Year of Impossible Goodbyes written by Sook Nyul Choi follows Sookan and her family through the difficult history of Korea. Throughout the book Sookan goes through multiple influential experiences that change her philosophically and emotionally. These experiences persuade different aspects of Sookan's being. Along with the struggle of war she faces the struggle of finding the path to eternal peace and wisdom.
At the beginning of her journey Sookan experienced great loss, but also the great gain of unseen wisdom. Sookan's grandfather had become very ill after his last remaining speck of peace was chopped down by the Japanese. On his death bed, he asked to see Sookan and Inchun (her brother). Grandfather was no longer the beacon of peace, he
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Throughout Sookan's life her mother had excluded her from the Japanese school, a torture no one can live through. After her life had turned 170 degrees after her grandfather's death and the sock girls capture, but school turned it the ten degrees more. On her walk to the jail like school with Aunt Tiger she wanted another vision, a vision to keep her on the ground and her feet under her. A vision of Grandfather. She rubbed and rubbed her eyes until she saw stars...and the Buddha with her grandfather's face. The Korean children laughed while the Japanese soldiers tried to move the stone Buddha. The Japanese were exhausted and giving up without Grandfather throwing a single blow. This instance in Year of Impossible Goodbyes gave Sookan the next hand hold in the the wall of wisdom. This vision showed her that victory and power does not come from the fight but the resistance mentally. A quote that supports this example from the book is, "They looked at each other, then at the students, and finally, broke out into laughter...They took off their swords and guns and threw them by the side of the road." (67). This quote shows how victory was won in the favor of the Buddha without a single fatality. It shows this because the soldiers put down their weapons with no order from the emperor they took off their weapons because they were beaten with patience and wisdom. The definition of wisdom is the knowledge of …show more content…
She was taken by the Russians after being tipped off by their so called guide. Sookan and Inchun were alone against a world that hated their existence. Sookan was alone with no one to protect her while she had to protect her brother. They had been barely surviving and had finally found a place to find food, a market. On the hill outside the market they saw a woman with a squirming child on her back. Sookan first thought how thankful the child should to be to have his mother, but then she realized the horror and difficulty the child was putting the woman through. Sookan discovered that not everything is as it seems. Before her mother was taken all she thought about was how she felt without worrying about her mother. Sookan discovered that Mother was not a rock, but a human being with feelings. Sookan discovered that few find, that people feel more than what they put fourth and everyone has feelings that they deserve to share. A quote that shows her gain of knowledge is, "I went up and offered to watch her baby. The woman looked us over, thought about it for a while, and then stopped to put down her basket. She untied the wide strip of cotton material that she used to tie the baby to her body." (140). This quote shows her gain of wisdom or understanding because a mother would not give her child to any random stranger there has to be trust between her and the caregiver. Unlike the average mother the baby's mother gave him to a random stranger that
In her article, “‘This Is the End of the World’:The Black Death,” which was on the New York Times best-seller list in 1978, writer and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Tuchman reports about the devastating impact of the Black Death in Europe from 1347 to 1350. [Summary] Tuchman starts her article describing the arrival of the deadly plague in October 1347 brought by Genoese trading ships docked at the Sicilian port of Messina and its effects it has on Europe’s population (257-263). [Paraphrase] Tuchman describes about the terrible epidemic that is speculated to have emerged from China and how it is continuously spreading throughout Europe killing countless number of people (258). Tuchman names out a long list of European cities and how
The book I choose for the book talk is “Dead and gone” written by Norah McClintock, this book talks about a murder mystery of Tricey Howard. The main character of the story is Mike, an orphan whose parents got killed in a car crash. He lives with his foster father named John Riel, who was once a police officer. During a swim meet, Mike see Mr.Henderson is staring at a girl name Emily without stopping. Then he informs Emily about what happened in the community center. However, as return Emily blackmails Mike to investigate Mr. Henderson. During the investigation, Mike finds nothing suspicious, but realize Emily is the daughter of Tricey Howard. Tricey Howard was murdered years ago, but the police still haven’t find the real killer. At the meantime,
Pavel’s recurring kindness and openness to the mother allowed the mother to move forward but with the removal of Pavel her crutch is snatched from her and she falls. When the gendarmes arrived it is made clear that “this time the affair was not [as] terrorizing to her” (pg. 74). With Pavel’s arrest the mother was stronger in her understanding of the truth. She knew that it was necessary, but her strength did not last. “When the police had led Pavel away, the mother sat down on the bench, closing her eyes began to weep quietly” (pg. 75). The mot...
...g to their religious beliefs. When the Genji warrior Yorimasa suffered a grievous would to his knee, he asked his retainer Watanabe no Chojitsu Tono to cut off his head. Tono, Yorimasa's retainer, refused to do so until Yorimasa had killed himself. Whereafter "Yorimasa turned toward the west, chanted ten Buddha-invocations in a loud voice, and spoke his last sad words: 'No flower of fortune has blessed a life resembling a long-buried tree--yet how bitter is the thought that all should end like this.' Without another word, he thrust the tip of his sword into his belly and fell forward, his vitals pierced.(p.157)" Tono took his head, fastened it to a rock and sank it in the Uji River. Like Yorimasa does, it is imperitive at the moment of death if one wants to reach the Pure Land, that he completely forget his current life and pray towards the Amida Buddha in the west.
The wars, the victories, the defeats and deaths arose from the warrior’s duty to the Buddhist Law. These warriors lived their duty and this is reflected through the tales that illustrate actions that include loyalty and respect towards other warriors.
