Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews April 1, 2023 March 25, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
The black flag appears in both literal and figurative forms throughout A Gesture Life, each time symbolizing danger. The black flag first appears when Captain Ono decides to use it to signal to Doc Hata when he will come for K. Ono chose the black flag based on Doc Hata’s name. At the time, he went by his full Japanese name, Jiro Kurohata, and kurohata is a Japanese word that translates to “black flag.” Doc Hata’s adoptive family belonged to an ancient lineage of apothecaries who helped villages that had been struck by deadly contagions. The family earned the name Kurohata from the black flag that a village would raise to warn outsiders of the contagion. For this reason, Doc Hata understood Ono’s choice of the flag as a warning of danger—a warning that bore out when soldiers raped and murdered K. In the novel’s present, as Doc Hata witnesses so many people around him suffering, getting injured, and dying, he comes to think of himself as a source of danger, and he imagines raising a figurative black flag to warn others to stay away from him.
Doc Hata’s house, which he has meticulously restored to perfection, symbolizes the high value he places on self-improvement and keeping up appearances. Throughout his thirty years in Bedley Run, Doc Hata has prioritized his own personal and economic development, as well as the establishment of a sterling reputation among his community. Doc Hata made important strides toward both goals when he purchased his Tudor-style home in the fashionable Mountainview neighborhood. For years, he labored until he had restored every inch of the house, and he transformed the grounds by installing an impressive flagstone pool and landscaping every inch of the yard. Through this restoration, Doc Hata showed himself willing to put in effort toward improving his own lot in life. Furthermore, the results of his labor at once elevated the aesthetic of his home and added value to both the property and the neighborhood. Yet Doc Hata’s obsessive maintenance of his house also symbolizes his tendency to displace his negative feelings and guard against hard memories. For instance, when Sunny left his home for the last time, he spackled and painted every surface in her room, as if to erase any trace of her former presence in his life.
Doc Hata has a longstanding fascination with the human heart, which symbolizes for him the place in the material body that houses a person’s immaterial spirit. His curiosity about the heart began during his training as a field medic, when he witnessed a doctor open a man’s chest and massage his heart with bare hands. This experience inspired Doc Hata, both in his philosophy of the heart as a vessel for the human spirit and in his career ambition to become a cardiopulmonary surgeon. Though Doc Hata never pursued more formal medical training, his attachment to the heart persists in his daydreams about saving other people’s lives. When he considers Patrick Hickey’s urgent need for a heart transplant, he imagines performing the operation for himself. And when Renny has a heart attack in Chapter 15, he imagines reaching inside Renny’s chest to massage his heart. In these fantasies, the heart demonstrates Doc Hata’s desire to be someone who can take decisive action and do real good for other people. Ironically, however, such fantasies also remind him of his persistent failure to act decisively according to the dictates of his own heart.
Please wait while we process your payment