First They Killed My Father

“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey” (Miyazawa). In the book First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung, the idea of strength is explored throughout the description of the events during the Cambodian genocide. The Khmer Rouge forced labor, starvation, death and despair onto millions of people in the late 1970s. The story is told by a survivor, Loung Ung, who persisted through the torturous pain and used what she learned as a survival technique. Ung builds the idea of strength by developing the theme leaving behind people and objects in the past builds emotional strength in order to explain experiencing difficult times is essential for development and survival. Persevering through burdensome situations allows people to learn and grow into stronger, more emotionally grounded versions of themselves. Loung and her family are forced to work in strenuous conditions with appalling health and no real doctors to aid

A few days after Loung and her family are forced out of their home city of Phnom Penh, a Khmer Rouge soldier stops them and demands he is given their watches. Loung’s father, without hesitation, gathers all of the watches and hands them to the soldier. Loug’s father then whispers to the family, “We are to give the soldiers anything they want or they will shoot us” (Ung 27). In this situation, the watches symbolize the Ung family’s time, wealth, and old life in Phnom Penh. By giving up the watches, they are sacrificing the comfort of what they have known their entire life, but they do so to survive. If the Ungs were to resist the commands of the Khmer Rouge, more pain and despair would be inflicted upon them. Although they give up something that represents so much, they immolate it to protect their lives, therefore setting the standard for their journey, preparing their mindset, and increasing their emotional