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First They killed My Father is a Memoir written by Loung Ung; it details her story of surviving the Cambodian genocide. Loung, now a grown woman, was but five years old at the start of the narrative. The Cambodian genocide took place from 1975 to 1979. During this time more than two-million Cambodians perished due to torture and extreme starvation. This story spans her adolescent life from age five to around the age of nine. Her account begins at her home in Phnom Penh, the Cambodia capital city. Here, she and her family lived a comfortable life being that they belonged to the middle class. Her father, Sem Im Ung, worked for the Cambodian Government. He was able to support the family with any means that he could to make sure they had nice …show more content…
clothes and adequate education. Loung’s life of comfort would soon take a turn for the worst when Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, gave orders to overtake and evacuate Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. Unbeknownst to her, this was Loung’s last moments of childhood before she was thrust into a world of atrocities. Her greatest motivations to survive the Khmer Rouge killing fields were: her animosity and resentment towards the Khmer Rouge and Angka, revenge, and the need to avenge her father’s death. Loung Ung and her family, like many others, were declared unclean so to speak by the Khmer Rouge.
Anyone who came into contact with western influences did not fall under the acceptable view of returning to” year zero”. This prompted the relocation of her and her family under orders of Angkar. Angkar, also known as Angka, is not one singular person or being; it is an idea similar to religion. Angka is a generalized idea made by Pol Pot, who was the leader of the Khmer Rouge. Every action carried out by the Khmer Rouge was in direct correspondence with the idea of this greater being of supremacy. When Loung Ung’s journey begins, she doesn’t quite understand the idea of ‘Angka’; but by the end of her experience she is all too familiar with the abhorrent nature of the Khmer Rouge. Fairly quickly Loung learns the ways of the Angka. She learns to feel inconceivable hatred from the acts that are carried out under the ruling of Angka. “The Angkar has taught me to hate so deeply that I now know I have the power to destroy and kill (Pg. 105).” Her hatred dims the ever-growing grief inside of her for her family and for those around her. An example of this hatred replacing her grief occurs when she stumbles upon a random dead body. Being that everyone was dressed the same she could not tell whether it was a civilian or a Khmer Rouge soldier. Her feelings of hatred help her on her journey so she decided it ‘must’ be a soldier and is therefore not mourning the death nor is she sorry. "I do not in fact know if the body is a civilian or a soldier. Thinking of the body as a civilian makes me think of Pa too much. It is easier to feel no pity for the dead if I think of them as all Khmer Rouge. I hate them all. Holding on to my hate for the Khmer Rouge also allows me to go on living the mundane details of life (Pg. 192).” In one camp that Loung and her sister Chou stayed at, they had a moment to speak of their father’s death. Loung regrets not being able to help him be stronger like
he did constantly for her. Loung promises her sister that she would one day give Pol Pot a “painful, agonizing death” (Pg. 108). This hate festers inside of her and by the end of her journey she revels in the thought of getting her revenge against Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, and Angka. The theme of revenge also branches off from the hatred towards the Khmer Rouge. Loung’s hatred in a sense is helping to keep her alive. Throughout the story, she experiences loss after loss in her family and to those around her. Surviving these could make you assume that she would be sad and feel great loss; however, her reaction to these events result in rage towards Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, and Angka. She began this journey focusing on her circumstances and how they can and cannot be changed. She uses her anger to persevere as a source of strength. For example, Loung is told by her parents to be quiet and not draw attention to herself in the camps, this makes her a prime example for the other girls’ in the camp to take out frustration on her. She uses this built up anger to persevere. “At first, I do nothing and take their abuse silently, not wanting to attract any attention to myself. Each time I fall, I dream of breaking their bones. I have not survived this much to be defeated by them (Pg. 126).” When it got to the point of needing to physically defend herself. Loung was able to gather her built up anger and use it in her defense against another girl much larger than she. My anger makes me feel six feet tall, and I lunge at her with my body, knocking her to the ground . . . I cannot stop. I want to see her dead. "Die! I hate you! I am going to kill you!" My small fingers wrap themselves around her throat again, trying