This article has an extremely powerful effect and I feel entirely for Mr. Shin Dong Hyok and other members who lived in that camp. This paper was written using Orwell’s techniques; using simple words to be straightforward about the point she is making. Therefore, the impact and imagery that it was able to create was very clear.
This paper is an excellent example of the manipulation of truth. Due to the fact that Mr. Shin was born in the camp and lived there till his late 20’s, he assumed that their approaches towards him and the other members was true and a part of life. He never had a proper upbringing by his parents and hence was unable to distinguish between right and wrong. Inmates living in a “Revolutionary Zone” were re-educated and if they survived long enough they were released. This reminds me of the place that Winston (in 1984) was taken to and many others for committing thought crime. He was taken to a place where they tortured and broke him and he was released after finally believing what O’Brien told him to believe.
There is another connection to the book 1984 about marriage. Mr. Shin’s parents were matched together by the authorities and had Mr. Shin and his 22 year old brother. This is similar to the way things were done in 1984 where people were married not out of love, but to “do their duty” (have a baby). All the inmates in the camp were taught to feel nothing and to contain no emotions. They were like machines that just did what they were told to do. Furthermore, guards were told to not treat them like humans. Living under certain circumstances like this makes one eventually believe that they are not human. This comes back to the main question that all my blogs approach, what is a human? Is it someone that contains no feelings? Someone who experiences the life in a dystopian country?
When Mr. Shin found out about the outside world, this was an analogous reaction that Winston had when him and Julia first met in the woods which resembled the “Golden Country”. To Mr. Shin, the outside world was a utopian country that was filled with happiness. This was the prod he needed to escape from the camp. D-503 from We got a prod from I-330 to escape the One State and Winston got the reason to escape once he was united with Julia.
Overall, this article has a very strong impact and is able to communicate its story very clearly with the readers. Manipulation of truth, portrayal of how one can live with no feelings and emotions as well as connections to We and 1984 can be recognized making the interpretation of the article much more interesting to read after I had done much analyzing of all these elements.
Hi, Monique!
ReplyDeleteWell you have made some insightful comments and indepth analysis in your blog. I agree that the experiences that Shin has gone through holds parallels with the experiences of D503 in WE and Winston in 1984.For those of us who are brought up as free individulals will have a hard time relating to these experiences of torture and control. However, if you think about it we are never really truly free like a bird able to roam the skies. Just think we are from childhood controlled by our parents, teachers, bosses and even sometimes by our spouses. We all have to adhere to rules and regulations and time keeping schedules as well as less obvious rules such as peer pressure and keeping up with the Jones's and the pressure to conform to society's norms.So freedom is a very subjective experience. Which brings me to the question, are any one of us really free.? I think your question,what is human? is not only interesting but a topic that invites alot of debate. We are all born human but what separates us from animals is our ability to act civilized. This means unlike dogs on the street we do not procreate and then not recognize our offspring or worse kill them. In these books and article a dehumanization process takes place as controlled by the regime. All three characters have to learn to become human again and the effectively develop a conscience and a soul. I feel being inhuman is beyond just having no feelings it is about our actions and thoughts. Can we be really sure that animals have no feelings? After all they demonstate anger and love to their young. What is clear is that as students studying these novels and articles has certainly given us all food for thought.
Sabrina
Hey,
ReplyDeleteIm not so sure that i agree with you when you say its an example of manipulating the truth. I think that manipulating the truth would be something along the lines of telling them that they were in the camp for there own protection and outside the camp was a horrible world, however they actually never talk about an outside world to him. All this would be would be a lack of knowing the truth.
I never made the connection with marriage. I think that's a really interesting thought. Although it is similar in someways, it is still a tad bit different. In We they are expected to have sex with the other person, as there duty. Where as in this instance it is a reward for being a good prisoner, and don't want them to do anything otherwise.
Thank you Sabrina and Joel! Joel I'm not sure what your getting at... The people in control of the camp are not telling them the truth yet they are in a way manipulating them by treating them like animals, by letting them believe that they are animals. Hence, they are in some way manipulating the truth by not providing information about the outside world because the prisoners have a right to knowing about the outside world and the guards are manipulating the prisoners into believing that they have no other place but the camp. That's the point I was getting at, I hope that makes sense and you understand my point of view. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteMonique,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog and it seems as though you have made a lot of connections to 1984 and other articles we have read in class.
You made some good comparisons to 1984, and I was wondering if you see any more of those subtle connections?
On on of my own blogs, (http://poojasivhlenglish.blogspot.com/2010/10/born-and-raised-in-north-korean-gulag.html)
Aishwarya raised an interesting point as to the reasoning behind WInston's and Shin's motives. Although these two people share many similarities, what makes them different? The point that Winston had had a taste of 'the good life' versus Shin who had not provided some explanation for their actions. Do you feel that Winston's early life provided him with more of an incentive to revolt as opposed to Shin who only tried to escape based upon the stories he had heard?
Or oppositely, do you think that Shin's desire to escape was more because it was based on his own imagination regarding those stories- a very strong tool.
In addition, when you talk about the 'Golden Country' it is in relation to Winston's idea of a perfect world. I thought that Nina's idea on 'One persons utopia is another person's dystopia' (http://3nina.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/perception/) provides an interesting discussion on this topic of a 'golden country' or 'perfect world'. Does this 'golden country' in fact exist? Or is it just a figment of the human imagination that is unachievable?
Hey Monique, this is really good, but I was just wondering about a couple of things:
ReplyDeletesaid that when people are not treated as humans, they eventually believe that they are not humans, but Shin says he thought everyone was treated this way, therefore this is the norm for all humans, meaning that to Shin the way people were treated in the prison camp was humane, because he never saw people being treated in any other way, this could be why Shin says he never thought being at the camp was unfair.
You also compare the outside world to a "utopian country that was filled with happiness", so then why is it that Shin says that sometimes he wishes he could go back, back to the prison camps? Because if this “outside world” was indeed as great as it should be, then Shin shouldn’t have any urges to go back to the previous dystopian world, which goes into the discussion in Pooja’s blog