The Orphan Master’s Son
Adams Johnson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Orphan Master’s Son, amazingly depicts the disturbing lives of North Koreans and government horrors through its simplistic language with relatable characters. The Orphan Master’s Son takes place in North Korea and revolves around Jun Do, who is the son of an orphan master, but who receives the shame that Koreans place on orphans. Then he enters the military where he learns different fighting tactics and becomes a professional kidnapper for the North Koreans. For his reward, the government assigns Jun Do to a listening position on a fishing boat where he becomes a hero for fighting the Americans with a story that the fishing crew and he invented to keep from getting placed in a prison camp after to one of their crewmates defects. Jun Do then goes to Texas as a translator, where he learns about freedom and other cultures. When the mission fails the government sends him to a camp where Jun Do’s name and identity die.
In the second part of the book, the story starts off with Jun Do having killed the great Commander Ga
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This story starts by describing the destitute lives of the starving North Koreans due to “the flood [that] came… terraces collapsing, earth dams giving, [and] villages cascading into one another” (8). Then, the novel describes the fear that North Koreans have for getting sent to the prison camps and thus they turn on one another to avoid these camps. Causing people to really think about the true meaning of freedom, Johnson halfway through the book has an American, named Wanda, ask Jun Do, “Do you feel free? … Do you know what free feels like?” (154). Through this exchange, its impact has Jun Do and the reader reflect on the true meaning of freedom and throughout this book, the authors develops this
What is freedom? This question is easy enough to answer today. To many, the concept of freedom we have now is a quality of life free from the constraints of a person or a government. In America today, the thought of living a life in which one was “owned” by another person, seems incomprehensible. Until 1865 however, freedom was a concept that many African Americans only dreamed of. Throughout early American Literature freedom and the desire to be free has been written and spoken about by many. Insight into how an African-American slave views freedom and what sparks their desire to receive it can be found in any of the “Slave Narratives” of early American literature, from Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustav Vassa, the African published in 1789, to Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself which was published in 1845. Phillis Wheatley’s poetry and letters and Martin R. Delany’s speech Political Destiny of the Colored Race in the American Continent also contain examples of the African-American slaves’ concepts of freedom; all the similarities and differences among them.
Blaine Harden, former national correspondent and writer for the New York Times, delivers an agonizing and heartbreaking story of one man’s extremely conflicted life in a labor camp and an endeavor of escaping this place he grew up in. This man’s name is Shin Dong-hyuk. Together, Blaine Harden and Shin Dong-hyuk tell us the story of this man’s imprisonment and escape into South Korea and eventually, the United States, from North Korea. This biography that takes place from 1982-2011, reports to its readers on what is really going on in “one of the world’s darkest nations” (back cover of the book), that is run under a communist state and totalitarian dictatorship that was lead by Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and currently lead by Kim-Jong un. In Escape from Camp 14, Shin shows us the adaptation of his life and how one man can truly evolve from an animal, into a real human being.
Written by Margaret K. Pai, the Dreams of Two Yi-min narrates the story of her Korean American family with the main focus on the life journeys of her father and mother, Do In Kwon and Hee Kyung Lee. Much like the majority of the pre-World War II immigrants, the author’s family is marked and characterized by the common perception of the “typical” Asian immigrant status in the early 20th century: low class, lack of English speaking ability, lack of transferable education and skills, and lack of knowledge on the host society’s mainstream networks and institutions (Zhou and Gatewood 120, Zhou 224). Despite living in a foreign land with countless barriers and lack of capital, Kwon lead his wife and children to assimilate culturally, economically, and structurally through his growing entrepreneurship. Lee, on the other hand, devoted herself not only to her husband’s business but also to the Korean American society. By investing her time in the Korean Methodist Church and the efforts of its associated societies, such as the Methodist Ladies Aid Society and the Youngnam Puin Hoe, Lee made a worthy contribution to the emergence and existence of Hawaii’s Korean American community.
The vivid feeling of relief and elation as a result of escaping the clutches of slavery is evident from the analogies and figurative language Douglass uses in the beginning of the passage. Douglass states he struggled to express exactly what significance freedom in the North had on his immediate mental state. However, he manages to use words such as “highest excitement” to present the level of relief he acquired from escaping, giving a connotation of obvious unlimited happiness. He further described such a dynamic feeling to his audience by comparing it to the feeling an “ . . . unarmed mariner [receives] when is rescued by a friendly man-of-war from the pursuit of a pirate.” This analogy not only helps the progression of the description of this relief but it also gives the audience imagery to connect the feeling to. He continued by including a line he previously used in letter to a friend living in New York of feeling as though he escaped “a den of hungry lions”. By including the words “hungry lions” one can see that he is referring to the South, full of slave masters ...
Have you ever thought about what it would be like not to be free? What would it be like not to be able to make choices? What would it be like not to be able to do what you want? It's scary to think about not being free, but even in the world today some people don't even have basic human freedoms. Lois Lowry shows us in her books The Giver and Gathering Blue what it would be like not to have freedom and how important it is that we have it.
1984 demonstrates a dystopian society in Oceania by presenting a relentless dictator, Big Brother, who uses his power to control the minds of his people and to ensure that his power never exhausts. Aspects of 1984 are evidently established in components of society in North Korea. With both of these society’s under a dictator’s rule, there are many similarities that are distinguished between the two. Orwell’s 1984 becomes parallel to the world of dystopia in North Korea by illustrating a nation that remains isolated under an almighty ruler.