Throughout the book Year of impossible Goodbyes Sookan changes in Responsibility. Amongst war Sookan was driven to keep the sock girls on track. "Captain Narita came by for a second inspection. He said he wanted to make sure that we were all working as hard as we could serve"(Choi 51) Neverless this situation changed Sookan, now she knows that you have to work hard. Also After grandfather died, mother was depressed and Sookan was compelled to take care of her. "It has been days since mother has spoken"(48) In this situation She realized that sometimes she will have to care for her mother. Finally, when she was compelled to take care of her brother as a result of her mother did not make it across the border. "Inchun was still crying. I stopped
Sookan changes in many ways throughout the book Year of Impossible Goodbyes when crossing the 39th parallel, when she communicated with the Russian no matter the risks, and when she attends school. Sookan became much more responsible with Inchun when crossing the 38 parallel. She acted as his mother. When they were passing the parallel "'Go Inchun!' I urged. 'Flatten yourself out like a snake and slide through, then keep running. I'll be right behind you'" (Choi 164). In the quote Sookan let Inchun go fist she she knew he would make it across. Throughout the whole entire chapter she also fed him watched him sleep incase of danger. Sookan become more responsible when she asked the Russian where her mother was. "I asked him once again, 'Can
Fahrenheit 451 is a book which tells about the future going to happen. The main character is this book is, Montag, a 30 years old firefighter. He then meets a young lady called Clarisse. She is only 17 years old and also a crazy girl. Montag is married and his wife name is called, Mildred. She has accidentally drugged herself and almost died. Montag doesn't know why she is doing this and also he isn't that happy with her as in marriage life. He feels that his life is changed after meeting this lady, Clarisse.
This was the very first time in Sookan’s life that she had been separated from Inchun, as he was always her “shadow”. This would also be the first time that she would be speaking Japanese, because she had only heard it up until that point. Mother was very reluctant in allowing her children to go off to school: “I knew Mother had hoped the war would end before Inchun and I had to go to the Japanese school” (Choi 64). This quote also represents how Mother has a little bit of hope for the future, although Grandfather lost his when his tree was cut down. Although this scene was courageous of Sookan, she became much more brave and motherly in the following
Sookan changed to from being a minimum bravery to being tremendously brave. She first looked at straight at Captain Narita without breaking eye contact and a quote from the book is that, “Except for Grandfather’s and mine, everyone's eyes were lowered in silence.” (Choi 27) This has importance because it shows that Sookan isn't very afraid of Captain Narita’s power to hurt them. Also, in chapter 5, when Sookan goes to the second day of Japanese school, she's brave and not thinking of the consequences of what may happen if she claps to a statement of helping the Americans win the war, and to kill them first, she quotes, “I clapped my hands in delight. I couldn't help myself.” (81). This is important accordingly because she agrees with the boy
Over the course of Year of Impossible Goodbyes a lot happens to Sookan that makes her change. The first thing that happens to Sookan which is probably the most significant change is when the Japanese authorities feel that Sookan’s family is getting too rebellious. So the Japanese cut down the family's tree, which they care deeply about. Another way Sookan changes is she is allowed to rub her grandfather’s feet. When rubbing his feet, she finds how severely tortured he was by the Japanese. The last major change Sookan goes through is when her guide betrays Sookan and rats her family out to the communist authorities. By the end of the book, Sookan realizes that life is hard and that if you want something you have to take control and get what you want.
In the book Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become, Barbara Fredrickson discusses the biological aspects of love and the connections that people can have through interactions with each other. Fredrickson aims to increase the reader’s knowledge of how love works and she even tries to change the way people view love. She wants people to take a more static and scientific approach to connections between people rather than the emotional mystery that people view it as now. Sherry Turkle on the other hand wrote the book titled Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other where she tries to uncover how human interactions and connections work by observing human responses
...y prayer and the sword” (pg. 95), shows that the combination of Buddhist religion and physical strength is a sufficiently powerful combination to ward off evil.
Death is inevitable; if you want happiness in life, try A. Margaret Atwood, the author of “Happy Endings,” uses six separate short stories to depict outcomes with different scenarios. The author practices the use of flash fiction which adds to the entirety of each version. Though this short story has portions of unusual context, the content can teach a reflection on life. As the reader analyzes all six versions, the gender roles are evident as the story progresses. Atwood starts the short story by introducing the two main characters, John and Mary, and then proceeds to tell a variety of options as to who they are and what happens to them. In Margaret Atwood’s short story, “Happy Endings,” the central theme of fiction provides several different
Her mother and her lover, both glad to her take her in to clean up and rest, but before the day’s end her mother tells her she needs to return to her father. Fully aware of the extent of her ex-husband 's brutality she still insists that her own daughter must go back for fear of prosecution by lawyers. Nieve sums up the emotional betrayal by her mother “After my mom covered me with kisses and hugged me tight, she said that if the lawyers didn 't give her permission, she couldn’t let me stay the night because she’d sign a paper that very clearly said she wouldn’t do that. Never in my life did I imagine I’d ever hear my mother say something like that” (75).This statement shattered Nieve’s hopeful view of her mother as her saviour. And with this betrayal she began the learn the true nature of man’s fear and strength. At the age of just nine, she had no trust in her parents, she only had herself. Shortly after this blow, agents of the CDR take Nieve to an orphanage disgussed as a boarding school. Her mother and father again battle for custody of Nieve, but as far as Nieve is concerned, she is an orphan. This point of view is shared by Nieve when her mom comes to discuss Nieve’s potential adoption “Norma is the woman who wants to adopt me. My mother was ashamed because she never imagined the school would ever ask her to come in to talk about such a thing. ‘How can a girl