American Literature II

In The Sympathizer, a key attribute of the main character is his ability to view and understand something from various different perspectives of a given situation. I would like to expand on such ability and extend it to the historical time period of which the story surrounds, the Vietnam War. Upon reading about this historical time period, I discovered a book: A People’s History Of the Vietnam War.

One of the reasons that this book stood out to me is because it presented a perspective of the war, which differed from most historical textbooks that I’ve read. This was especially true in this book’s explanation of why the United States got involved in the Vietnam War. Most historical textbooks justify U.S. involvement by focusing primarily on what was going on in Vietnam. However, this book provided an alternative perspective, explaining that some of the reasons why United States got involved in the war were due to reasons that came from outside of Vietnam.

The book began by stating that at the time of the war in Vietnam, the United States was already heavily committed to anti-communist regimes in many other parts of the world, and a win for communist in one country can lead to a potential domino theory effect on the rest. Thus, when it looked like the communist were going to win the war in Vietnam, the U.S. became directly involved in attempt to stop that from happening. Also, the United States was facing a major domestic battle of socialism and the rise of labor unions within businesses. The government found anti-communism to be essential in weakening unions and socialism domestically. If the United States would stand by at allow for a communist victory in Vietnam, it would lead to weakened anti-communism  domestically, which is something that the United States wanted to avoid from happening.

As I write this, I am watching the Netflix show Dear White People(F.Y.I). And it makes me wonder, what is genuine sympathy. In the episode I am watching, the white students are constantly telling a black student how they are sorry that he was held at gunpoint. On top of this, the white students are always hinting that they stand with the black students by liking rap and making cultural references and more importantly that they are not racist. So the question I find myself asking: does this ambiguous narrator have genuine sympathy or is he a cultural appropriator who sees the hardships and sees the culture but is not in it. He immediately tells us that he has two faces and two minds. But he never tells us who he identifies with more, he just tells us that both groups do not accept him. But since the narrator is constantly referencing American culture( supermarkets, Elvis, and Twain) and not telling us about any Vietnamese culture, is he just like the white students in this show that solely pities a culture from the outside? He sees the hardships that the South Vietnamese face, he is even experiencing a fraction of it with the death of Linh and Duc, but is this as far as his genuine sympathies go? 

Reading the sympathizer I see that he has taking a new approach in writing by not adding ” ” to indicate that some one is talking . Which had confused me for a while because I was not quick on noticing it and thought it was just a book with no talking. The narrator of the book begins to where he is an aid to the General, but he is not just an aid in the Generals inner circle but a SPY!! DUNDUNDUNNNNNN!!!!! I thought it was going to be another boring school book but it turns out to have a lot more life to it compared to all the others (sorry).

Honestly I personally think it would be better as a comic book.

(click the gifs.. they work…)

As a confessional poet whose writing style is straightforward and easy to understand, I found myself enjoying Ada Limón’s work. To say I was elated with having to analyze her poems is an understatement because picking apart poetry and analyzing it is usually a daunting task as majority of the time it is hard to read and leaves me feeling confused, but that was not the case this time around. So, when reading the poem above several times, the first thing I noticed was how her choice of words played a significant role in making the reader feel a part of the conversation. You see her inclusion of the reader when she says, “Don’t you believe it?” because it is here where she captivates the reader and leaves them thinking of how to answer her question. This type of writing style plays in her favor because it makes her poetry more relatable especially in this instance, as she is conveying hope through this poem. The way in which she successfully depicts strength and fierceness is through female horses as they naturally hold those traits and can be looked upon as symbols of female empowerment. When Limón says, “they make it all look easy, / like running 40  miles per hour / is as fun as taking a nap, or grass” when referring to the female horses, she is shedding light on how they are capable of making the most difficult things look easy. Thus, bringing up how human females should learn from female horses because we need to learn how to push forward and take on the the animalistic strength and fierceness that these horses posses in order to push forward and ignite the fire to bettering ourselves. Therefore, Limón is bringing forth the hope needed to empower females by making both animal and human relatable in the sense that if a female horse is capable of doing such amazing things, then why can’t a female human do it too.

The narrator of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel calls himself a “sympathizer,” but what does he mean exactly?  What are the multiple meanings of “sympathize” that the text invites us to consider?  How does his role as a sympathizer complicate his identity, his ability to know himself?  How does it relate to his claim that he is a “man of two faces” (1)?  Choose a passage from the first three chapters that demonstrates the way in which the narrator’s sympathies work, and analyze it in order to explain what it means, in Viet’s view, to be a sympathizer.

1-2 pages, double-spaced. Due May 8.

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