When is it okay to lie?
I am reading the Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson. This book is definitely worth of being a best seller. I am in love with this book mainly because I like the events that are taking place, they just seem real and so authentic. Last week I almost reached my goal of reading, but I didn’t meet the goal but I am not on page 86, so I read for about a total of an hour and a half and read about 33 pages. I am a pretty slow reader unfortunately, but it is cool I guess. This week I read about a few things ranging from lying, to the crew members being upset with Jun Do for not being able to think on his feet when the Americans were talking to them, and to the crew members basically drilling in his head the North Korea was indeed the greatest nation in the world.
During my reading, I had one particular passage that stood out to me. “Three months on this boat, and you can’t even pretend to be a fisherman? You’ve watched us empty a seine purse on this deck a hundred times - don't you eat off the same plates as us and shit in the same bucket?” (Pg. 62) The reason this stands out to me is because Jun Do is new to being on the boat with the other fishermen, however it was almost like he wasn’t buying into the North Korean way in a sense. This means that he has to be quick on his feet and according to the other fisherman they have to believe that North Korea is the best country on earth. When the Americans came he wasn’t able to act as if he was an actual fisherman, the Americans thought they were spies, and because of Jun Do’s lack of ability to just pretend for one second he ruined everything for them in a way. I guess this goes hand in hand with what I didn’t like about what I read, mainly because it was like they are automatically supposed to be liars and deceivers, although they have nothing to lie about and they are doing nothing wrong. They were in North Korean waters fishing, but they still needed a reason to lie to deceive the Americans. This reminded me of when I was watching a clip of How Dangerous is North Korea, and they started to explain how if one man can manipulate a country of 25 million people, imagine what he would be able to get them to do in the name of North Korea.
Something that made me think deeply was just about the people of North Korea to be honest. In the novel the fishermen were almost drilling each other to already say how great North Korea is, even though they have nothing to show for and nothing to make North Korea great. All they know is that democracy is evil, they do everything to honor the great leader and that there is no country better than there country on earth. It just makes me wonder about their conditions and how bad is it in North Korea and what the people are going through. Overall, I enjoyed this portion of my readings and I look forward to reading some more.