Broken Glass Floating Essay

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Recommended: Cambodian genocide similar to the Holocaust

In today’s society not many people realize that they are thankful to wake up and live another day. Just imagine being lost at night in an area you are completely unfamiliar with. Imagine it being cold, and you having no clothing. You don’t have any money and you are starving. Now, all your ears hear are the screams of the one’s around you being killed. To add to the torture, you are unable to control your next move, nor the next. There is constant death, starvation, and suffering happening all around you, but you cannot do anything to help the situation besides fending for yourself to survive. This is the devastating and cruel world that Chanrithy Him’s When Broken Glass Floats introduces to its readers.
The title, When Broken Glass Floats, is a Cambodian proverb which means “a time when evil triumphs over good.” Him describes from beginning to end her intense journey for survival during her life in Cambodia under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. She starts the book off with her peaceful life at home with her large, loving, and loyal family. The peacefulness quickly does a one-hundred and eighty degree turn once the Khmer Rouge takes over Him’s home land and the readers are introduced to the torture that she experiences. As Him and her family anxiously awaited in some refugee camps for their turn to migrate elsewhere on the globe, Him’s story takes her readers through the disease filled labor camps and abusive living conditions.
I believe the title of the book has a deeper meaning than just its’ literal translation of “a time when evil triumphs over good.” Personally, I feel as if the title of the book symbolizes the fight for survival that Him experienced. When Broken Glass Floats, to me, symbolizes that even though Him’s famil...

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...o save these refugees because many of them were still terribly ill and still suffered from starvation. Many of the refugees that had lost family members, including Chanrithy, were emotionally drained due to the horrific events that they had witnessed during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. Sadly for many of the refugees, the experience of being part of genocide alone was psychologically devastating. Chanrithy was now living without parents due to the genocide, and development as a human now became an obstacle for her due to the fact that she lost half of her family. Cambodians living today have made the post-genocide effects clear as problems regarding the topic still linger. The refugees that witnessed the horrific four-year span of killings are growing old, and hopefully with the passing away of the witnesses the effects of the disastrous event will slowly fade away.

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