Andrew’s World Literature Blog

     Throughout this course, the most unexpected and surprising thing has to be the book Hayy Ibn Yaqzan. It probably stands as the most unconventional and difficult book I’ve read– not in a thematic sense, but in terms of pure rhetoric and text. The section before the actual story started especially confused me. It often felt like I was in Spanish class again, as I had to read slowly and didn’t always understand what was being written. It definitely wasn’t the kind of book you could skim.      Another thing that surprised me was how invested I got into certain books, especially There There. It’s not often that I lose track of how many pages I’ve read, and it genuinely felt like time just flew by almost every time I sat down to read it. It’s a book I could see being adapted into a mini-series and being done well. Some of the most interesting parts were the class debates, which were always fresh and interesting, sometimes even getting heated. I’d also like...

     I think the Digital Humanities component has offered up some great new formatting and presentations for projects that I can see myself using in the future for literature/history related projects. Perhaps the most important of these is learning how to use the SCU library/databases to do scholarly research. There is a drastic difference between how long it took me the first time to how long it takes now, and as a result I have access to these tools whenever. It seemed so complicated at first, but finding peer-reviewed scholarly journals is mostly easy now. I am absolutely certain that I will continue to use this throughout my college career, as I had even been using it for different classes this very semester.      As for the project formatting, although most of my projects in this class were essays, I still sufficiently learned how to use Omeka and StoryMap, which is excellent formatting for any geography-based assignment. I think my learning is enhance...

     A topic that stuck in my mind when reading Pachinko was the contrast between positive fatherly love and the social norms at the time. It was expected that parents should never compliment their children, and that they could turn out poorly if they did. Sunja had to wait to compliment Noa until nobody could hear, as the way she feels is very different to the way she acts when people are around her. This love stems from Hoonie’s unwavering and unconditional love for his wife and children. Though it wasn’t common, Hoonie ate at the dinner table with Yangjin and Sunja and would wait for them to finish. He would always compliment the two, and genuinely made them feel like equals– something that was very uncommon at the time.      Marriage itself was usually a symbol of status, something done for practical reasons rather than for love. Hoonie was genuinely loving and affectionate for his wife and child, something that the both endlessly praise him for and cl...

     Yumi feels torn between her identity and how the world around her treats her based on said identity. I don’t think that her dislike for being Korean has anything to do with any intrinsic differences between a Korean and Japanese person (though it’s possible she feels that way based on everything she’s been told), but the socioeconomic differences one just so happens to be born into based on their race at the time. It is hard to see any benefits or pride in one’s identity if they are constantly chastised and seen as inferior for it. I think her description of Japan as a beloved but cold stepmother stems from the idea that Japan is her home, no matter how terribly she is treated. She would like to be “liked” by the stepmother in the sense that she wants to be financially stable and feel respected and safe with her identity, but knows it is unlikely. Even so, most of her experiences that revolve around being Korean are negative– so it’s not surprising that she feels the...

     Gender is one of, if not the biggest recurring theme throughout the novel. The entire plot stems from the societal norms that would condemn the 16 year old Sunja for being impregnated while unmarried to a much older, manipulative man who had a whole separate family. If word were to get out, most people would have undoubtedly sided with Hansu. It’s a shame that Sunja has to marry, especially at her age, in order to remain what would be considered a valuable member of society. The novel even mentions women killing themselves if they are impregnated before marriage, even if it was forced upon them. It is so awful to think that regardless of age, a woman or girl could be heavily condemned or commit suicide for having a child they didn’t want, a horror that the novel keeps the reader aware of to continually contextualize the decisions made by the characters.       At the same time, many of these different societal standards between men and women are no...

     Relating to lifestyle, the quote I have chosen is “The Japanese think Koreans are filthy, but they have no choice but to live in squalor” (Lee 119). This quote is a frustrating one, in the sense that people are judged for issues imposed onto them by a powerful government. Japan annexed Korea and kept the Koreans into low-income ghettos, with little support from the government and Japanese police that hardly listened to the Korean’s complaints, if they could even understand it due to the language barrier.       It is even more frustrating in scenes where certain characters are somewhat ambiguous in terms of race, and the demeanor of the Japanese people interacting with them changes from positive to negative once they realize that they are Korean. Even when they clearly aren’t “dirty,” they are judged as such due to preconceived notions. Lee definitely includes this to showcase the illogical and unfair bigotry at hand, and the way that human psychol...