In literature, authors try to transcend the reader to the time period and setting in which the story takes place. They introduce characters, whose depth help make them more relatable to the reader. They make the characters seem believable or convincing by creating backgrounds for the characters and illustrating development/growth within the characters. In certain books, like memoirs and biographies, the characters that are described are real people. Their real life experiences and emotions make it easier for the author to convey the complexity of the character to the reader.
In the memoir, “First They Killed My Father” the author, Loung Ung recounts her experiences living under the control of the Khmer Rouge regime and the Angkar government
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She lived in a middle class family and was completely sheltered from the horrors of the civil wars arising within Cambodia. When the Khmer Rouge soldiers invaded her home, she was quickly thrown into a new way of life that did not include the luxuries she was accustomed to. She describes her physical, mental, and emotional transformations as she is forced to work long hours with very little food. She also is forced to endure the losses of four of her family members (Keav, Pa, Ma, and Geak). Loung’s new environment affects her negatively. The harsh conditions in which she is forced to live, as well as the deaths of some of her family foster Loung’s hatred and rage towards the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot. She makes a promise to herself that she will survive the genocide so that she can kill the people who made her and her family suffer. As Loung witnesses the corruptness of the Angkar and the Khmer Rouge, her anger grows. The text explicitly states, “I am a kid, not even seven years old, but somehow I will kill Pol Pot. I don’t know him, yet I am certain he is the fattest slimiest snake on earth. I am convinced there is a monster living inside his body. He will die a painful, agonizing death, and I pray that I will play a part in it. I despise Pol Pot for making me …show more content…
This quote demonstrates Loung’s mental state after surviving many months in the tyrannical society, led by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge soldiers. Before the genocide, Loung was happy. She was not full of rage or anger. She loved living with her family in Phnom Penh and she had hope for her future. After experiencing life without basic necessities like decent clothing, shelter, and food Loung becomes infuriated by the way she and her family are being treated. She fights for her survival even though she if forced to watch many others die around her. Eventually, after four years of torture, Loung and her remaining family travel to Battambang to meet up with their other relatives. There she begins to heal from the devastating losses she experienced throughout 1975 to 1979. After a few months, Meng (Loung’s older brother) decides to take Loung and his wife Eang to America, where they can start a new life and escape the savagery in Cambodia. In America, Loung immerses herself in the Western culture, to forget about the suffering she had to withstand. No matter how hard she tries she cannot escape the memories of the genocide. After many years of living in America,
His perception of reality changes greatly when he is stripped of his innocence. Despite numerous attempts to comply with the multiple tenets of the revolution, he’s obligated to join the Khmer Rouge as a soldier. Heavily burdened by this task, Arn risks losing his morality and humanity for the sake of survival. He states, “Now I have gun. I feel I am one of the Khmer Rouge. It feels powerful” (112). After months of supressing his will under the reign of the revolutionaries, being on the other side of the battlefield allows him to bask in violence and brutality, using it as a channel to release his tide of emotions involving misused vulnerability, fierce ire, oppression and grief. Arn becomes a killing machine – a clear consequence of the excruciating abuse he suffered. His past shaped his perception of reality whereby his supressed emotions crippled his ability to perceive optimistically. He states, “Long time I been on my own, but now really I'm alone. I survive the killing, the starving, all the hate of the Khmer Rouge, but I think maybe now I will die of this, of broken heart” (110). Arn’s crippling unleashes a plethora of feelings, each more overwhelming than the next. His impulsive retaliation by killing and imposing death only cripples him further by clouding his judgement. He’s caught in a blind rage, unable to feel or think clearly. It’s only after discovering that his sister
To have a good story, there must be good characters. Characters help the reader relate to the plot and struggle of the story, as well as creating a picture of the scenes on each page. But what exactly makes a character? What defines their personalities and relatableness to the reader? The way a character thinks, acts, and views the world are influenced, much like in the real world, by the people and places around them.
When you read, especially fiction, you experience a broad sweep of human life. You gain access to the thoughts of others, look at history through another person’s eyes and learn from their mistakes, something that you otherwise would not be able to experience.
“The Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot’s Regime”. Mtholyoke.edu. 11 May 2005. Web. 7 May 2014.
Daniel Goldhagen (2009) states that in less than four years, Cambodia’s political leaders induced their followers to turn Cambodia’s backwards and regressing society into a massive concentration camp in which they steadily killed victims. Furthermore, a deeper understanding of the Cambodian genocide is provided within Luong Ung’s personal narrative, “First They Killed My Father” (2000). Ung’s memoir is a riveting account of the Cambodian genocide, which provides readers with a personalized account of her family’s experience during the genocide. She informs readers of the causes of the Cambodian genocide and she specifies the various eliminationist techniques used to produce the ideological Khmer vision. Nonetheless, she falls short because
- Why did the author do this? :The author did all this to make the book sound better and make people want to read it and it needs a main character who connects with everyone and the main idea. And the main idea gives the book its main point and it goes in events to make it flow. and it had meaning so it sounds good.
