Coming Of Age In Chinatown Essay

Chuanyue Xia
Ltea142
Final Paper
Prof. Benoit
06/15/2018
Coming of Age in Chinatown:
The Unsinkable Human Spirit
Do you remember a distinct period in your life during which you "came of age"? In some cultures and for some people, this may be a more distinct time period and for others it may be more general, but most people remember a time period during which they went from being an adolescent to being an adult. While for many people the time period during which they came of age was a difficult period of adjustment and awkwardness, Chinatown by Oh Jung Hee is a story about the author coming of age in conditions of poverty, where horror is an everyday occurrence and death is a constant companion. However, despite the fact that many of the events

described in Hee's story are extremely unsettling, Hee makes her story not about these events or even the setting in which these events took place, but about her own coming of age amid this dark confusion.

The people of Hee's village deal with crippling poverty and hunger, and struggle to feed their families. They deal with joblessness, and those who do find work deal with terrible working conditions or jobs that are otherwise distasteful, like prostitution. They deal with pollution and bedbugs and death, and too many horrors to mention. However, based on Hee's presentation, the story seems less about the terrible conditions which all the people must face, but rather about the fact that the people persevere and overcome these challenges, even as they are tortured by them. Chinatown by Oh Jung Hee is a coming of age story which describes the author's experience of learning about birth, life, and death while living in a Korean shanty

town, in which the author makes the case that human life goes on despite tremendous adversity, horrors, and filth.
Although Oh Jung Hee describes death all around her in the slum she grew up in, she also describes what birth is like in this filthy place, pointing out that life continues in even the harshest of environments. The juxtaposition of life and death throughout Hee's short story Chinatown is one theme that makes the story both interesting and, at times, difficult to read. One example of birth that Hee remembers is a time when the cat they adopted has kittens. The cat had been adopted in order to protect their dwelling from the rampant pests inside their shanty town (57). This fact reminds readers of the filthy life of adversity her family experienced in the Korean slum. The cat became pregnant and gave birth to kittens, which it then promptly devoured (57-58). This is an experience which might horrify many children, but the author states the narrative as a simple fact, and then quickly moves on with her tale. This seems to suggest that such horrors were commonplace for her during her childhood. Furthermore, this close juxtaposition of birth and death is a theme that is repeated throughout the story. Even the mother cat seemed extremely troubled by this experience, and it "howled" after killing its own kittens (58). This shows that even animals could be aware of the terrible situation in the shanty town, and even animals felt the suffering that many readers may feel even while only reading this story. The author's memory of her grandmother wrapping the kittens' heads for disposal is particularly moving and disturbing, and shows the level of callousness that was necessary to deal with the everyday tragedy that many living in the shantytown must have dealt with. However, the author, her family, and presumably even the cat continued surviving after that experience, and life went on. According to Quora (2014), a mother cat may eat her kittens if 1) she needs to eat a few kittens in order to produce milk for the others, 2) she is severely malnourished and needs them for sustenance, or 3) she is feeling especially "stressed and unsafe." Since the mother cat ate all her kittens, it was not to produce milk for the remaining kittens. However, either of the other two explanations fit. The juxtaposition of birth and death in the case of the litter of kittens paints a picture of the resource scarcity in town; when any animal is driven to eat its own children it is a horrifying, extreme example of how bad conditions could get. The subsequent howling of the cat seems to suggest that the cat knows what it did, and suffers severe emotional distress as a result. Furthermore, the stress associated with living in the shanty town may have led the mother cat to kill her young and later regret it. Although none of the kittens survive, the author's experience of the birth of these kittens serves as one example of the continuing - if malnourished and twisted beyond recognition - cycle of life in the shanty town, despite the tragic, adverse nature of the life being described.
Another example of birth found within the novel is also linked closely with death, in that Hee's mother giving birth coincides closely with her grandmother's death, once again juxtaposing life and death and showing the tragic nature of life's perseverance within the Korean slum.

Grandmother's actual passing, like the birth and death of the kittens, seems understated in the story. However, it inspires one of the few expressions of true sorrow in the story, when Hee's mother begins "crying while caressing Grandmother's clothing chest" (62). This shows that the people in the story do not lack the ability to feel emotional pain and suffering. Furthermore, Hee conducts her own sort of burial ritual, burying some precious items of her Grandmother's and visiting them as a way of paying her respects (62-63). Readers may get the sense that Hee cares for her grandmother by noting the author's close attention to many details about the old woman throughout the story. However, this may be the most sure expression of the author's caring for the woman. According to Bronna D. Romanoff (1998) in her article "Rituals and the Grieving Process," Hee's silent burial may have been an expression of "disentfranchised grief," or grief that Hee did not feel comfortable expressing in any other way (710). Hee's lack of expression of grief over her grandmother's death while she was with her family could have been because she did not see sharing grief with her family as an appropriate outlet for her

grief. This may have been because she had been taught not to express her grief, or because she felt it would worsen the burden of grief on her family members. Just after Grandmother passes, Hee's mother gives birth to her eighth child (64). This juxtaposition of birth and death reminds readers that even as people die in the harsh environment of the slums, other people are born in the midst of these tragic conditions. This birth is presented in the context of great pain felt by Hee's mother and "A sense of helplessness and despair" felt by Hee herself (64). While the helplessness and despair felt by the author may have been because of her mother's pain while giving birth, the timing of Hee's presentation of this information suggests that the feeling came over her after the child was already born. This might lead readers to believe that Hee's feelings of helplessness and despair have more to do with the thought of bringing another life into the terrible conditions in the shanty town, or the thought of stretching her family's already-limited resources further to take care of another individual. Although birth is shown to be a part of life in Hee's neighborhood, birth is not enshrined in a manner similar to the way it is often viewed by families who have more resources. Instead, the author mentions the pregnancy and the birth in the context of the pain and inconvenience they cause, and juxtapositions the birth with the death of the Grandmother to show that life and death are two sides of the same coin. Birth seems to be just one way that life continues to endure despite the terrible circumstances in the Korean slums.
While the process of bringing new life into the slums is shown to be painful, inconvenient, and rather ugly, the author personifies the slums themselves, which are shown to be both an oppressive force and a familiar, nurturing presence in Hee's life, once again demonstrating that life endures in even the harshest climates. When Hee first arrives in the slums, she sees them as an unwelcoming, uninhabitable place. This is demonstrated through the author's question upon her arrival, "was this really our new home" (53)? Furthermore, upon looking at some of the dewllings, the author writes "no one could have lived there" (53). This shows first of all that many of the buildings occupied by the families in her neighborhood were not originally dwellings. However, it also seems to suggest that the slums themselves seemed foreign and unwelcoming to her, at least at first. As time goes on, however, Hee is shown that her family and others can make a life in the slums, inhospitable though they are. The first time Hee describes the slums themselves, she does so in her introduction to the setting of the story. She describes the coal dust that would cake everything, and the bombed out buildings lining the streets which had been destroyed in the war (49-50). Although this setting seems inhospitable to the reader, the author immediately identifies with this setting as her home. At this point, early on in the story, the reader reacts as the author reacted when she first arrived. The fact that the author introduces the setting to readers by presenting it as her home may help readers to question their perception of what "home" really means. Then, later on in the story, the author revisits the setting of the story as she was first introduced to it, showing readers that when she first came to this