Theme Of Communism In Paradise Of The Blind

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Doung Thu Huong is a Vietnamese novelist who wrote during the Cold War era where communism had overthrown the French rule in Vietnam. As a teenager in the mid-1960, she joined the Communist Party, serving as the leader of a Communist youth brigade. In the early 1980’s, there was a major shift in her temperament and beliefs about the role of Communism in her country and was expelled from the Vietnamese Communist Party in 1989. Huong’s novel included criticism of the communist government and was banned to be published in Vietnam. In Huong’s Paradise of the Blind, she mocks the actions of the communist authorities towards the Vietnamese people in order to show the lack of leadership demonstrated by the country’s regime. Huong chooses to show this …show more content…
In general, as a leader, Bich is supposed to rule in justice and in a professional manner, but ironically, under corruptness of communism, an uneducated peasant is given a responsibility to be a leader and “insul[t]” meaning abuse the villagers. The leader of a village was an alcoholic who “be[gged] cups of wine” thus showing that communists leaders consisted of unprofessional and alcoholic leaders. Huong shows the reader that communist authorities lack leadership as they gave an uneducated peasants authority to rule in which he behaves poorly to the peasants while the communists blamed the land owners to be exploiting the peasant while ironically communists are the ones who caused chaos to the peasants. The reader is able to infer that the author is implying that the outcomes of the uprising of the communist regime have not been pleasant. Lastly, Hang goes to Moscow to see her uncle Chinh, and learns that her uncle had begun illegal smuggling and says: “They all seemed on edge impatient. They were probably busy thinking of the goods they had smuggled …show more content…
For example, when Huong writes about the disaster that the Land reform, a communist group, caused in the village, she says, “Land reform had ripped through the village like a squall, devastating fields and rice paddies, sowing only chaos and misery in its wake” (33). The author is comparing the “land reform” to have “ripped” meaning torn, shredded the village like a “squall” which is a storm. Like the land reform that “devastat[ed] fields” meaning that it destroyed the rice paddies, a squall also destroys farmland due to the strong wind. Communists were tyrannizing the citizens by destroying the land and belongings of the citizens by causing “only chaos”. Huong mocks that, by destroying the lands of the citizens, the communists terrorize the people while trying to create equality between land owners and peasants thus the lack of leadership is demonstrated by the communist regime because they behave cruelly even to the peasants. Furthermore, Hang talks about the time where Chinh was humiliating her Aunt Tam and grandmother in front of the villagers because they owned land and the author writes, “They (Vietnam’s citizens) knew that they were being stalked, that at any moment they could meet with humiliation, sorrow, even death. Their fate hung from a thread” (25). Huong used a metaphor to

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