Character Analysis Of Lucky Child By Loung Ung

In the Novel, Lucky Child by Loung Ung 2005, Loung Ung is a girl who is chosen to go to America with her oldest brother and his wife. Chou is Loung’s older sister and stays in Cambodia. Lucky Child is a story about them trying to reunite with each other while coping with their inner demons revolving around the Khmer Rouge genocide and the Cambodian civil war. In this novel, persistence is a major character trait that allows the characters to survive and eventually thrive throughout their lives in their past, present and in the end. Despite enduring hardship during the Khmer Rouge, It is persistence that ultimately ends up playing a vital role that helps the characters survive. One example from the novel comes from Hong when she and Amah are reunited with the rest of the Ung family. Hong tells them about her own Khmer Rouge experience. Chou narrates Hong’s story and says, “ Hong tells them about how she saw a young boy beaten to death with sticks because the soldiers said he was lazy. Hongs words come out in spits and anger when she reports that the boy was slow with his work because he was sick and starving… After that Hong became the best worker in her unit even though she was many years younger than the others.”(pg55) When Chou was describing Hong’s experience she described Hong’s language as if it were like spitting to show just how upsetting and angry it made her just to talk about what she witnessed. Because the soldiers made an example out of that boy, they made it