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Loung's Innocence In First They Killed My Father

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Growing up in an ideal world, a child should never have any kind of burden placed upon their shoulders; but that ideal is just that; ideal. In the memoir First They Killed My Father, the hardening of a child’s innocence is shown as it follows the early years of Loung. The memoir captures moments and feelings that were once constantly questioned and seen as gruesome, to those same instances now just accepted and seen as the norm. The eventual numbed thoughts of a young child show how truly awful some things and some people can be; as just a child the author states that “there were times when such scenes [as bodies being buried] terrified [her], but [she] has seen the ritual performed so many times that [she] feel[s] nothing” (85). These hardened …show more content…

She constantly questions many things in her daily life and always wants answers to why and how the world and people work. Even for months after her forced departure, Loung continues to ask question after question trying to understand the actions taken around and against her. But through her long journey, her curious mind, that like a child's should be, begins to deteriorate. She begins to ask fewer questions as the answers she receives become more vague and unknown. She still sees many things around her that make her wonder, but now she just accepts what is …show more content…

As clarified in a faculty essay, the title gives deep meaning to how this affected her. With the title literally talking about her father’s death, the weight of his killing is truly shown and what a high impact it had on her and her life. The loss of her father created an realization like no other; it was the moment when she knew she truly had to grow up. Growing up, Loung considered her father to be all knowing and a protector, she knew that he was the reason they all survived, “Pa was [their] strength and [they] all needed him to survive…” (108). And without him, she needed to find strength. No one was there to protect her and she had to find it within her young self to be

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