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Kip is a second son of his Sikh family from Punjab. His family had the tradition of assigning jobs to the sons, first joining army, second becoming a doctor, and third becoming a businessman. However, due to the war, the soldiers had to be marked with yellow chalks on their body and the first brother of Kip's family was insulted by this. Refusing to join the army, he went to jail and Kip, instead, joined the army because he is kind of a guy who takes orders. Kip is comfortable with being a subordinate and he does not want to be in charge of things. When Lord Suffolk died due to bomb explosion, Kip became the "big guy" in the field. However, in his narrative, he directly mentions that he is more comfortable with being an invisible member of the group. From this chapter, we learn that Kip, even though he does not thoroughly realizes it, is feeling left out of this whole English society and as the English patient says, "[fights] to get back to or get away from [his homeland]". Because he is so used to being alone, he develops a way to defend himself, being completely alone in his thought. However, as he arrives at the mention and meets Hana, Kip starts to change, wanting to develop his relationships with Hana further.
What do you think about the tradition of assigning jobs to sons and/or birth order? I find it interesting that a culture can have expectations that pretty much determine your career; your life. Can you relate to that?
ReplyDeleteWell, I personally do not agree with the tradition of assigning jobs to sons. In Korea, there are quite a lot of people who believe their son should inherit their job, which becomes the profession of that family. For example, doctors encourage their sons to be doctors and CEOs educate their sons to become the leaders of their company to keep the power to their family only. These thoughts, however, can discourage the sons to seek for their own dreams. They will be the best productive members of the society when they are doing jobs they would like to do because passion is needed to succeed in that field. Even though many people assign jobs to their sons under the title of tradition and culture, they are actually taking away the society's opportunity to be more developed and civilized.
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