DTE#2 In the book Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick the main character Arn Chorn-Pond wants to survive the war and reunite with his family but, he is forced to become a killing machine that destroys everything in his path so he has to learn what his limitations are and how they contrast with the khmer rouge. Arn was always poor but living in Cambodia was peaceful until the khmer rouge took over and a single wrong movement could get you killed. Fear and loneliness caused Arn’s emotional stability to be tested and betrayal was Arn’s way of fighting fear and loneliness. As humans we like to categorize things as good or bad. As a soldier under khmer rouge control Arn Chorn Pond was neither and watching him grow over the course of the book readers can learn to …show more content…
In the beginning he wants to be everyone's hero and he tries to do what he can to restore peace. Quickly he learns that he cannot shield everyone from their devastating future. Protecting others is another way that he can protect his own emotional state. Arn is living through more death, destruction, and agony than most people could possibly imagine so knowing that some of his actions are admirable and kind gives him a sense of warmth. Arn defends a five year old boy and says “No please don't” to the khmer rouge who want to kill him. According to Arn, you don’t say please to the khmer rouge. The next day Arn is too tired to say please and the boy was never seen again. As long as he is not the victim, he will do anything. Going along with whatever he feels will keep him safe is the only way he knows he can resist loneliness and fear from overwhelming him. This is significant because Arn wants to be more than just a weak boy with no future, in fact he is discontent with being just a little bit famous, so switching between beliefs is his
The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down by Ann Fadiman is a very interesting book. It’s amazing how difficult it is for Americans to understand other cultures because the United States is such a diverse country. However, as an American, I understood the frustrations that Lia Lee’s doctors’ felt when trying to diagnose and treat her properly. In this book both the American doctors and the Hmong peoples faced many hardships and barriers when trying to communicate with each other. After having read this book I can understand where both groups were coming from and reasons for their actions. I could only imagine the level of difficulty and anger that the doctors and Lia’s parents must have experienced over that time period.
Cara Sierra Skyes has a hard role in Perfect by Ellen Hopkins. Cara is in love with her boyfriend Sean, she describes him as fun, good-looking, adventurous, and a jock. Everyone expects the perfect girl to go out with the perfect guy. Caras mom has always taught her, appearances are everything. So, Cara held onto that. She is a pretty and popular cheerleader. Cara holds a special trait, she is actually really smart and has a scholarship lined up at Stanford. Problem is, Cara has a twin brother, Connor. Connor is super suicidal and has tried many times to kill himself, sadly one day he succeeds and leaves a girlfriend and his family behind in his high school years. So everything is definitely not the idea her parents have of “perfect”. At Least she tries. Cara is in love with her boyfriend Sean but she starts to spark an interest for a girl at the ski slopes one day and she becomes very confused. Between dealing with all her school activities, her grades, and her brother that she worries about all the time, Cara is struggling to keep her life together and be
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
“Here I am, saying [HIV] can happen to everybody… Even me, Magic Johnson” (Johnson 292). Tragedies happen to everybody, even superstars. However, it is how people deal with these tragedies that develops true character. In My Life, by Earvin Johnson, his story demonstrates perseverance, hard-work, and leadership. With these values, Johnson overcame adversity and rose to the heroic status that he now holds.
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
How Influence Can Change a Person As someone once said…. “Sometimes people come into your life for a moment, a day, or a lifetime. It matters not the time they spent with you but how they impacted your life in that time.” – Unknown.
Marks, Stephen P. "Elusive Justice For The Victims Of The Khmer Rouge." Journal Of International Affairs 52.2 (1999): 691. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 19 Dec. 2011. .
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...
The Cambodian Genocide was a trial and error of someone trying to make all people equal. Khmer Rouge had approximately 1.7 million people executed attempting to equal everyone out and make the world a “better” place. Although he tried very hard at this, he of course failed and and all of his attempts were, in the end pointless.
Days at the work camp subjected Arn to some of the worst visuals to ever be seen by a human being. For example one day Arn noticed that some people working with him began to complain about missing family or home, and to sadly say those people were never seen again. Which taught Arn the cruelty of these men, and also to hide any emotion deep inside himself in hopes the Khmer Rouge might let him live. Another thing Arn had to cope with physically, and mentally was the fact that he knew what would happen if he'd stop working. After seeing one of the workers next to him fall down, and be dragged off by the Khmer Rouge Arn began in this next quote to have a phrase he could always look back to if he ever felt like he was going to give up. “Over, and over I tell myself one thing: never fall down” (Patricia McCormick 42). Arn needed to realize this fact very early in his encampment because he knew if he ever fell down he just end up like the rest of the dead boys, and
“Running away from your problems is a race you’ll never win.” -Unknown. Running away from a problem in one's life is never the correct solution, and often times, running away from a problem can only make it worse. In the beginning of the story, Jem explains her background to Spider, how she has moved about through many foster homes. This explanation helps Spider understand the reason Jem is such a closed book.