The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down Muddle Character Analysis

Understanding and accepting cultural differences is immensely difficult. This difficulty is especially prevalent in healthcare settings due to various factors including language barriers, variance of medicinal style, and religious restrictions. The Lee family in Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down muddle through these matters with their daughter, Lia, and her severe epilepsy. In the beginning of the novel, the Lee family seems uncompliant with western medicine, preferring their own brand of healing—a mixture of animal sacrifice and herbal remedies. This refusal of modern medicine for a disease as severe as Lia’s lends weight to the idea that the Foua and Nao Kao Lee are stubborn, distrustful, and neglectful people. This idea is constantly disproven throughout the book, with valid reasons behind these emotions presented through a history of the Hmong people in Chapter Ten. Having no prior knowledge of the civil war in Laos or the consequent struggles of the Hmong, chapter ten opened the door to a new perspective on the Lee family and their struggles with their daughter, Lia. …show more content…
After learning of the American abandonment of “more than 10,000 Hmong,” under the rule of the Pathet Laos, who intended to wipe out the entire Hmong population, this cynicism of American authority indisputably stems from something much larger (Fadiman 139). Although the Lee family was lucky enough to have been evacuated from war-torn Laos, the residual distrust in Americans shines through in dealing with Lia’s doctors. The cultural and religious differences in medial opinion are evident throughout the novel, with Foua and Nao Kao’s dislike of western medicine culminating in Lia’s removal by Child Protective Services due to improper medication administration by her