When Heaven and Earth Changed Places #6

In the end of When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, the author, Le Ly Hayslip, starts to identify an important part of our everyday lives, labels. We put labels on people, places, and feelings without trying to find out what they are behind those labels. Hayslip's family itself is labeling within itself because they had people on both sides of the civil war. "You see, I think we are all used to putting labels on things we don't understand"(340). The labels people all over the world use for things they don't understand have negative and suspicious connotations. Pretty much, people who are different from them are thought of as people to be suspicious of just because they aren't the same. Some labels I can't use on this blog but in Vietnam and in Hayslip's time Communist and Capitalists were labels on opposite sides of the war. Hayslip started a fight with her brother Bon where she said, "...Communists--capitalists--I don't know what these mean anymore. Are they people? Are they enemies? Well, yes and no. Bon Nghe, your a Communist, but your not my enemy. You may call me capitalist, but does that make me your enemy? I don't think so"(340). Hayslip's fight with her brother ended up bringing them closer, erasing the labels both of them had for each other from opposite sides of the ocean and almost 10 years of being sparated.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places #5

Le Ly Hayslip, the author of "When Heaven and Earth Changed Places", returned to Vietnam after she emigrated to America, she faced dangerous speculation because of the circumstances that led to her leaving the country. The Vietnam government thought she was a person who was against communism, so when she decided to come back, she says she was prepared for an interrogation. The interrogations of her past as a teen and child were beatings and spening nights on end in damp cells, but in comaprison, the one she had as an adult was the complete opposite. Hayslip, a local friend, and two officials were in the best restaurant in the city, the Pacific. One official says, "My Goodness...a Viet Kieu who has lived so long in the states and doesn't smoke or drink and acts like a lady! We are very impressed! That's not how we remember most Americans"(264). The questions the officials ask give you a really good look into how Vietnamese people view Americans, mostly as heavy drinkers and smokers and although there are deffinitely people who do live that kind of lifestyle, to know only one type of answer to what an American is probably based on their fear. Later on, the officer says:

You are right about one thing, Miss Ly. Much of what our two peoples know about each other comes only from the war, and that is most sad. I would be discouraged to think Americans believe we are a country full of terror squads, secret police, death camps, and starving peasants (266).

The officer really hits the mark with this comment on the war, and pretty much all wars. Many of our, and their, misconceptions started in wars or similar events were people who knew almost nothing about each other were fighting against each other. Hate for killed friends and other numbers of dead patriots could lead to many wrong ideas about the other side. The wall of undertanding between America and Vietnam seems old, but it is still standing, even after all these years after the war.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places #4

Le Ly Hayslip, the author of the book When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, which is all about Hayslip's journey back home and she also tells us about her life before she left Vietnam. When she comes back, though, she meets changed people who have moved ahead in life, or backwards in some cases. "Although Tinh explained these things calmly, my heart sank at this example of peasant justice--at how grasping and vindictive my family seems to have become since liberation"(206). The changes her country has gone through that now seem normal to Hayslip's family shocked her. When she first sees her older sister in the market, her sister reacted alarmingly for what should have been a happy meeting, saying, "...for god's sake--get out of here! Take pity on us--please! Let us live a little longer!"(218). This is the exact mentality Vietnam had during the war, Hayslip later tells us, and seeing her family being hounded by the shadow of war shocks her, leading her to run back to the house of her niece, Tinh.
She doesn't connect with them anymore after her years in America, and they also see her as an "American" at first and not her for who she really is. Hayslip had not told her brother yet that she was coming and her family said "He'll think she's a spy or saboteur! Maybe even a party agent assigned to ferret out defectors!"(228). That Hayslip's family could think this is mostly because her brother is a person in the government, so if he were to do anything wrong or suspicious, he would suffer. Because of this mentality, that many governemnt officials had, Hayslip's brother doesn't trust her. Her family was right about her brother, and this nearly breaks Hayslip's heart, "Co Bay! He uses the ceremonial form of greeting--one reserved for distant relatives--rather than the familiar em bay for number-six sister. It almost breaks my heart"(229). The gulf between them had changed drastically from when they were children and he would carry her around. Now he is in no position to dote on his youngest sister because of the country he is in.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places #3

