As June Dewyer has pointed out, Kwang's last image strongly evokes and plays out

the circumstances that lead to Mitt's death.326 Interestingly, it seems that while Henry

witnesses his fallen hero's public humiliation, the images of Kwang, his father, himself,

and his dead son all commingle to become a "wide immigrant's face" that bears the

blows and crushing weight from those established members of the community who police

and self-righteously defend what they think is their own rightful American turf from the

"strangers from a different shore."327 Without question, Henry's half-welcoming the

falling blows and shielding Kwang from the angry crowd is his way of punishing himself

and appeasing the stinging sense of guilt about his involvement in bringing down his

paternal hero he once worshiped. Coming from someone who used to pledge no

allegiance to anyone and professionally work under the cloak of invisibility and

impersonation, this act is a great leap of character that foreshadows his future departure

from the downtrodden life of betrayal and imposture that his sub-rosa vocation has

dictated.

 Yet Henry's action can also be interpreted as his attempt to re-script the deeply

disturbing traumatic incidents of his life that concern the deaths of his loved ones, his son

Mitt and his father, whom he feels he has failed terribly as a father and a son. While

Henry failed Mitt as a parent by not being able to protect him, he also harbored

murderous feelings toward his father and intentionally inflicted pains on him right before

his death. The listless, crushed body of Mitt and the paralyzed, bed-ridden body of

Henry's father, who silently endured Henry's inflammatory words of half-intended

emotional torture, were all helpless like Kwang's, which is also crushed to the ground

and is subjected to the physical and verbal assaults from enraged people.