The end of Native Speaker was interesting.  I think that this book ties in with the same non-canonical theme as Invisible
Man.  The theme is identity.  This is also the theme that I think should get put into the canon eventually.  The theme identity has to do a lot with how the character sees or portrays him/her throughout the book.  In Invisible Man the narrator really was an invisible man.  He sort of went about his daily life not really doing anything specific, he was kicked out of college and sent to the city where he became a speaker for the Brother Hood.  He made many mistakes and it seemed as though like Amanda Lea said in class everything he had something to do with went bad eventually. In Native Speaker Henry is much like the narrator from Invisible
Man.  Henry works as a spy we find out, I think this is the first way in which identity is a theme in the book.  Henry being a spy has to play many different roles throughout the novel.  He is constantly entering people’s lives, finding information out and then disappearing.  He has to play the role of the person they want him to be.  This makes it difficult to have a personality and an identity.  I feel as though he was almost lost, and didn’t know himself who he was as a person.  Henry in the end quits his job and ends up with the one thing he knows he wants or the one thing he knows about the most…Lelia.  I think that the ending of this book makes more sense than the ending of Invisible Man where the narrator just goes crazy.  Native Speaker was one of my favorite books from this semester and one that I think will fit into the canon eventually due to its common theme of identity that is also present in books like The Sound and the Fury. 

I am still not too sure how I feel about Native Speaker.  Henry reminds me a lot of the narrator of Invisible Man the more I read.  I feel like because of his job, he doesn’t really know who he is.  If you think about it, if you had to play a lot of different identities and be a different person each time, would you really know who you were? Or for that matter, know how to act when you weren’t on the job?  I don’t think I would.  If I had a job like his and had “act” everyday and move around to different places, and deceive people, I would feel like a bad person and I wouldn’t have a very good sense of self.  I would feel as though I had no identity.  Maybe this is how Henry feels, maybe not.  Lelia seems to have a strong personality.  She knows what she wants for the most part and she does what ever she wants.  Although she does break down during the readings we just did.  Its understandable why she does though, talking about her son, and being hurt that Henry never spoke about it.  On the topic of their son Mitt, Amanda Lea made a really good point in class, that the pile up of his friends could represent all of the secrets in their lives and it eventually suffocated Mitt.  His death is very odd, you hear about people dying in all different ways as we spoke about in class, but have you every really heard of anyone getting suffocated by a group of friends and at such a young age?  I’m not really sure what is going on with kwang yet, we haven’t touched much on him in class.  He plays an important role though, because we keep getting rushed into talking about him and the Professor always says that he’s important and to not forget him.  I’m curious to see what role he plays in the story.  I’m not sure at this point why Henry is telling the story. 

The ending of Sula was different from others that we read.  Usually a book has pretty good closure and there are some questions remaining when finished.   This book however, leaves you with many questions when finished reading.  Sula herself was a very odd character.  The book sort of revolves around her and the mistakes that she makes.  Nel is her best friend and they seem to have a very good connection, they just get each other completely it seems.  Sula didn’t seem that different from others until she and Nel watch chicken little drown.  I thought that was really odd and couldn’t understand why they didn’t try to help.  Later on we find out that it was a sense of tranquility for Nel to watch him drown.  Then Sula watches her mother burn to death.  She doesn’t do anything but almost watches as if it is entertainment.  She too enjoyed watching it.  That sort of ties them together in a weird way.  Nel later gets married to Jude, and we know that Jude is only marrying her just so that he is married.  Then Sula sleeps with Jude.  Most people can’t imagine their best friend sleeping with their husband, and if that did happen, most would probably cut off ties with one or both of them.   They don’t talk for a long time until Sula is dying.  Nel goes to visit her.  I think she does this because she needs closure.  Nel gets Sula and knows that she grew up with her mother being a prostitute and for them sex just made you happy and it wasn’t a big deal.  Knowing this Nel sort of understood but as any other person would she needed closure and to hear it from Sula why she did it.  Sula says that it meant nothing and she didn’t understand why Nel couldn’t get over it.  Nel goes to Sula’s funeral and says goodbye to her.  When Sula dies the town thinks it is this great thing, and that the “witch” is dead.  What they didn’t realize though was that Sula was their way out of bad things, she was the one to blame things on.  Once she dies bad things start to happen again and I think that the town eventually realizes this.   The ending of this book leaves so many questions about Sula and Nel and both of their lives.  It was an interesting book to read, but the ending was frustrating.

I am sort of enjoying this book; I find it very different though.  It sort of reminds me of The Sound and the Fury in some ways.  It reminds me of it because it has some characters that just don’t seem right in the head.  Eva Peace delivers her sons bowel that was life threatening, leaves her children for 18 months with out telling them it would be that long.  She returns with more money than she left with and she lost her leg.  It is believed that she lost her leg on purpose for insurance money.  Later in the readings her son whom she nick named
Plum returns from war with disturbed memories and a heroine addict.  She kills him.  She seems to be a disturbed character.  Another part of the story so far that was weird was when Sula swings the boy into the river and he drowns.  Although she didn’t do it on purpose, it is just weird that nothing was done about it.  The last part of the story that I felt was important was when Hannah takes the nap and dreams about a red dress.  She then dies a little bit later in a fire, while Eva is badly injured.  I thought it was so weird that Sula saw it happen and she wasn’t afraid or upset, she seemed interested in it.  That struck me funny; if I ever saw something like that I don’t how I would get over it.  She didn’t seem to be very upset about the boy, who drowns either, which I thought was odd.