Preview

Pob Study Guide

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
16909 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Pob Study Guide
Introduction
Paradise of the Blind, by Vietnamese novelist Duong Thu Huong, was first published in Vietnam in 1988 and translated into English in 1993. It was the first novel from Vietnam ever published in the United States and gave American readers authentic insight into the poverty and political corruption that characterized Vietnam under the communist government from the 1950s to the 1980s. Although to most Americans the name Vietnam conjures up images of the Vietnam War, the novel does not concern itself with what the Vietnamese call the American War. It begins in Russia in the 1980s, as Hang, a young Vietnamese woman, travels to Moscow to visit her uncle. As she travels, she recalls incidents from her childhood and adolescence in Hanoi and also tells of life in her mother's village during the communists' disastrous land reform program that took place in the mid-1950s. The novel, which was banned in Vietnam, is essentially the story of three women from two generations whose family is torn apart by a brother who insists on placing communist ideology above family loyalty. The exotic setting and descriptions of the lives of ordinary Vietnamese people in rural and urban areas, combined with the story of young Hang's struggle to forge her own path in life, make for a compelling story.
Author Biography
Duong Thu Huong was born in 1947, in Thai Binh, Vietnam, the daughter of Duong Dinh Chau, a North

Vietnamese military officer who fought in the communist guerilla army against the French in the 1950s. Duong Thu Huong's mother was Ngo Thuy Cham, a primary schoolteacher. Duong grew up in poverty and as a child often went hungry. She attended an arts college in Hanoi, studying music, dance, and painting. At this time she had no particular interest in literature and no desire to be a writer.
In 1968, during the Vietnam War (1959–75), Duong volunteered to lead a Communist Youth Brigade, an arts troupe that sang and put on the-atrical performances for the North

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Ning Lao Tai-tai started her life as the youngest child of three, the fifth child bore, in the village of P’englai. The village of P’englai sat on the Yellow sea, on the peninsula of Shantung, it sat facing Korea.…

    • 689 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Loung Ung Chapter Summary

    • 1575 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Loung Ung-the author- is an average middle-class five year old. She has three older brothers, two older sisters and a younger sister. Her parents “ma” and “pa” have been married since they were teenagers. On April 17, 1975 the Ung’s life style would be changed for the rest of their lives, when the Khmer Rouge soldiers arrive in the family’s village. The soldiers quickly move all the families out of the village telling them to pack very little. Loung soon finds herself on an overcrowded truck with many families learning she will never be returning home.…

    • 1575 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    pwb study guide

    • 4435 Words
    • 18 Pages

    The Poisonwood Bible is a novel rich with the complex beauty that is the Congo.…

    • 4435 Words
    • 18 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The reports in this novel are prefaced with a quote by Robert Shaplen, which sums up the feelings of those Americans involved in the Vietnam conflict. He states, "Vietnam, Vietnam . . .. There are no sure answers." In this novel, the author gives a detailed historical account of the happenings in Vietnam between 1950 and 1975. He successfully reports the confusing nature, proximity to the present and the emotions that still surround the conflict in Vietnam. In his journey through the years that America was involved in the Vietnam conflict, Herring "seeks to integrate military, diplomatic, and political factors in such a way as to clarify America's involvement and ultimate failure in Vietnam."…

    • 1881 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The preface, Hunt expresses how his early beliefs on Vietnam were molded by books he had read including Lederer and Burdick's The Ugly American, Fall's Street without Joy, and Greene's The Quiet American. He talks of living with his family in Saigon for the summer in the 1960s. His father worked with the U.S. military mission, to revamp the simple idea of Americans as “innocent moral crusaders”) in which was done outside of and in blindness to the actual Vietnamese history and culture. Hunt begins with an extensive look at the America’s view and movement on to the Cold War. In Chapter One, "The Cold War World of The Ugly American," he reviews the United States' indifference to the problems Vietnam while centering on a more international inference. That makes Ho Chi Minh with the seem to be more a communist instead of a patriot and which in turn led initially to help the French colonialism in the area, then to the support of anticommunist leaders, an move that attracted the United States to the issue. Hunt then blames Eisenhower administration's views, which gave a " ... simple picture of Asians as either easily educable friends or implacable communist foes" (p. 17).…

    • 724 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This cover represents the geographical context of Vietnam, the innocence of the main characters (personal context), the freedom of the late 1960’s (social context) and the Vietnam War period (Historical context).…

