First They Killed My Father Symbols

Some symbols in literature are black and red. Black and red symbolizes a few things; sad things and happy things such as when the Khmer rouge soldiers take aways the Cambodians items that they have or any of their food. The color red symbolized the word passionate. Passionate is showing or caused by strong feelings or a strong belief. They use black for being mean and for killing. For example , the soldiers are mean and treat the Cambodians like trash like their nothing and kill whoever and whenever they want to even if they look at them wrong. “Keav, and now pa, one by one, the Khmer rouge is killing my family.”

In First They Killed My Father, Loung used the color red for a variety of things such as clothing, and food. The reason for this is because in Cambodia, they are unable to wear or use any kind of color. When she was younger, her mom made her a red dress and she was not allowed to wear until New Years. The red dress was important to her because father had complimented it on her, so it made it even more important to her. I know this because, “I follow this with my eyes, focusing all energy from it, wanting desperately to rescue it from the pile. My first red dress, the one ma made for me for the New Year’s Celebration.”

The color black was more like the main color used in this book because the Khmer Rouge soldiers killed over a million of people and not only that, in front of their families. The Khmer soldiers took all of the Cambodians important objects that they had, their clothes, and even their food. A quote that I found was “My hands clenched in fist; I continue to stare at my dress. I do not see the soldier’s hand reach into his pocket and retrieve from it a box of matches. I do not hear his fingers strike a match against the side of the box. The next thing I know the pile of clothes burn into