Jeffrey Vinokur April 10, 2008
Hon. English IV Mr. Saxon

Monkey Bridge: An Autobiography of Lan Cao

Monkey Bridge is a semi-autobiographical story of a Vietnamese immigrant teenager who learns about her family history and past. Critics have praised Monkey Bridge for highlighting the plight of the Vietnamese American during the 1970s and depicting the Vietnam conflict from multiple non-bias perspectives. The book was received well by the critics who hailed it as a “touching and powerful story” that documents the Vietnamese American imigrant’s experience post-Vietnma war. New York Times Book Review contributor Michiko Kakutani commented, "Cao does a sensitive job of delineating the complicated relationship between a mother and a daughter" and concludes, "Cao has made an impressive debut." While most critics and literary criticsims focus on the thematic aspects of the story such as charectar relationships, I belive that the books relation to Lan Cao’s actual life in underhighlighted. Lan Cao wrote this book as a fictional adaptation to her actual life events. The book can even be concidered an autobiography if Mai, the main charectar in the book, is represented as Lan Cao. Mai strongly paralleles the stuggles that Lan Cao undergoes in her life and many of the events from the book actually occored in Lan Cao’s life. For example, Mai immegrates to the USA at the same age and in the same way as Lan Cao. The similarites are stunning and greatly help with a thourough understanding of the book.

Lan Cao is herself a naitive of Vietnam. “In 1975 the last of the U.S. embassy officials were airlifted out of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. Among those airlifted were Vietnamese whose families had opposed the communists, including Lan Cao” (Banerian 1). In the book, Cao describes a young Vietnamese girl named Mai Nguyen who at the age of 13 immegrates to the United states at the end of the war. Right from the beginnning, the reader recieves clues that the book is an autobiographical account due to the striking similarites of Age, time period, method of immigration, and even setteling location. Both Mai and Cao settle in little Saigion, a nickname for a city with a large vietnamese imigrant population. Lan Cao sets up th eplot as a starightforward autobiography, but deviates over the course of the book from this genre.

The remaining chapters in the book lightly follow Lan Cao’s life events but deviate in order to give the reader insight into the Vietnam conflict from multiple perspectives. As a Vietnam War novelist, Cao writes “as an outsider with inside information” (Monkey Bridge 41). Due to her first hand experiences in Vietnam, Lan Cao became a professor of literature in 1983 and expert on Vietnamese studies. Through the course of the book, multiple narrators tell the story of Vietnam. Cao’s healthy relationship with her parents who also immigrated to the United States accounts for the book’s emphasis on Thanh’s narrative. The story of Vietnam from her mother’s perspective is bred from Lan Cao’s relationship and experiences with her own mother. One deviation from Cao’s actual life is the character of Baba Quan. This mysterious grandfather who was left in Vietnam illustrates the unknowns and secrets of Vietnam since Cao was only 13 when she left the country and may not remember everything accurately.

“She encourages us to allegorize from these stories, to see the experiences of her portrayed body as metaphors for the experience of her birth nation” (Janette 3).

Final Book Comparison

With one last post remaining this marking period, I am going to analyze the characters presented in the two books I have read. To remind you, the books were A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess and Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao. Alex DeLarge in Clockwork and Mai of Monkey Bridge are both surprisingly the same age, but they have developed into two completely different people. Despite their differences, they still illustrate the common thoughts and dreams of a teenager growing up in an unknown world.

Growing up

Teenagers find themselves in between childhood and adulthood. It is a stage in their lives where they leave the protection of their parents and start to live independently; however, they are still vulnerable to the many menacing forces the real world can throw at them. In Monkey Bridge, Mai is only 13 years old when she comes to America. In her transformation to becoming an adult, she sets out to discover the true past of her family and unveil knowledge about the Vietnam conflict as an insider. She works hard to prove herself and complete her goal. Her innocence is depicted though her misunderstanding of her family history, but in the end she becomes enlightened and develops a great understanding for her heritage.

Although Alex DeLarge in Clockwork is not presented in a family situation, he is still considered a teenager who is trying to prove himself in the real world. He is constantly trying to impress his gang and trying to define himself by doing bolder and more dangerous acts then his friends. Unfortunately in Alex’s case, the world he is in takes advantage of him and Alex becomes a victim of the Ludovico technique. After he is taken off this sadistic therapy, Alex starts the transformation into an adult. He looks to a future without violence and staring a family as an adult.



