Character Analysis: Doc Hata

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Casey Levis Wes Miller EN104 4/1/12 The Never-Ending War It is often believed that what happens in the past stays in the past, and it should never affect the present-day. However, Lee contests this exact idea with a deep insight into the life of a man known as Doc Hata. Doc is a well-established Korean man who was adopted and raised in Japan, and eventually made his way to the suburbs of New York in a town called Bedley Run. Lee successfully exposes the dissonance between the life Doc leads now and the life he lead before moving to New York. Though to every person residing in Bedley Run Doc seems to be the “primary citizen,” Lee suggests that his life is actually a desperate attempt to amend his past when he was a medic in the Japanese…show more content…
The importance of this is seen on page 234, when K observes Doc, and presumably says to Doc: “'You are a Korean' (234).” Even though he does indeed speaks the language, he replies by telling her that he was born and raised in Japan, and therefore he is Japanese despite the language he grew up learning. The fact that he was adamant about receiving a young Japanese girl to start his own family makes it obvious he is trying to bring the figure of K back into his life. It is the guilt that he feels for failing K that provokes him to give Sunny the stable life he knew he was more than able to provide for her; the kind of life he knew he would be able to provide for K if she had lived. Doc names his medical supply store after his daughter Sunny, to remind himself of who he was when he first met K: a medic. Sunny seems to be a direct parallel of K for Doc. Doc attempted to move out of Japan and forget the war, to retire in a picturesque town, but brought within him everything he physically left behind. The war was over but it still existed within him, and K was gone but he brought her back to life with the adoption of Sunny. He arrived in New York with no title, but soon adopted “Doc” as a nickname and runs his own medical supply store, both a clear, everyday reminder of his previous title in the war, with…show more content…
When Sunny came to the decision to have the abortion, it was one that had to happen overnight, without a nurse since Sunny had gone past the allotted time to have an abortion, nearing full term. When the doctor is convinced to do the procedure for Doc regardless, Doc insisted that he be the one to stand in for the doctors nurse. The act of helping in the procedure is seen as Doc's way of making sure the abortion goes correctly, since the only other abortion he experienced in his past is the one of K, done gruesomely wrong. Doc had been told upon meeting K that she was pregnant, but he did not want to believe her to be so. The only way he comes to believe is by seeing the “tiny, elfin form” that the men had cut out of her body during her death (305). Doc had been trained in the war on how to do such surgical procedures (343), so he had the capabilities to give K the abortion she needed and could have done it without doing harm to K. Instead, he let her baby die at the hands of other men, the very men that killed K too. As with every other way he failed K, Doc tries to be forgiven for this by giving Sunny the abortion she needs the right way. This is Doc's only way to correct what K had to go through- through Sunny. Every change, every attempt Doc makes to start a new life has it's melancholy, for what he left behind still remains a part of him in his daughter, job, and in his name. What Doc never seemed
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