Doc Hata builds a seemingly clean identity by neglecting the reality of his tragic past involving many of those he loved, and loses sight of who he really is as an individual. Many of those who lived in the same town as Doc Hata, only exposed to the outer shell of his impenetrable
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Although many were fooled into thinking this was true, like all humans in this world, no one lives a perfect lifestyle. One major set back in Doc Hata’s life involved the single woman he learned to love after the traumatic experience of K. Even with the one woman he had potentially moved on with, he continued to hold back his feelings and resisted to show all emotions in any way in efforts to erase his past with K. Hata supports the idea of erasure and his mental suspension in life with the statement, “I felt awfully young touching her, and the wanting I had wished never again to know was rushing back to me, a disturbing shiver in my fingers[…]. I stopped everything then” (Lee 315). Through the failure of the complete abolishment of the memory of K, Hata ruins his relationship with Mary Burns because he was never able to show true, passionate feelings (Miller). Although Doc Hata strives to remake his life in America without the burden of his past, it is clear that total erasure is impossible. Although the scarring scene of her death will be buried in his memory eternally, he must learn to grow from this experience and live, in contrast to totally shutting off all recognition of affection that remotely remind him of K and their
Although many were fooled into thinking this was true, like all humans in this world, no one lives a perfect lifestyle. One major set back in Doc Hata’s life involved the single woman he learned to love after the traumatic experience of K. Even with the one woman he had potentially moved on with, he continued to hold back his feelings and resisted to show all emotions in any way in efforts to erase his past with K. Hata supports the idea of erasure and his mental suspension in life with the statement, “I felt awfully young touching her, and the wanting I had wished never again to know was rushing back to me, a disturbing shiver in my fingers[…]. I stopped everything then” (Lee 315). Through the failure of the complete abolishment of the memory of K, Hata ruins his relationship with Mary Burns because he was never able to show true, passionate feelings (Miller). Although Doc Hata strives to remake his life in America without the burden of his past, it is clear that total erasure is impossible. Although the scarring scene of her death will be buried in his memory eternally, he must learn to grow from this experience and live, in contrast to totally shutting off all recognition of affection that remotely remind him of K and their