Outline: Adoption: Introduction: - adoption as means of family structure - adoption as a part of an unhealthy lifestyle, a way of living that influences

your present - importance of complete family, revealed through shattered relationships of Hata and Sunny - as this disables them from living the notion of a complete family - suggests horrors of ill-bred family, and consequences from lack of paternal and maternal figures - contortion of views and values, imposes or is molded by various contorted values or notions - develops Hata as unreliable narrator, shifts compassion to his side - communicates the past, history with filtering shades to handicap his wrongdoings, rectify his wrongs - demonstrate the effects (bad relationships) for the present Thesis: By developing Doc Hata as a man deprived from familial notions, - Lee illuminates the horrors of ill-bred relationships, consequences that destroy the structural notion of relationships and moral upbringings. - Lee suggests that adoption demands a different treatment of an individual, specifically how we are to impose judgment on a character with complicated pasts. Main Point #1: Develop speaker as unreliable, and to some extent, untrustworthy; susceptible to his interpretations - Doc Hata is a complicated man - Results in unreliability o A conscious choice, brought up blatantly in first page, to hide his past, or fabricate some ideals or situations o In my case, everyone here knows perfectly who I am (1) - Doc Hatas situation brings us to question some moral issues that arise from this event, yet we are drawn to his character as a means of empathy for him o Because he lacks love from whole family, we are forced to empathize with his character as means that he doesnt understand in context - Lee triggers various events to develop historical issues and backgrounds, but given the complexity of his character and his adoption, this allows us to feel compassionate for him, as almost his sins are pardonable because he is merely adopted o By being adopted causes compassion to arise, or displaces the audience into a different judgment - Doc Hata leverages or exposes his life in hopes that we as the audience will bring a levitation or pardon to his unforgivable sins o Hata tries to explain the past with distance, as if hes completely different, and because hes adopted, as a man of different backgrounds, we hold certain values against his volition o I, too, had been a difficult child. For me, it was the heady time of adolescence that unmasked and clarified my sense of obligation (72) - Doc Hata, as we develop through the story, is seen to be untrustworthy, or at least susceptible or questionable to certain situations.

Yet, the very act of his life being brought to the exposure of the audience, demands us to view him differently o In our part, we as audience have the obligation to excuse his behavior due to the lack of certain upbringings o I think of them most warmly, as I do my natural parents, but to neither would I ascribe the business of having reared me, for it seems clear that it was the purposeful society that did so, and really nothing and no one else. (72) Therefore, Lee emphasizes the theme of adoption as a means of developing the narrator, as well as adding layers to the very character of Doc Hata, allowing readers to know that he, indeed, is not a character that we should trust, or that he has added creative license to his novel o

Main Point #2: As a means of communicating larger history - by shedding light on the past, he stains pages of history with marks of a man o but because history has to be accurate and not exactly made up, thus, an unreliable character must be utilized o this allows Lee to decide whether on his part to embellish certain events or not - the past history, especially cruel events, are sensitive and taunting to bring up; hence, Lee must approach such topics with wary and caution, not stepping on any lines that trigger or detonate controversy or polemical issues o Hatas exposure of his life in the military to us is a frame which opens the readers to a single interpretation, albeit there being multiple frames open for discussion o Having built on the notion that he is unreliable, we can come to state that he, for one, is not the final say on history - The theme of adoption ties in because it helps us to realize that adoption strips away familial notions or upbringings harmful to a personal life o Adoption disintegrates the various upbringings that normal families can experience o Adoption allows a character or a person to decide his or her own fate, thus justification can happen, or at least or their part be justified because of their own means; the question of ethics and creative license in that sense - Because Doc Hata was raised in a shattered family, or relationships that could not be mended by the ligation of simple familial conflicts, Hata lacks the meaning of mutuality or consensus o This causes him to become a man who blindly yields, willful blindness as they call it o Main Point #3: As a theme to demonstrate how past can influence the present, or actions - Doc Hata brought up Sunny, trying to bring her up in what he believes to be the best family o having the impulse to shield her from criticism and unhappiness, and feeling (87) - He doesnt want others to think that this family is forced, that this family is a family comprised of people who dont belong together - He, by his own part, wants to ensure that there is nothing that could be detected or everything that could happen naturally in a family o I dont see the reason. Youre the one who wanted her. You adopted her. But you act almost guilty,, as if shes someone you hurt once, or betrayed,

and now youre obliged to do whatever she wishes, which is never good for anyone, much less a child (60) Because he lacked such things, he wanted to please Sunny in his own means possible, that she can live the life he imagined to dream of o Thus begins the recurring cycle of a broken family, as demonstrated by her being a single mother o I dont need you, [] I never needed you. I dont know why, but you needed me. But it was never the other way. (96) o leads to disaster; and it was then that I wished she were just another girl or woman to me, no longer my kin or my daughter or even my charge, and I made no sounds as I grimly descended.. (116) Opens to plausible deniability, o the act of knowing that something is going never happen, but simply denying it because it may or may not happen with a single question in mind o denial in chains of command, knowing whats going to happen but denying truth o passivity or thoughtlessness as banality The notions of such issues stems from the origin of a shattered dream, a ending that can never be dictated on his part Having questioned his past and backgrounds, he does not fully come with pride and identity of a Korean He cannot therefore, rightfully, adopt the voice or image of a Korean o He, though the only child of a hide tanner and a rag maid (257), comes to power