The majority of Americans take freedom for granted, and the only way to be appreciative is to have that freedom taken away. For Jim, a runaway slave, freedom was the ultimate attainment. He would risk life and limb for even the slightest chance to be free. For this particular slave, the Mississippi River offers a chance, even if only temporary, to be a free man. Jim develops a fondness of being a free man, only to have it ripped away once again. He vows to buy his family back when he gains his permanent freedom. The Mississippi River allows Jim to experience the feel of freedom.
The detail present in the narrative helps convey the tones of liberation and fear. Douglass recalls the “blessedness of freedom,” of not having to wonder if it will be a day of “life or death,” yet he was able to live and “succeed in reach{ing} New York without the slightest interruption.” Attaining freedom was the highest goal for Fredrick Douglass. As a slave each day he would wake up wondering if he would live to see tomorrow, due to his strength he was able to live on and succeed in reaching the safe state. However, once freedom was attained he felt as though he “had escaped a den of hungry lions” with “money loving kidnappers” causing him to “trust no man.” Douglass feels as though he is prey in this free state where kidnappers are awaiting to make some easy money and take him back to slavery.
In North Korea life was incredibly different, and is still different, from life in America. The residents of North Korea live in extreme poverty, while Kim Jong Il and any member of Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea live as if they were kings; their meals filled with delicacies the citizens of North Korea can only dream of. Although it’s found strange to most in "normal" society, Kim Jong Il is revered as a God, because it is he who gave them all the “luxuries” in North Korea. When in actuality, he is the sole culprit of North Korea’s extreme poverty.
... changed the way Americans viewed freedom in the Nineteenth century. Freedom to them was much more than just being just being able to be seen as equal, they wanted to be physically treated as equal humans. Freedom was about the ability to be a self-reliant, self-governing, and literate individual who was seen and treated as a human. Douglas and Jacobs both showed their readers that being free was a God given right, not something that someone let them earn. Americans were all talk and no action when it came to the statement “all men are created equal.” One should be born free, not born being owned by someone else. Douglas and Jacobs’s slave narratives are haunting, but they caught American’s attention to how badly people wanted to be free. Both of these writer’s knew early on that there was one thing in life that everyone deserved, and that was freedom.
By any measure, The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong, known as Hanjungnok (Records written in silence), is a remarkable piece of Korean literature and an invaluable historical document, in which a Korean woman narrated an event that can be described as the ultimate male power rivalry surrounding a father-son conflict that culminates in her husband’s death. However, the Memoirs were much more than a political and historical murder mystery; writing this memoir was her way of seeking forgiveness. As Haboush pointed out in her informative Introduction, Lady Hyegyong experienced a conflict herself between the demands imposed by the roles that came with her marriage, each of which included both public and private aspects. We see that Lady Hyegyong justified her decision to live as choosing the most public of her duties, and she decided that for her and other members of her family must to be judged fairly, which required an accurate understanding of the her husband’s death. It was also important to understand that Lady Hyegyong had to endure the
Sandy Wilson, the author of Daddy’s Apprentice: incest, corruption, and betrayal: a survivor’s story, was the victim of not only sexual abuse but physical and emotional abuse as well, in addition to being a product of incest. Sandy Wilson’s story began when she was about six years old when her birth father returns home from incarceration, and spans into her late teens. Her father returning home from prison was her first time meeting him, as she was wondered what he looked like after hearing that he would be released (Wilson, 2000, p. 8). Not only was her relationship with her father non-existent, her relationship with her birth mother was as well since she was for most of her young life, cared for by her grandmother and grandfather. When she was told that her birth mother coming to visit she says, “…I wish my mother wouldn’t visit. I never know what to call her so I don’t all her anything. Not her name, Kristen. Not mother. Not anything (Wilson, 2000, p. 4).” This quote essentially demonstrated the relationship between Sandy and her mother as one that is nonexistent even though Sandy recognizes Kristen as her birth mother.
Soon after Papa’s arrest, Mama relocated the family to the Japanese immigrant ghetto on Terminal Island. For Mama this was a comfort in the company of other Japanese but for Jeanne it was a frightening experience. It was the first time she had lived around other people of Japanese heritage and this fear was also reinforced by the threat that her father would sell her to the “Chinaman” if she behaved badly. In this ghetto Jeanne and he ten year old brother were teased and harassed by the other children in their classes because they could not speak Japanese and were already in the second grade. Jeanne and Kiyo had to avoid the other children’s jeers. After living there for two mo...
...ars North Korea and America called it truce, and North and South Korea remained separated. However, the children of North Korea are taught Americans are the enemy, Americans started the war, and North Korea must take their revenge on America. ( ) Since information is repressed, and the children are knowledgeable of nothing else. Thoreau’s claim of inborn sense of right and wrong is disproved. The children of North Korea do not realize the immorality of hatred and seeking revenge, harvesting anger for people they do not even know. They become brain washed to believe this is what is right, and how life should be.
The North Korean regime would have spies in China in order to capture those who were fleeing among the borders to find food or a job, people were easily targeted and brought back in order to force them labor camps. This experience made many of the defectors stop trying but at the same time it made other North Koreans to try harder to not get caught. Many saw that the only way to escape fully was by either giving themselves up to the Mongolian boarder police or find a way to get to South Korea which is not easy even until this day. The South Korean government seems to be very generous by giving these people welfare in order for them to establish themselves in this new and strange country. Something that was shocking is that once the defectors were in South Korea, whenever they would hear bad commentaries towards North Korea and the situations they lived in, they felt offended. There was still something ingrained in them that even after all the lies about their regime and leaders there was still a sense of identity with being fully North Korean. And many believed that the regime would soon collapse allowing them to go back with their families and friends. Demick’s narrative points out how in these six stories involving North Koreans defectors once in South Korea they would experience a massive cultural shock. Many pointed