How we cite our quotes: (Page)
Quote #1
Since beautiful women in the provinces get shipped to Pyongyang, that's certainly what had happened to his mother. The real proof of this was the Orphan Master himself. At night, he'd drink, and from the barracks, the orphans would hear him weeping and lamenting, striking half-heard bargains with the woman in the photograph. (7)
In his desperate quest to avoid orphanhood, Jun Do pieces together a likely story about his family. This results, for him, in a twisted version of what familial love is: true suffering, loss and tragedy. He imagines that the cruelty shown to him by the Orphan Master proves the fact that the Orphan Master is actually his dad, because only a man truly suffering from the loss of his only love could hate a child so much. That's how Jun Do sees it, anyway.
Quote #2
He did catch the Okinawan families making appeals to fathers listening on their ships, but it was hard to feel too bad for kids who had mothers and siblings. Plus the 'adopt us' good cheer was enough to make a person sick. When the Russian families broadcast nothing but good cheer for their inmate fathers, it was to give the men strength. But trying to plead a parent into returning? Who would fall for that? (54)
Here we get a deeper understanding of Jun Do's concept of family. As he scans the radio waves while on the Junma, he catches glimpses of how other families work—and it perplexes him. Children, he thinks, ought to be of service to their families, and not the other way around. There's a sense that weakness—even the natural frailty of infancy and childhood—is something to be hated and shunned.
Quote #3
"It's because no one ever taught you about family and sacrifice and doing whatever it takes to protect your own." The Captain's eyes were open and calm and so close to Jun Do's that it felt they were communicating in some pure, wordless way. The hand on the back of his neck was solid, and Jun Do found himself nodding. (83)
While the Captain is surely manipulating Jun Do to save his own skin, there is something appealing in his explanation here that Jun Do does not want to resist. This explanation plays well with Jun Do's understanding that family members exist to sacrifice themselves for each other—and that the willingness to suffer is an innate part of belonging to a group.