to squeeze out her life. I hate her. I hate them all (Pg. 126). Her anger is a form of strength; it is her only hope to defend herself. “In my head, I make a list of all the wrongs done to me. I will make them suffer twice the blows I've suffered by their hands (Pg. 127).” She tries to defend her anger explaining that she “need[s] the new memories that make me angry to replace the old ones that make me sad. My rage makes me want to live just to come to back and take my revenge (Pg. 128).” Sem Im Ung, Loung’s Father, played a major role in her survival of the Cambodian genocide. Although only five, her relationship was much closer with her father than that of her mother which is usually the other way around. Her father thought she wasn’t just a nuisance, he thought she was witty and clever. She would find herself in a bad situation, which her mom saw as acting out and unrefined; her father, however, would see it as cunning and resilient. “Pa always defends me — to everybody. He often says that people just don't understand how cleverness works in a child and that all these troublesome thing I do are actually signs of strength and intelligence. Whether or not Pa is right, I believe him. I believe everything Pa tells me (Pg. 4).” Because of his trust and encouragement of her, Loung was able to utilize these memories and never doubt her intelligence and resilience. Even after the devastation of the Khmer Rouge taking her father away, she remembers him as a positive being rather than dwelling on the negative. The best example of Loung using her father’s encouragement is later in the story after she escapes when she is living with her host family. She gets into a heated argument with the host mother but instead of escalating it she hears her father’s voice calming her and soothing her. Although this new mother doesn’t show her the love she longs for, she knows what that love feels like; “Pa loved me and believed in me… I do possess the one thing I need to make something of myself one day: I have everything my Pa gave me (Pg. 183)”. Overall, Loung Ung survived the Khmer Rouge killing fields during the Cambodian genocide by adapting and using any strength she could to overcome the obstacles that came about. Her hate towards the Khmer Rouge was used to fuel her energy and power in dire situations. She used her need for revenge as an end goal to keep going without dwelling on herself. Revenge also helped displace her feelings of grief and misery. The need to avenge her father’s death was a key element of motivation. Vengeance kept her true to herself; she knew exactly what her father would have wanted in every situation. The constant reminder to always be the clever young girl who was able to get in and out of any situation kept her hopeful in a situation with no hope. The atrocities committed in the Cambodian genocide were inconceivable; to have lived through such a challenging period of history in her adolescent years and survived to tell her story is remarkable. Some may say that Loung Ung is lucky; but luck isn’t a part of genocide. Genocide is meticulous and shows no mercy, Loung showed great amounts of mental strength in a world she barely knew
Between 1975 and 1979, Pol Pot-the leader of the Khmer Rouge followed Maoist communism, which they thought they could create an agrarian utopia. Agrarian means that the society was based on agriculture. They wanted all members of society to be rural agricultural workers and killed intellectuals, who had been depraved by western capitalist ideas. A utopia means a perfect society. This idea went to extremes when The Khmer Rouge resumed that only pure people were qualified to build the revolution. They killed Cambodians without reasons by uncivilized actions such as: cutting heads, burying alive… There were about 1.7 million people killed by the Khmer Rouge.
Although the two genocides are quite different at a first glance, they are interestingly similar upon deeper inspection. For starters, the Holocaust is best known for it’s brutal and inhumane treatment of prisoners, such as tattooing a number on their arm against their will and feeding them food that is not even fit for dogs to consume (“Holocaust”). It may be shocking for some people to hear that in Cambodia, it was just as atrocious, maybe even worse. During the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975 most Cambodians were forced to leave their homes on such short notice that numerous families were killed on cite for not evacuating quickly enough. Those ‘lucky’ enough to escape immediate death were forced to work, unpaid, in labor camps until the fatigue wore down their immune system and they died of some wretched disease (“Genocide”). Another intriguing similarity betw...
This genocide took place all throughout Europe. It started in Germany and spread all the way to Great Britain. (“Some of the things that are not). The Cambodian Genocide was an attempt by the Khmer Rouge to take over and centralize all Cambodian farmers (“Cambodian”). This genocide lasted from 1975 to 1978 when the Khmer Rouge was finally overthrown by the Vietnamese (“Cambodian”).
