Craft of Writing Flashcards
What is “Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice” by Nam Le
This blend of fiction, autobiography, non-fiction, and metafiction is written from the first person perspective of an Australian refugee from Vietnam, who immigrated to the US. It reveals the difference experiences between Nam Le and his father - the easier life vs the sacrifice and hardships of his father - and examines themes of storytelling and narrativization.
“my father arrived on a rainy morning”
“The sound of rain filled the room - rain fell on the streets, on the roofs, on the tin shed across the parking lot like a drumming of a thousand fingertips”
Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice - Nam Le
Pathetic Fallacy
- Le uses pathetic fallacy to make his writing more vivid and descriptive, but also serves to reflect the human emotions of the characters, reflected in the tone or mood of the setting, seen further in the plot elements
“I was dreaming about a poem, the dull thluck thluck of a typewriter’s keys punching out the letters”
Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice - Nam Le
Onomatopoeia
- Le uses onomatopoeia to invite readers to use their senses to understand what is taking place, by adding a sense of reality
“At sixteen I left home. There was a girl, and crystal meth”
“I quickly gathered up the cigarette packs and sleeping pills”
“I drank before I came here too”
Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice - Nam Le
Motifs of self destruction (substance abuse)
- Motifs portray Le’s coping mechanisms for the lived trauma. These mechanisms allow the audience to understand the weight of the subject matter on the character, and the everlasting and continuous toll trauma maintains on the individual
“Everything smelt of wet leaves”
“The sound of rain filled the room”
Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice - Nam Le
Imagery
- Le uses imagery to transport the audience into the world of the text, especially bringing to life
“…but the Americans just frowned and spat and laughed”
Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice - Nam Le
Prose and improper grammar
- Establishes Le’s prose and an informality to the text, creating a conversational and casual tone - the builds a relationship between the writer and the responder
