For my blog I will be discussing whether or not the war has directly affected Thi and her siblings. This was a topic that was discussed in my class discussion and I found it very interesting. The question was if the war directly affected the children or not. My stance on the debate was that the war indirectly affected the children.
Bo is my favorite character. He is at the root of all the problems in the book. I do not think that he should be hated for the conflict that he has caused because it can be equally distributed on to the mother. Bo has had an extraordinary life. He has seen war, lived dirt pore, seen people die, and through it all he has survived. On page 106 Bo was starving, on page 110 his mother left him with an abusive father. On page 111 he was watching people die in the streets from starvation. On page 122 he was hiding from the people who were trying to kill him. He could hear the people being killed.
In my opinion Thi is indirectly affected by the war. Her father has PTSD and acts in strange ways like on 74-75 when the a man calls and scars Thi, instead of comforting her he shuts the blinds and acted likes he would do if he was in a war. There are other times in the book where things like this happen. Bo has been toffened throughout his life.
Thi has not been directly affected by the war, but bo has. For example if a sling shot was to represent the Vietnam war, the shot to represent bo, and the target to represent Thi. If the sling shot was used to shoot Thi the sling shot does not directly affect Thi. All of the energy that was stored up in the sling shot is not transferred to the shot. Then when it hits the target the shot transfers all the energy to the target. Bo is directly affecting Thi’s life but he is just transferring the energy.