For instance, we don’t even know the narrators name. However, all the other characters are explained in a great amount of detail. First, there is Miss Mandible. She is the teacher and you can tell that she is an experiences and older than many of the other characters and she seems to be sexually attracted to the narrator of the story to the point where he says “Miss Mandible wants to make love to me but she hesitates because I am officially a child.” Then we have Sue Anne Brownlee, a fellow classmate of the narrator who happens to sit next to him in class. She is a very innocent and naïve girl who is also attracted to the narrator. And our last character in the story is the narrator himself. The Author 's writing style depicts the narrator as both 35 and 11 years old but in reality he is actually 35 years old and has been in the army. His wife recently had an affair with another man and he is trying to find himself. He is split between wanting a relationship with a better physical connection or a better emotional
The Khmer Rouge years was a period of time that devastated all of the small country Cambodia, a story that was so well told by Loung Ung about the Pol Pot regime. The Khmer Rouge years was from 1975 to 1979 (http://www.cambodiatribunal.org). The Khmer Rouge, otherwise known as Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), conquered Cambodia for four years. The Khmer Rouge forced people to work in the fields including children. To make matters worse, the people that were forced to work were also malnourished and were living in grim conditions (http://www.wcl.american.edu).
Authors develop characters’ personalities in order to add depth to their story and allow readers to feel more connected to the characters. Beyond this, characterization also allows authors to develop the themes of their stories in a more clear manner. A prime example of this would be in the poem Judith, where the author contrasts Judith and Holofernes’ personalities in order to develop the major themes of heroism and having faith in God.
Although Niang explicitly demonstrates her blatant favouritism towards her actual birth kids, shunning the likes of her stepchildren, some of her nasty traits cannot be avoided by even the most loved of her children. In this case, her violence and impatience. Little Sister, being only a baby and having not seen her actual mother Niang, was understandably uneasy when meeting her for the first time. Not even thinking of letting Little Sister adapt to her new environment, Niang’s impatience at her less than warm welcome from her favourite daughter led her to slap the poor child. She began “beating her daughter in earnest”, with her blows landing “indiscriminately on Little Sister’s ears, cheeks, neck and head”. Such brutality demonstrated by a mother to her daughter shows vividly how Niang couldn’t control her destructive nature, choosing instead to let her exasperation take over.
The Vietnam War caused great destruction in Laos, and so the Lee family migrated to America, after spending a short time in refugee camps in Thailand. After settling in America, Foua gives birth to Lia, who unbeknownst to them will suffer from epilepsy soon after she is born. For four years, little Lia is admitted to hospital seventeen times, after suffering both grand and petit mal seizures. Through miscommunication and a failure to understand each other’s cultural differences, both the parents of Lia, and her American doctors, are ultimately at fault for Lia’s tragic fate, when she is left in a vegetative state.
... Each story has its characters, each character is given its unique personality, identity, and destiny. They are like us, but they live in books. To me, we can now read their stories and use what we read to connect them to what we already knew. Manny, the main character in “Crossing”, was being compared to a monkey tied up with chains, which resembled the loss of freedom for both of them.
The Cambodian Genocide has the historical context of the Vietnam War and the country’s own civil war. During the Vietnam War, leading up to the conflicts that would contribute to the genocide, Cambodia was used as a U.S. battleground for the Vietnam War. Cambodia would become a battle ground for American troops fighting in Vietnam for four years; the war would kill up to 750,00 Cambodians through U.S. efforts to destroy suspected North Vietnamese supply lines. This devastation would take its toll on the Cambodian peoples’ morale and would later help to contribute that conflicts that caused the Cambodian genocide. In the 1970’s the Khmer rouge guerilla movement would form. The leader of the Khmer rouge, Pol Pot was educated in France and believed in Maoist Communism. These communist ideas would become important foundations for the ideas of the genocide, and which groups would be persecuted. The genocide it’s self, would be based on Pol Pot’s ideas to bring Cambodia back to an agrarian society, starting at the year zero. His main goal was to achieve this, romanticized idea of old Cambodia, based on the ancient Cambodian ruins, with all citizens having agrarian farming lives, and being equal to each other. Due to him wanting society to be equal, and agrarian based, the victims would be those that were educated, intellectuals, professionals, and minority ethnic g...
“First they killed my father” is a powerful and touching story. It highlights the horrifying and painful cambodian civil war. It dramatically impact the readers and also informs them about sacrifice, and that it is necessary in hard times.
Marks, Stephen P. "Elusive Justice For The Victims Of The Khmer Rouge." Journal Of International Affairs 52.2 (1999): 691. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 19 Dec. 2011. .