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.