Sunday, July 04, 2004
Daisy's Response
The book “A Step from Heaven” by An Na tells a story about a journey of a young Korean girl named Young Ju Park’s from her home country, Korea, to a place called Mi Gok or America. Moreover, this book portrait on how Young deals with challenges while living in America. Further along, in page 11, the author’s Apa said that Mi Gok is where everyone can make lots of money and where its people live in big houses. I really do not agree with him where he said that everybody can make lots of money in America. Based on my experience living in United States for quite sometimes, in order to make lots of money, people are force to work hard and in order to do so they really sacrifice their time just to meet their expectation. In some cases they have two jobs at the same time, but, even though they have two jobs, rarely they can save money. In relation to my previous statement, I remembered Darwin’s theory “Survival for the Fittest” that eventually said that in the end the winner takes all. It is really true that only glints of people in so called Uncle Sam’s can make it to the winner strata, but compare to the rest of the people, the ratio is far more than balanced. Moreover, the cultures of materialism that have been so well adapted here makes it hard for people to find themselves waking up in the morning without complaining or just getting through the day without cursing.
As far as living in big houses, it is hard to compare and contrast points of view. Maybe what some Asians think is big may not be as big as what the Americans think. But taking the mindset of what the Americans think that bigger is better. What may seem big to some Asians is probably small compared to what Americans think. In Young’s case and her Apa, I think we can make an argument that what they have in Korea maybe small in comparison to what America has to offer. But in my country of Indonesia we too have very big houses even bigger than what people have here. So if I compare I don’t agree with what Apa claims. Some Asians are prosperous enough to have bigger houses built in their country and don’t see the need to come to America. But then again we have some people, just like in Korea, that live in small meager houses, and comparison.
As far as living in big houses, it is hard to compare and contrast points of view. Maybe what some Asians think is big may not be as big as what the Americans think. But taking the mindset of what the Americans think that bigger is better. What may seem big to some Asians is probably small compared to what Americans think. In Young’s case and her Apa, I think we can make an argument that what they have in Korea maybe small in comparison to what America has to offer. But in my country of Indonesia we too have very big houses even bigger than what people have here. So if I compare I don’t agree with what Apa claims. Some Asians are prosperous enough to have bigger houses built in their country and don’t see the need to come to America. But then again we have some people, just like in Korea, that live in small meager houses, and comparison.
