More handpicked essays just for you.
Modern world history world war 2
Cause, course and consequences of the WWII
Cause, course and consequences of the WWII
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Being stripped of your freedoms and past will leave you as a new, yet pained, person for the future. For instance, wartimes during childhood traumatize many for life. That concept is thoroughly demonstrated and explained in the memoir First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung. Ung’s life is turned upside-down when she is forced out of her own home and into a labor camp ruled by an anti-westernization, pro-communist group called Khmer Rouge. Her belongings are even burned, and she is restricted from having free will in her new life.
As stated earlier, Ung’s family and many others of the upper class were forced out of their homes by the Khmer Rouge and into a labor camp. This camp led by the rebellious Khmer Rouge was set up to be a perfect, classless society where everyone is equal. Loung Ung states, “The Angkar says they are model citizens because many have never ventured out of their village and have not been corrupted by the West. We are the new people, those who have migrated from the city.” She also says, “The base people will train us to be hard workers and teach
…show more content…
us to have pride in our country.” This displays how the Khmer Rouge rebels and the Angkar government are imposing their views on the poor girl by forcefully relocating her to a camp full of people who already despise her. In that situation, Ung was powerless to fight back as she was merely around five years old, thus making her feel helplessly lost and confused. This can be scarring for a young child because it alters their view on what authority truly is and how people come into power by striking fear into others. Plus, she is treated as if she is lower class in the camp as the Angkar reign over them, even though she is supposed to be in a “classless society.” When Loung Ung’s belongings were burned, her past and wealth burned away, too. According to the passage, it states, “Lying on top of the pile is a pink silk shirt, a blue jean jacket, and brown corduroy pants - all remnants of past lives to be destroyed.” Additionally, it says, “I follow the dress with my eyes, focusing all my energy on it, wanting desperately to rescue it from the pile. My first dress, the one Ma made for me for the New Year’s celebration.” This portrays how clothes come with memories and once you lose a part of that memory, your whole past comes crashing down. Ung loses her precious moments spent with her family and silently questions why these strangers are destroying her possessions. Furthermore, this concept of vanity and colored clothing is prohibited in her new life due to the Angkar’s and Khmer Rouge’s fear of westernization views and traditions. In the work camp, members had many restrictions put on them by the Angkar.
First They Killed My Father states, “Meals will be served from 12 to 2 p.m., and from 6 to 7 p.m. If you come late, you will get nothing… the harder you work, the more you’ll eat.” Time is significant now in Ung’s life, unlike the carefree world most children live in where fun days just go on and on. To add on it says, “Children in our society will not attend school just to have their brains cluttered with useless information. They will have sharp minds and fast bodies if we give them hard work.” This conveys how the Khmer Rouge are afraid of westernization corruption in Cambodia and how their conservative perspectives prevent those like Ung from obtaining knowledge or even being fed. Taking away children’s freedoms and knowledge is like trapping them in a cell, with no room to blossom, learn, and experience true
reality. In conclusion, childhood trauma can leave one to suffer for the rest of their life. Examples of this trauma are demonstrated in First They Killed My Father through Loung Ung’s experiences. The Cambodian genocide impacted her life greatly as restrictions, harsh treatment, and a new life was rapidly forced upon her due to the inner political issues of Cambodia. As you can see, removal of your freedoms and past will change your life forever.
War is cruel. The Vietnam War, which lasted for 21 years from 1954 to 1975, was a horrific and tragic event in human history. The Second World War was as frightening and tragic even though it lasted for only 6 years from 1939 to 1945 comparing with the longer-lasting war in Vietnam. During both wars, thousands of millions of soldiers and civilians had been killed. Especially during the Second World War, numerous innocent people were sent into concentration camps, or some places as internment camps for no specific reasons told. Some of these people came out sound after the war, but others were never heard of again. After both wars, people that were alive experienced not only the physical damages, but also the psychic trauma by seeing the deaths and injuries of family members, friends or even just strangers. In the short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” by Bao Ninh about the Vietnam War, and the documentary film Barbed Wire and Mandolins directed by Nicola Zavaglia with a background of the Second World War, they both explore and convey the trauma of war. However, the short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” is more effective in conveying the trauma of war than the film Barbed Wire and Mandolins because of its well-developed plot with well-illustrated details, and its ability to raise emotional responses from its readers.
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.
Walker, Luke. "Cambodian Genocide." World Without Genocide. William Mitchell College of Law, 2012. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. .
Often, we find ourselves facing dramatic events in our lives that force us to re-evaluate and redefine ourselves. Such extraordinary circumstances try to crush the heart of the human nature in us. It is at that time, like a carbon under pressure, the humanity in us either shatters apart exposing our primal nature, or transforms into a strong, crystal-clear brilliant of compassion and self sacrifice. The books Night written by Elie Wiesel and Hiroshima written by John Hersey illustrate how the usual lifestyle might un-expectantly change, and how these changes could affect the human within us. Both books display how lives of civilians were interrupted by the World War II, what devastations these people had to undergo, and how the horrific circumstances of war were sometimes able to bring out the best in ordinary people.