    • 590 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    One being the point of view of an American soldier and the other being a Vietnamese family. The personal experiences of these characters help us to understand the war itself. Our generation can learn from these experiences by reading and acknowledging the first hand retellings of Vietnam. These narratives offer a real perspective of the Vietnam War, much different from that of the twisted and glamorized Hollywood angle. First person Vietnam narratives are the most insightful and dignified pieces of historical context we can obtain. While is necessary to recognize the bigger scheme of things it is important to understand the perspectives of the individuals involved on both sides, in order to put the Vietnam War itself in…

    • 1422 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Countries of the World Vietnam by Amy Condra – Peters, published by Times Editions 2001…

    • 887 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    As leader of North Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh was a man of the people. He identified himself among the feeble and humble citizens of North Vietnam. He was relatable among them. His main objective was to gain independence for Vietnam no matter the sacrifice. As a communist, Minh founded the French Communist Party in 1930 (Moss,2010). “Ho Chi Minh was by far the best known Vietnamese leader. His leadership of the struggle to liberate Vietnam from French colonialism had earned him enormous prestige and a popular following among the rural masses who comprised 85 percent of the Vietnamese population. Ho and the other Vietminh leaders were committed to unifying Vietnam under their rule (Moss, 2010 p. 83).” His leadership skills were personable and this aided in his quest to employ communism in his country. Minh visited many countries and educated himself on the communist rule of those countries. Through this he became a nationalist accruing support from other countries creating an overseas movement to help the Vietnamese fight for their independence. (Moss, 2010)…

    • 512 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the 1960s the Vietnam War had an influence on many writers from both Vietnam and the United States. Two writers from both of these cultures are Tim O’Brien from the United States and Thich Nhat Hanh from Vietnam. Although the writers share many differences between themselves, the subjects of Thich Nhat Hanh’s essay In Search of the Enemy of Man and Tim O’Brien’s short story The Things they Carried come from vastly different cultures in regards to how they view death, sacrifice, and discipline.…

    • 1028 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    There were several personal factors in Ho Chi Minh’s life that led to the formation of his identity with him. He was born into a strongly nationalist family. His father ran a nationalist Vietnamese newspaper, which Ho was greatly exposed to as a child. He was French educated, so he learnt the French values of independence and equality. In the early stages of his life he travelled to Paris. There he learnt the communist teachings of Lenin. It was then that Ho began to believe that communism was the best method through which his people could achieve the goal of independence.…

    • 997 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Confusion glided through me as I didn’t know that the Vietnamese ever went to war again after the Vietnam War. After my relatives elaborated on how catastrophic the war was on the citizens and the country itself, I assumed that Vietnam wouldn’t be ready to return to combat. Also, it was shocking that it only took two to three years for the country to stabilize and rebuild. However, what truly sparked this subject was when I remembered this reason: The Khmer Rouge received support by North Vietnam; the government which fought the Khmer Rouge a few years after the Cambodian Civil War. These components led me to have the ambition to analyze more on this…

    • 576 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Brothers K

    • 595 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The novel illuminates light on the situation not just during the Vietnam era, but also rather throughout all history and the future to come. Throughout mankind’s occupation…

    • 595 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the chapter “ Bao, Tuyen, and Phi Pham- Vietnam” from From Every End of This Earth, Roberts (2009) explains Saigon in 1975 was falling to the communists. Bao wanted to escape to another country after Vietnam War, but Bao had to choose between love and freedom. He chose to stay with Tuyen, and she refused to leave her family because they were not married. Bao is an officer in the South Vietnamese Army, and he did not want to enter in army. Therefore, he entered in Vietnamese Army, and he faced difficult positions. After leaving the Army, they tried again to escape of Vietnam. Moreover, in this time they succeed to escape to Thailand, and they stayed in a refugee camp. Than they went to America with their children, and they made good…

    • 137 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Novel Without a Name

    • 1090 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Novel without a name by Duong Thu Huong provided a real insight on war from the Vietnamese point of view. Readers are able to contemplate with the themes that reoccur, what the war truly is like, and the effects it causes on the people, society, and the individual. Three main reoccurring themes of this novel were disillusionment of the war, betrayal, and the loss of innocence that the war causes on a human being.…

    • 1090 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics