“...between 1.5 and 3 million people killed at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, a communist political group.” According to the University of Minnesota. Between 1975 and 1979, the communist political group “Khmer Rouge” ruled by Pol Pot invaded Cambodia and caused a mass genocide of between 1.5 and 3 million people. Loung Ung was alive during the time the Khmer Rouge invaded and caused the “Killing Fields”. Loung Ung’s family suffers throughout the invasion of the Khmer Rouge and her older brother, Meng decides to take Loung and his wife to leave the country and immigrate to America to save their family. Throughout the story of Lucky Child, we see how the effects of the Khmer Rouge invasion affected her greatly and how she overcame them. Loung overcomes the obstacles of dealing with her Cambodian past, depression, and acceptance of her identity shows that perseverance can help …show more content…
Though Loung disagrees and thinks this “In my mind the war rages on, even though I know I live in a peaceful land. There’s no way I can explain that to Meng” (69). Ever since the invasion of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Loung Ung can't think of anywhere being peaceful and instead total war zones. Throughout the story, Loung deals more with her Cambodian peace and finally decides to visit her home, Cambodia. Whilst in Cambodia, Loung visits her family and stands outside her old home where she was when the Khmer Rouge invaded and says “I’m not afraid anymore,’ I smile and whisper to him. Chou reaches out and takes my hand as we drive away” (253). Loung finally overcame her PTSD and no longer thinks of Cambodia as an active war zone where she watched her family suffer and be taken away from her. Loung is no longer afraid of Cambodia and finally thinks of it as her home
This quote above illustrates that at the start of Thomas Buergenthal journey, Holocaust survivor, he would be experiencing strokes of luck that help him stay strong, survive, and reunite with his mother during and after Auschwitz.
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. .
Loung and Chou are contrasting characters throughout the novel and contradict each other at every term. Loung is very rambunctious and and is not afraid to say what is on her mind. Since
A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal is a memoir about his time as a Jewish child in multiple ghettos and death camps in and around Germany during World War II. The author shares about his reunions with family and acquaintances from the war in the years between then and now. Buergenthal wished to share his Holocaust story for a number of reasons: to prevent himself from just being another number, to contribute to history, to show the power and necessity of forgiveness, the will to not give up, and to question how people change in war allowing them to do unspeakable things. The memoir is not a cry for private attention, but a call to break the cycle of hatred and violence to end mass crimes.
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
The Ung’s moved from one place to another just to keep their family together. Because their father was a former government worker, the Khmer Rouge would have killed him if they found out because they think anyone with an education is a threat to their dictatorship. For months they were on the road. Walking in the hot sun, starving and it was very hard for them to stay together. It was the hardest on Loung because she desperately wanted to be somewhere she can call “home” somewhere like Phnom Penh. But that was difficult considering they had to move to anot...
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...
“Wake up, wake up, son. We must leave now.” He opened his eyes and looked outside; it was still very dark and rainy. “Where are we going, Mom?” he asked while crawling out of bed sleepily. When they left the house for the train station, it was only four o’ clock in the morning, and the boy thought that his family was going to visit their grandparents whom he had not seen for ten years. The next morning, they arrived in Nha Trang, a coastal city in Central Vietnam, where his father told him that they would stay for a while before going to the next destination. They went to live in the house of an acquaintance near the fish market. Every day they would stay inside the house and would go out only when it was absolutely necessary, especially the kids who now had to learn how to be quiet. They learned how to walk tip-toe and to talk by finger pointing; few sounds were made. Every sound was kept to the minimum so the neighbors and the secret police would not be aware that there were new people in town.
Angela Huang Ms. Smith 7/8B April 22, 2024 Life SMTH According to Sucheng Chan, a historian working at UC Santa Barbara, between 1975 and 1994, nearly 160,000 Cambodian refugees fled to the United States because of the Cambodian Civil War. One of the many who arrived was 10-year-old Loung Ung. In the memoir Lucky Child by Loung Ung, Ung writes about immigrating to the USA and struggling with the new culture while dealing with the scars of living under the Khmer Rouge’s reign. The book starts with the day she arrived in America and ends with her reunited with her family in Cambodia.
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...
Funny Girl is a musical featuring an iconic score by Jule Styne, lyrics by Bob Merrill, an original book by Isobel Lennart and an updated book by Harvey Fernstein. Directed for a new generation by Michael Mayer. On tour at the Orpheum Theater San Francisco. 05/17/2024. “Funny Girl” follows the life of Fanny Brice, a talented comedienne and singer who rises from humble beginnings to a star on Broadway.
“The Drama of the Gifted Child” by Alice Miller is a book that every child psychologist should want to read in order to understand children at a young age. This book teaches the readers that a gifted child who is intelligent, sensitive and is emotionally aware can be accustomed to their parent’s expectations. Therefore they will do whatever it takes to fulfill her parent’s expectations, while ignoring their own feelings and needs. While trying to be the perfect child, they lose their true self and locks away their feelings. When the child becomes older, they still try to please their parents but are constantly looking to others for approval. If an adult cannot face the truth of his or her past as a child, then they are not going to
Settled in the end of the fifth century, two groups established themselves in what is now present day Cambodia. The Champa controlled the central and southern part of Vietnam and the Funan is the southernmost part Vietnam and present-day Cambodia. Influences from both China and India were obvious as dance and music spread throughout the area. Ruling on its own till 1864 when the French absorbed it into French Indochina Along with Laos and Vietnam. For nearly a century, the French exploited Cambodia commercially, and demanded power over politics, economics, and social life. It was not until a leader Norodom Sihanouk proclaimed Cambodia's independence in 1949 which was later granted in 1953. Cambodia fell into chaos during the 1970’s as General Lon Nol and his connections to the Khmer Rouge brought Cambodia into a genocidal age. For a decade Cambodia was surrounded by despair and carnage until the reign of the Khmer Rouge ended in 1979. Slowly rebuilding of the nation began as outside countries and organization such as the United Nation helped to get Cambodia back on its feet. Plans were made for general elections by 1993 which lead to the constitutional monarchy that the country has today. With its cyclical and oppressive history, Cambodia future is optimistic with the economy growing rapidly due to industries such as tourism, textiles, oil and the traditional farming. Slowly the nation reaches to find its place among the other powerhouses in Southeast Asia and around the world.
Her anger is now being used more as a driving force rather than just a cause for spontaneous outbursts. “It is dangerous to travel without permission, but I don’t care” (Ung 159). She goes on to see her mother, motivated and determined by her anger. But her mother and her baby sister, Geak, have been executed by the Angkar. Loung passes out for three days after learning about her mother’s fate, but she is woken by the superior of her camp and she is punished.