This theme also ties into our fourth marking period projects as we start our rite of passage from grade school students to college students. In college, students need to take a lot moe responsibility for their own work since there aren’t parents and teachers pressuring them to work hard. This is a new situation all the seniors will be facing as we transform from dependent teenagers to fully functioning adults. The Personal Improvement Project is one of the major step that will help with this change. I don’t know what I will be doing for the project yet, but I will blog post about my ideas in the next week.

Until next time…

BYE!!!!!

For this blog post, I would like to compare and contrast the two books I have read for the third marking period. While they may seem different at first glance, these books are actually remarkably similar and have their own way of setting themselves apart. Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao is a book about not forgetting where you came from and connecting past, present, and future. On the Other hand, A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess, is about violence and sadistic control over a person’s choices; however, A Clockwork Orange also uses a theme of time: past, present and future.



After I finished reading A Clockwork Orange, I did research on the book using Questia and discovered that there was originally one less chapter in the story. As I mentioned in my last post about this book, Clockwork ends with Alex thinking about a positive future; a life with a wife and kids, and without violence, pain, and death. In the years after the book was written, this last positive chapter was added to the book, which would otherwise end with Alex returning to his poor behavior of beating, tormenting, and raping innocent people. I believe Anthony Burgess added this final chapter to help drive home the ultimate meaning and goal of this story. Without the last chapter, people may not see the meaning of the story and wouldn’t take away anything from it. With his last chapter, we can break the book up into past, present, and future events:

In the far past, Alex was a thug on the street who beat, rapped, and molested people without understanding the nature of his violence.

In the past, Alex was treated by the Government to make him incapable of making the decision between right and wrong, so he was always forced to subdue to others. He was also unable to carry out acts of violence.

In the future, Alex thinks about ending his violent path and starting over with his life. His last thoughts are those of starting a family and children.

These seemingly different books share the common thread of time: Past, Present and Future. Lan Cao utilizes this aspect to show the Vietnam conflict from multiple perspectives and angles, and Anthony Burgess uses it to highlight moral choice and clearly show his intent in writing the book.

Time: Past, Present, Future

"B" vs "A"

Until today, I mistakenly thought that I needed to read 4 books and complete 4 project to earn an "A" for the marking period, but thanks to the exuberant classmate who sits next to me, I was informed that my assumption was incorrect.

You only need 3 books for an "A" and two books for a "B"!

If I had known this before, I would definitely have gone for an "A."

I started reading 'Ceremony,' a book by Leslie Silko, until this generous student (whose blog can be found here) informed me that I only needed 2 books. As a result, I have stopped reading Ceremony after being about 19 pages into it.

I am truly disappointed in myself for not knowing that 3 books = A, and 2 books = B. Now that I must settle for a "B" since I missed a project, I will blog about A Clockwork Orange and Monkey Bridge; the two books I have already read. To redeem myself, the projects I will do and my blog posts will hopefully be very strong.
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Clockwork Orange: Final Post

A Clockwork Orange has turned out to be a suspenseful, alarming, and disturbing story which sets itself apart from any other book you will ever read. As I said in my first post about this book, I started out reading A Clockwork Orange because my classmates told me that it was interesting. Once I got pass the initial blockage of the Nadsat language, I continued to read it because it was engaging, unsettling, and just plain creepy.

Anthony Burgess wrote this book in 1962. This may seem like an outdated book, but its morals and principles still apply to today’s society more the ever. For this blog post I would like to analyze the book as a whole and the significance of the ending to the moral of the story.

For Burgess, the important idea is a choice between right and wrong. His book is similar to 1984 by George Orwell in that it presents a futuristic issue that society faces. Although I don’t think the type of mind control presented in the book ever came true, this kind of government control is still a possibility. His argument is that people should have the choice between right and wrong and this is a right that should be guaranteed to people.



Even though Alex is a low life who does horrible things, we root for him since his basic freedoms have been taken away and his mind crippled. When he is finally removed from his anti-violence trance, the reader is actually happy that he can commit crimes again such as beating and raping people. Surprisingly, the story ends with Alex back to his old bad habits, but the reader is left with closure that Alex’s moral choice will lead him towards good since his last thoughts are of starting a family and children. A recent online survey showed that citizens (obviously) are opposed to the type of government control presented in the book.

If you are still interested in A Clockwork Orange , checkout the Moive adaptation Be warned that it is rated “R” because of the violent acts portrayed from the book.

