Today just about everyone that is normal wants two be different and almost everyone that is different want to be call normal to some degree. Chang Rae Lee points this out in Aloft as his main character, Jerry, is tired of being of the majority. When Chang Rae Lee talks about Jerry, the reader finds out that he is a middle class white male that has just entered retirement. Lee picks a normal character of the majority to emphasizes the want for something exotic. Jerry was living the picturesque American dream. He ran the family business that his father owned before him, had two children, one of which took over the business, a house, car, and a good future ahead of him. All of these things were the norm that is accepted by society.
While Jerry liked to live a normal life he had an interested in women of different races and background. The way that Lee describes the women of different background is that they all give Jerry a different ride in life. It is almost like women of different origin help Jerry escape from his normal life.
Jerry’s first wife Daisy was Korean. He described her in two main ways but both of them were in terms of being different. One way that Jerry describes Daisy in her beautiful, small Asian features and how they were not like those of white, European girls. These differences made her that much more beautiful to him. In a way these fixations on the physical differences may be why Jerry did not see why Daisy was losing her mind. Jerry’s girlfriend after Daisy died, Rita, also had her fair share of problems with Jerry during their relationship. Rita left Jerry for reasons he was not too sure and for anther man. It is possible that again Jerry was ignoring the sign that said she wanted something else because he was too focused on his exotic beauty.
This thinking of differences presents two problems. One, what is normal for one group of people is not the same as for another group of people. Many times people forget when dealing with other ethnicities that things that seem typical and acceptable by one person might be not acceptable by another person. Two, going to different ethnic groups to escape from normalcy, only points out the differences between the two groups. Jerry is not helping eliminate the differences between the two, but is establishing the differences.
While understanding and participating with different cultures is a good thing. Understanding cultures allows people to develop interests while accepting differences. Jerry is looking at it from the perspective of looking at the stereotypes. It does not seem like he is really interested in the full culture, just in bits. Accepting one part of a culture and not everything really does not make a person understand the culture better. Lee is pointing out modern day form of racism in a way; by saying that only parts of a culture are acceptable and other are taboos. This does not progress races to come together, instead it makes races more distant.
