Word: war
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...Chang-Rae Lee’s “The Surrendered,” such a plight of insatiable need afflicts Hector Brennan and June Singer, war survivors whose lives are unwillingly but unavoidably entwined by the aftermath of the Korean War. Fundamentally a contemporary war novel, “The Surrendered” derives its plot from a scrutiny of the most basic of human experiences—love and conflict. Though beleaguered with a requisite love triangle and sometimes seized by paroxysms of sentiment, the novel is a paradigm of narrative layering—a finely crafted story...
...1950s, June is one of many children orphaned by the Korean War. Rescued from certain death by Hector, a soldier with a tormented past, they escape to an orphanage where they meet Sylvie Tanner, a reverend’s wife. For this indigent pair, Sylvie appears to be a pillar of salvation, a testament to love’s resilience in the face of war...
...flinty resolve. They self-medicate with alcohol and analgesics, their compulsion not dissimilar to the reason for Sylvie’s own addiction. Like the ill-fated Erysicthon, they devour themselves, and yet for all their indulgence in masochistic punishment, they cannot wrench free from the consequences of their war-torn pasts. The author of three previous novels centered on the immigrant experience, Lee is still preoccupied with tropes of alienation, estrangement, and a loss of identity. “The Surrendered” simply concerns emigrants of time rather than location...
...they serve to emphasize the remote helplessness of the victim. In Manchuria, the Japanese cut off the eyelids of one of Sylvie’s companions in order to force him watch her be raped. Years later, in Korea, Hector is commanded to kill a tortured prisoner of war, but cannot bring himself to pull the trigger. The young bugler, legs broken beneath him, grabs a grenade from Hector’s belt, but allows Hector to flee the area before removing the pin. Lee plays on the dichotomy between the sufferer, deprived even of the right...
...ballad of Hector and June’s love affairs with life. Both are prone to fighting—Hector with his fists and June with her cold contempt—but they fight hard because of the imminent isolation threatening to consume them whole. They recognize that war has rendered them forever incomplete, lacking any conviction in human solidarity. Hector, musing about the war, sees a couple embracing: “They were both slight of frame and not tall, and if he hadn’t known them he would have mistaken them for youths in thrall...