Summary Of Past Haunts The Present: Young Refugee Looking Backward

Maria Yazmin Gonzalez
Rodriguez
English 102
26 February 2018
Past Haunts the Present:
Young Refugee Looking Backward
A month later he was in Camp Pendleton, San Diego, waiting for sponsorship. He and the other refugees had been rescued by a Seventh Fleet destroyer in the South China Sea, taken to a makeshift Marine Corps camp at Guam, and then flown to California. As he lay on his cot and listened to children playing hide-and-seek in the alleys between the tents, he tried to forget the people who had clutched at the air as they fell into the river, some knocked down in the scramble, others shot in the back by desperate soldiers clearing a way for their own escape. He tried to forget what he’d discovered, how little other lives mattered to
The young eighteen-year-old refugee seeks refuge in San Francisco and winds up moving in with a sponsor (Parrish the British immigrant) and the sponsor’s partner (Marcus the Hong Kong immigrant), which exposes him to a new world of becoming “liberal” (Nguyen28). While observing every detail to adjust culturally and economically to the American life, the young protagonist has a sense of fear and shame. The author shows a descriptive part when the young refugee is constantly asked to reminisce his story more than once (Nguyen 26). Reminiscing the past, made the protagonist reencounter more drama of his “escape”, which made it more complex for him to psychologically “forget” and move forward. Processing the American lifestyle, through his “sponsor” and the sponsor’s partner, made him feel uncomfortable at first, but at the same time have a sense of hope. For instance, the eighteen-year-old (Liem) demonstrates that when he wanted to report to the refugee services their “mistake” and not feeling safe. On the other hand, when he felt ashamed of his story about leaving Vietnam. The safety that was being given to his sponsor and Marcus changed his perspective and gave them a second chance. He assumed that this new lifestyle that he imagined to seek in America could help him
The author provides detailed imagery of the protagonist trying to persist the new American lifestyle that he experiences, by forgetting and avoiding his past and moving forward. The author includes the protagonist representing all the refugees who are constantly haunted by their past and having difficulty moving forward. The young refugee trying to forget the detailed scenery of every Vietnamese trying to “escape” while others are being killed or “knocked down”. He realizes that the only thing that mattered what his life and not others. All that mattered to him was to seek for refuge and persist to the new life of discarding traditional values that he did not expect to do. The scenery of that suffrage before coming to America is an example of what some refugees go through when they come to America. Vietnamese immigrants are very different from other immigrants. Vietnamese immigrants leave their homeland due to violent circumstances and have a lot of attachment to their memories and have a difficult time to “forget”. On the other hand, some immigrants like Parrish and Marcus, leave by choice and have less attachment to their homeland. Referring back to the young refugee’s flashback of having his life become at “stake” when escaping. Made a huge effect from the war on the young the boy, because the result of being unwanted from their homeland,