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
Even though Little Saigon provided Vietnamese American with economic benefit, political power, this landmark also witnessed many difficulties that Vietnamese experienced. Vietnamese American experienced many traumatic events prior to migration such as war, journey on boats, therefore many of them suffered posttraumatic stress disorder, stress, and depression. Significantly, Vietnamese refugees who went to the re-education camps sustained torture, humiliation, deprivation, brainwashing and several other punishments from Vietnamese Communist. Those refugees have higher rates of having mental disorder. Language barrier is another obstacle that...
“First They Killed My Father” bears upon a happy families world turning upside down when they had to evacuate from their beautiful home in Phnom Penh. The Ung family lived in an apartment building in the uppertown of Phnom Penh were the more wealthy people lived.Father, Sem Im Ung worked for the government so he earned enough money to support 7 of his children and his wife considering she doesn't work. The main character and also the author of this book tells the readers about her tough journey to survive the war.
Following the beginning of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union would start what would become two of the worst genocides in world history. These totalitarian governments would “welcome” people all across Europe into a new domain. A domain in which they would learn, in the utmost tragic manner, the astonishing capabilities that mankind possesses. Nazis and Soviets gradually acquired the ability to wipe millions of people from the face of the Earth. Throughout the war they would continue to kill millions of people, from both their home country and Europe. This was an effort to rid the Earth of people seen as unfit to live in their ideal society. These atrocities often went unacknowledged and forgotten by the rest of the world, leaving little hope for those who suffered. Yet optimism was not completely dead in the hearts of the few and the strong. Reading Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag by Janusz Bardach and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi help one capture this vivid sense of resistance toward the brutality of the German concentration and Soviet work camps. Both Bardach and Levi provide a commendable account of their long nightmarish experience including the impact it had on their lives and the lives of others. The willingness to survive was what drove these two men to achieve their goals and prevent their oppressors from achieving theirs. Even after surviving the camps, their mission continued on in hopes of spreading their story and preventing any future occurrence of such tragic events. “To have endurance to survive what left millions dead and millions more shattered in spirit is heroic enough. To gather the strength from that experience for a life devoted to caring for oth...
Imagine that you are in Vietnam in 1975. Out of your house window, you hear gunshots and screams of pain and agony. You hide in fear as your parents are packing their things, planning to head a boat to a refugee camp in America, as it will keep you away from those pesky Communists. Who knew that a simple boat ride to a refugee camp would cause so much stress when realising that you will have to leave all your old memories behind? This is what Ha experiences when running away from home with her family because of Communists. Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai is a historical fiction set in South Vietnam in a small town called Saigon. Ha, a rebellious ten-year-old Vietnamese girl, her three brothers, and her mother who had recently lost her husband- must flee out of their hometown once war strikes. But this is a challenge, with little to no source of food and water, and with many eyes of the Communists staring down on them, wishing upon death. Will Ha and the rest of her family be able to flee safely to America, and if they do, will Ha be able to bound “back again” in her new home in
Throughout the nation’s 2000-year history, Cambodia, a developing Southeast Asian country located on the Indochina Peninsula, has experienced a number of glories and tragedies; as a matter of fact, it was until 1993 that the democratic election, supported by the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), were conducted to restore peace in Cambodia under a coalition government (CIA World Factbook, 2013). In order to transform from the negative peace which is just the absent of direct violence to the positive peace meaning the absent of cultural and structural violence, Cambodia, the younger member of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), has been trying as hard as possible to address the problem of inequality with the obvious hope that if inequality is not natural, according to Hobbes, but rather constructed, there are probably chances to level down its impacts or even demolish its existence.
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...
We understand that the author’s purpose is to show how degraded he feels by the events that took place that morning in Burma.
Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worse attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point were they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous example used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were. After being forced into concentration camps, Elie was rudely awakened into reality. Traumatizing incidents such as Nazi persecution or even the mistreatment among fellow prisoners pushed Elie to realize the cruelty around him; Or even the wickedness Elie himself is capable of doing. This resulted in the loss of faith, innocence, and the close bonds with others.
Three days, told to walk for three days to evade the bombs and then they could return home, but the bombs never came, the walk continued, and what waited for them was a true horror. Leading up to the communist takeover, lasting from 1975-1979, was the formation of the Khmer Rouge in the 1950s. The Khmer Rouge was an assemblage of angry peasant farmers seeking salvation in communism. In the 1960s, Pol Pot became head of the Khmer Rouge and organized the overthrowal of Cambodia’s government, headed by Lon Nol. By 1975 they had complete control and began their regime of reforming Cambodia into a classless, agrarian, communist state by the name of New Kampuchea. To complete their reformation they acted out the Cambodian genocide, killing essentially all upper class and educated so as to glorify the Khmer race of hard workers. The Khmer Rouge regime over Cambodia in the second half of the 1970s is characterized by the persecution and
As we got further and further into the Vietnam War, few lives were untouched by grief, anger and fear. The Vietnamese suffered the worst hardship; children lay dead in the street, villages remained nothing but charred ashes, and bombs destroyed thousands of innocent civilians. Soldiers were scarred emotionally as well as physically, as