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
Imagery and politics are two closely related concepts. “Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be” (McLuhan, 1971). The image has the power to make or break the politician. The impact of imagery also applies to the Government as a whole. The image created by the government influences the support of the population; because of this correlation, information regarding government affairs goes through filters; information that could negatively impact the image of the government may not be provided to the public depending on how important it may be for the general population to know. In the beginning of the Vietnam War, Laos was declared a neutral zone at a conference in Geneva by the United States and the Soviet Union (Jones, 2007). As the disputes about Laos’ future government structure continued, the United States believed it was time to take action and continue their fight against communism (Young; Buzzanco, 2006). The Americans were fighting the Cold War for the containment of communism and to make the world safe for democracy. If Laos became a communist country, communism would not be contained; this led to the Secret War. American officials did everything in their power to keep the information regarding the Secret War in Laos hidden. The prime reason for failing to acknowledge the public of the happenings in Laos, was to aid the government in the protection of their image. Many American citizens were against the government because of the war in Vietnam, which had started 10 years prior to the Secret War; knowing about Laos would give the general population more reason to protest. Furthe...
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
“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.
The Vietnam War was the longest war in America's history of involvement. Twenty years of hell, land mines, cross-fire, and death. Vietnam was divided by the Geneva Accord. The north being communist run by Ho Chi Minh. The south being anti-Communist run by Ngo Dinh Diem. Before Vietnam was separated, it was run by France. France had ruled most of Indochina since the late 1800s. The Vietnamese were unhappy with the way the French were controlling, therefore, many of them took refuge in China. When in China, they began to follow the lead of Ho Chi Minh, who wanted to model the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence as that of the U.S. version. In the 1940s, Japan had taken over Vietnam which upset Ho Chi Minh and his revolutionaries when they had returned a year later.
(Haugen and Musser) The Cambodian genocide is not nearly as well known as the Holocaust. The leader of the Khmer Rouge was a man named Pol Pot.
It has been known that the Vietnam War affected many American soldiers who were involved in the war physically and psychologically. The Vietnam War was one of the most memorable wars in history. Many Americans’ lives lost for no objective at all. Chapter 10 informed us about how the Vietnam War started and what really happened during that time. It also gave us background information about Vietnam Veterans and nurses who were involved in the war and what they went through during the war. I had the opportunity to interview a Vietnam Veteran also.
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).
The Communist Party of Kampuchea, also known as the Khmer Rouge, took control of Cambodia on April 17, 1975, which lasted until January 1979. For their three-year, eight-month, and twenty-one day rule of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge committed some of the most heinous crimes in current history. The main leader who orchestrated these crimes was a man named Pol Pot. In 1962, Pol Pot had become the coordinator of the Cambodian Communist Party. The Prince of Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk, did not approve of the Party and forced Pol Pot to flee to exile in the jungle. There, Pol formed a fortified resistance movement, which became known as the Khmer Rouge, and pursued a guerrilla war against Sihanouk’s government. As Pol Pot began to accumulate power, he ruthlessly imposed an extremist system to restructure Cambodia. Populations of Cambodia's inner-city districts were vacated from their homes and forced to walk into rural areas to work. All intellectuals and educated people were eradicated and together with all un-communist aspects of traditional Cambodian society. The remaining citizens were made to work as laborers in various concentration camps made up of collective farms. On these farms, people would harvest the crops to feed their camps. For every man, woman, and child it was mandatory to labor in the fields for twelve to fifteen hours each day. An estimated two million people, or twenty-one percent of Cambodia's population, lost their lives and many of these victims were brutally executed. Countless more of them died of malnourishment, fatigue, and disease. Ethnic groups such as the Vietnamese, Chinese, and Cham Muslims were attacked, along with twenty other smaller groups. Fifty percent of the estimated 425,000 Chinese living in Cambod...
On July 13, 2003, the death of Cau Thi Bich Tran, a 25 year-old Vietnamese mother of two, stirred up the hearts of many in the Asian American community. According to the police, officer Chad Marshall and his partner responded to a 911 call from Ms. Tran’s neighborhood claiming that an unsupervised toddler was roaming the streets. The policemen arrived at Tran’s home and were let in by Dang Bui, the father of the two boys, who did not know what was going on at that time. Chad Marshall entered the house and in less than a minute, had shot Ms. Tran through the chest.
The Cambodian Genocide took place from 1975 to 1979 in the Southeastern Asian country of Cambodia. The genocide was a brutal massacre that killed 1.4 to 2.2 million people, about 21% of Cambodia’s population. This essay, will discuss the history of the Cambodian genocide, specifically, what happened, the victims and the perpetrators and the world’s response to the genocide.
By the year 1857 the British had established complete political control of India. As Western education was introduced and missionaries eroded Hindu society resentment among Indian people grew and it was joined by unease among the old governing class when the British decided to formally abolish the Mughal Empire.