Le Ly Hayslip was once a hero in her childhood. The Viet Cong, a group of fighters who were fighting agianst the Republicans who belonged to the north, had adopted Ky La, Hayslip's city as a center for their operations in that area. Ky La had many skirmishes and the people of Ky La were told that if they told the Republicans any secrets they would kill them and all of the people they loved. Already in the book, many people had been killed execution-style for associating with them or just be seeming suspicious. At one point, Hayslip had just come back from a notoriously dangerous prison very fast, and her family was under house-arrest because the Viet Cong thought they were suspicious. The act of seperating them from the rest of the village like that just gave them more reason to be suspicious because since they weren't seen with the obviously guilty villagers, the Republicans treated them better and avoided harming their house. After the house-arrest was lifted, Hayslip did another thing to cause the Viet Cong to suspect her. As she was walking to the field to farm, she accidentaly lead Republican soldiers to a place where two Viet Cong members were hiding, which ended with the two Viet Cong dead and her facing absolute death. After some time, though, she looks back on why she didn't even think of "tattling". She says that "Back then, we didn't even know anything about the world going on beyond our small area, Saigon seemed like a world away to us, never mind America (151)." The people in her village didn't know much else besides farming and the only reason they sided with the Viet Cong was because they had practically brainwashed them with propaganda telling them they were doing something good, so if she had told anybody, she wouldn't have done it because she thought it was "right". What she was doing at that time wasn't something she needed to go against, no matter how bad the treatment became.

Blog Question #3

In the movie On the Waterfront there are mainly two views on "ratting" or being an infomant to the police. The mob members, mostly Johnny Friendly and Charilie think that squeeling is selling out your friends, no matter what excuse you come up with. Terry, on the other hand, thinks that when your "friends" are doing something you need to stop, you need to stop them. In the beginning Terry didn't think like that though. Through the movie all the way until the end Terry is first standing up for himself and then he stands up for the people around him, the dock workers. After Terry testifies against Johnny, the whole mob turns against him because what he did was their idea of a "stool pigeon".
I think that you need to tell the truth when the lies are hurting people. However, there are times when people are cruel and don't try to help anyone and are just looking out for themselves. The mob was like that in the movie. In the end when Johnny took everyone's guns away from them, he didn't do it because he wanted to stop hurting and killing people, he did it all for himself so that the police wouldn't find something incriminating. Tattling and trying to stop something wrong are just points of view. To the people who are exposed, they think its tattling but the people who are doing the "tattling", they are doing it because they feel what they are doing is right. In elementary school, you might remember teasing or being teased for being a "tattle-tale" and when we were kids, there wasn't such a thing as a "moral crusader". Kids think selfishly and that works for them, but we aren't kids anymore.

Blog Question #2

In the play, All My Sons by Arthur Miller, many characters give up their morals in order to give their family a "happy" life. Joe Keller sends cracked cylinder heads to the front lines that ultimately kill 21 men during the war. He does so, and lies about it for three years, later saying, "You're a boy, what could I do! I'm in business, a man is in business...(69)." Providing for his family at the time, the boy who knew nothing of the business and a wife, took precedence over the thought of maybe killing people. Kate Keller also doesn't expose the truth to their son, Chris, and her reason was"You can't bull yourself  through this one , Joe, you better be smart now, This thing-- this thing is not over yet (75)." Kate Keller's determination to not fall and have their most dangerous secret revealed is so strong, she lies to everyone. She lies to her own son, if it meant believing that her other son hadn't died because of her husband. She also puts her family's fragile balance over turning her husband in, and ruining her family for good.

I believe that some things are worth hurting your family, but there are also things that are more important than going along with society. It just depends on how important you think the thing that you have a choice of betraying your family for actually is to you. Peer pressure isn't a very good idea to break apart your family for but for some people their country could be that thing that they would choose.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places #2

For this post about my Outside reading book, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places , the devotion of certain people to others is a big piece that influences how the people Le Ly Hayslip is introducing to us live and their beliefs. She herself has grown up knowing that "The  oldest child in each family was responsible for providing for the family once the parents were gone. Sometimes this responsibility included vengeance for the father's death (69)." The strong connection between parent and child is what their whole society is based on. Young children grow up just to prove their parents proud and to provide for them when they grow old and feeble. Their devotion to their family bonds lasts even beyond death. Another common form of devotion is the kind between wife and husband. When Hayslip's sister's husband was taken away, she waited for 7 years for her husband to come back. Hayslip writes, "Waiting patiently for rice to grow or mountains to fall or lost husbands to come back was also the Vietnamese woman's way (22)." Waiting and holding faith that her husband would come back was the norm for Vietnamese women of that time.

Steady devotion to the people around them, including family and friends, was the principle belief of the people in Ky La, Hayslip's hometown. Unfortunately, as the war progressed, Ky La was engulfed in a power struggle between the North and South forces. "Life in the village had gone from love and distrust of no one to fear and mistrust of everyone...(70)." The change of attitude in a community where people helped each other out became a fragmented group of people, scared to talk to the wrong person or do the wrong thing. If they were caught doing something suspicious, the southern guerillas hiding in their village would execute them. Needless to say, during the tough part of the war, people hardened their hearts and walked softly in order to avoid being killed, and not just by the southern guerillas. The northern people also interrogated and beat the people of Ky La. After being surrounded by people hurting them, I am very interested in how Hayslip survived such a hard time.