This site does a great job illustrating the movie adaptation with captions and then analyzing the events in terms of Burgess’s goals.

Part 2 - Clockwork Orange

After reading Part Two of Clockwork Orange, the following adjectives come to mind to describe the happenings in the story: sadistic, evil, cruel, cold-blooded, forgiveness, unsympathetic, and unforgiving. I am surprised that Anthony Burgess was not admitted to a mental hospital after writing this book because this cruel story is a creation of his mind. Basically, part two of Clockwork Orange takes place entirely in jail where Alex turns from predator to prey. Other inmates and guards treat him poorly, dealing beatings and raping him. He dominates the streets outside of jail, but his cellmates and guards teat him as a low life inside the jail.

As in the last post, I have identified a few more analogies that Burgess ha created, which don’t quite go together in a normal world. Alex befriends the prison Chaplain, Charlie who takes a liking to Alex because he is interested in the bible. When Alex reads the bible he is excited by the talk of sex, sin and violence. In addition, Alex greatly enjoys reading about the torture of Jesus and even imagines himself being the person torturing Jesus. As before, Alex listens to Classical music while studying the bible. This is the ultimate analogy that is reversed in the book:

The Bible: Righteousness as Violence: sin

According to Alex, Violence is Righteousness because as he is reading the bible, he thinks that the depicted violence, sex, and wrong doing is god’s message, where as a normal person would understand that violence is a sin.

After reading though blogs of other people in my class who have read Clockwork Orange, I would like to respond to a common theme all the blogs say. Here are the blogs:

MC
TN
MC
DP
MM
MM

Many of these bloggers say, “I disagree with the government for forcing Alex to change and controlling his ability to distinguish right from wrong.”


If I was a government official, the treatment Alex received, the Ludovico technique, would be a perfect solution to a great problem. The government has always experimented with altering behavior and mind control. Instead of keeping people in jail, which ends up costing the government massive amounts of money, they can just treat the prisoners to be “good Christians.” This will reduce crime, save money, and have fewer rebels in society. Sounds crazy, but its true.

I will post again after I finish part three.

A Clockwork Orange

For my next book, I have chosen to Read A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Many of my classmates read this book for their last project and said it was ‘unique and out of the ordinary’ to say the least. As I had done with Monkey Bridge, I did some basic web searches on the book and the author to find out what I was getting myself into. Interestingly, Anthony Burgess didn’t write much until he was diagnosed with a brain tumor in his forties. At this point he began a writing frenzy (5 books in a year) so that he could provide his wife with money after he died. It turns out that he really didn’t have a brain tumor, but he kept writing anyway. A Clockwork Orange “was chosen by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.”

The first thing anyone would notice is that the language presented in the book has some non-english aspects. Some of the words come from Russian and I am actually 100% Russian; I can speak it, but I can’t read and write in Russian. This is a great advantage because I don’t have to pickup the words from context, I can read the words as they are. For example:

Korova – Cow
Moloko – Milk
Veshches – Other Things
Deng – money
Chelloveck – person
baboochkas – ladies
viddied – look
Luna – moon
Krovf – blood
Britva – razor/shaver
Pooshkas – gun/cannon
Nochy – night
Molody - young

Deciphering the vocabulary is entertaining and keeps me interested in the book. Just as my classmates said, it is a unique story. Alex and his gang of drools use drugs and roam the streets commiting awful crimes such as rape and robbery against people they don’t even know. They drink ‘Moloko,’ the Russian word for milk, laced with various drugs they refer to as Drencrom, Vellocet, and Synthemesc. Alex, the gang leader and protagonist, is also a fan of classical music, which goes side-by-side with his thirst for violence. These analogies don’t really fit together, and I think that Burgess is trying to make a point here. Classical Music is said to calm people and help them think clearly and critically. Violence results when people don’t think clearly and get angry. By listening to classical music and associating it with violence, Burgess is showing that there is a clear problem with Alex that is rooted deep inside him and the society.



Milk is nature’s nurturing food that babies drink to grow up when they are helpless and still learning about the world around them. On the other hand, drugs damage your body, destroy the world around us, and take away your senses to act logically. Mixing these two together is the ultimate symbol of this book, a great concoction combining good, evil, logic, and insanity.

I am nearly done with part one and actually excited to continue on to part two. This is building up to be one of my favorite books, or at least one I will remember for a very long time.


A Clockwork Orange - Movie Adaptation - This scene says it all.