The film, First They Killed My Father, follows a Cambodian family through the effects of government conflict. From a sociological perspective, this story has an even deeper meaning than is on the surface. On the surface, it is a sad story about a Cambodian girl in the middle of a war. However, when you analyze it, it is about more than that. It is not only about the people of Cambodia as a whole, but about pain, destruction, and the innocence that children should have.
To start the film, there are news clippings giving the background of the situation. A war in Vietnam spreads to Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge swore that they would take Cambodia back. The story is centered on a young Cambodian girl named Loung Ung. Loung is a happy child who lives in the city with her family. However,
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The group of monks are being herded by soldiers with guns, who degrade them with terrible sayings such as, “You monks are parasites. Draining the blood of the people.” This shows (ethnocentrism) because the soldiers see themselves as superior to the monks. When Loung’s family arrives at the camp, they are forced to give up all of their possessions. They are told that they must build their own house and they must dye all of their clothes, so that nobody is different. At this camp, everyone is forced to work in the field, as they must earn their stay and “work hard for Angkar.” While Loung and her sister are working, a soldier sees Loung’s sister eat a bean. This causes her to receive a (negative sanction.) She is hit in the head by the soldier even though she pleas for his forgiveness. Three of Loung’s siblings became soldiers, however her sister comes back injured and later dies. Then, Loung’s father is taken away to help repair a bridge. After Loung’s brother is hurt while trying to steal food, their mother tells Loung, her brother, and her sister that they must
Beah describes the difficulty of readjusting to normal life and the struggle to find a sense of belonging and purpose. Beah begins his essay by describing the surreal experience of returning to his village after the war. He writes, "Everything seemed so normal, and yet it was all so surreal." Beah had spent years as a child soldier, forced to commit acts of violence and witness unspeakable atrocities.
Then sharing it with all of the camp what Louis provided help keep many people who are on the verge of death around on page 165, examples of the Louise vengeance are given. "Rations were slashed. Rabidness, Lee made reckless efforts to find food. He still concentration miso paste – a fermented Japanese seasoning meant to be deleted in water…he volunteered to starch the garnis he volunteered to starch the guards shirts with rice water, exposing himself to the guards volatility just so he could scavenge flex of rice from the water… He was so friendly to eat
At first, a man named Milo Radulovich was going through the process of being released from the United States Air Force because of his sisters political leaning and because of his father’s subscription to the Serbian newspaper. The reporters tried to protect him; yet when they made a show on McCarthy attacking him, McCarthy retaliated by accusing Murrow (The news reporter who tried to protect Milo) of being a communist. All in all, the movie generally was about how McCarthy made vigorous attempts to root out communism in the government and CBS news trying to defy everything he has sought to
Many of the soldiers were cruel, not only killing unarmed people, but also raping "hundreds of women, young girls, widows" (Menchu 166). These murders discouraged some people from protesting, but it made other people realize that they had to be willing to sacrifice their lives to bring about change However, it is revealed the soldiers, who were painted as monsters, may also be victims of state terror. One broke down, claiming that he had to take "orders from a captain" or else he would be killed. If he obeyed, he would be "an enemy of the people" and if he didn't, he would be "the army's enemy," conveying how some soldiers had no choice and were as scared as everyone else (Menchu
Her father, Nao Kao Lee, was especially enraged on two occasions. One, when the doctors were performing a spinal tap on Lia, he said that was when “Lia was lost”, as the Hmong believed that procedure would cripple her in this life and her future lives . The second occasion was when he misunderstood that he had to sign a paper that stated that Lia would die in two hours, when it fact “released in two hours” was what was written. “In the Hmong moral code, foretelling a death is strongly taboo.”, and so Nao Kao grabbed his daughter and ran. He was caught afterwards, but these scenarios show that the Hmong had a strong sense of values that the doctors weren’t able to understand and both parties were at a disadvantage.
Loung Ung’s First They Killed My Father is a vivid, detailed memoir of a young girl’s experiences in Cambodia throughout the Khmer Rouge era. It records in expressive detail the horrors suffered by the Ung and her family while living under the oppressive rule of the insane Khmer Rouge. Meanwhile, First They Killed Her Sister by Soneath Hor, Sody Lay and Grantham Quinn is a lengthy criticism in direct opposition to the aforementioned memoir. Although the authors of First They Killed Her Sister made some excellent points throughout their assessment of First They Killed my Father such as showing how Ung having misrepresented some aspects of Khmer culture and history, they completely and utterly failed in their attempt to discredit her based on the claims that she perpetuated racial tension and distorted what really happened in 1970s Cambodia, which breaks down the few good points they did have. The critics correctly assert and prove that Ung misrepresented certain aspects of Khmer culture and history, showing that at times, Ung’s description of what had happened was distorted or partially fabricated.
The dehumanization of the Vietnamese is further stressed by the scene in a village where the squad is attacked by the VC and one of the soldiers is killed. Seeing their friend dying, Meserve and other soldiers express their hatred for the Vietnamese. Considering the Vietnamese as their sworn enemy, the soldiers take their kidnapping and rapping the girl as almost natural avenging actions, which shows the loss of humanity during the
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
The Khmer Rouge was a revolutionary group who wanted to reconstruct Cambodian society. On April 17, 1975 the Khmer Rouge attacked the capitol Phnom Penh. As soon as the Khmer Rouge got to the capitol they started to force the people to leave all their possessions and march to the rural part of Cambodia. “Hospital patients
The pills dance in my palms, gleaming white and inviting…. Somewhere in Cambodia, I dream that Pa and Ma are sleeping together in the ground. I close my eyes and wait for Pa to come take me with him. In her crib, Tori cries but I ignore her.” (180-181) Loung has a deep need to kill herself not only because of her painful memories of Cambodia but also because of her grieving for Pa, Ma, Keav and Geak.
She felt that she did not have enough time spent with her sister Keav and felt devastated when Keav was killed. The death of Pa has had a large effect on Loung and her family. They miss him greatly and have deep depression after his death. Loung whispers, “’I miss you so much, Pa.’ ‘It is so hard to live without you.
This shows that Loung idolized her father and these special moments between Loung and her father were things that she held onto in order to survive the atrocities that she experienced. Loung’s father not only provided provided physical protection by moving his family to places where they would not be in so much danger but he also provided emotional protection by giving Loung hope that she would survive these hardships even after he has
The film starts out with an African American man walking in the suburbs. He sees a car and is frightened. A person in a hood strangles him from behind and kidnaps him. This illustrates the fear African Americans have in a white society. The movie then fasts forwards to New York City and turns the focus on Chris who is a successful young photographer.
In the poem, “A Hymn to Childhood,” Li-Young Lee talks about having fragmented individuality from childhood due to war. He is lost in perception of a traumatic childhood caused by war and a normal naïve childhood. Lee depicts the two diverged childhoods from his memory through the use of antithesis to emphasize the world perceived by a self fragmented individual. Throughout the poem, he consistently presents two opposing ideas to show what it feels like to grow up with emotional trauma.
Most people can understand that when a soldier comes back from war, he is not going to be the same. He has seen too much and done too much to still be the innocent boy he had been. In the novel, The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh, he not only puts the effect of war for soldiers, but for regular civilians as well. The novel is saying that war affects females even though they could not fight in war. The message is conveyed through female characters that have felt sorrow and emptiness during and after the war.