Anger - The Bandaid to Pain? Anonymous 12th Grade

If one looks back on human history, millions of lives have been lost for various fights and disagreements between powers. Although one has the resources and knowledge to learn from past mistakes, humanity still chooses violence to end complications, believing the sacrifice of life to be the only way, turning it’s back on the possibilities of freedom and peace. The novel, First They Killed my Father, by Loung Ung is based on real events and offers a first-person narrative of surviving the Cambodian war and a communist regime. The author was exposed to oppression, brutality and immense loss and pain at a time in her life when one’s personality and identity develops. Ung had to deal with loss/genocide, discrimination and violence throughout the Cambodian war; her experiences, and how she chose to deal with them, formed her into the strong, affectionate activist she is today.

Ung dealt with the loss of her family members, by converting her sadness into anger and directing it at the regime. She lost her sister to disease and her mother, father and baby sister to the brutality of the regime: “After surviving the deaths of many of her family members, the reader might expect Loung to feel deep sadness and loss. Instead, she only...