How we cite our quotes: (Page)
Quote #4
They had only their teeth to start the cut, their nails to peel back a flap, and their little biceps to rip the branch clean. Normally, a sight like this would reassure him, make him feel comfortable. But Jun Do had seen no living boy so sinewy, and they moved faster than the Long Tomorrows orphans ever had. (170)
Jun Do had seen some pretty serious suffering in his early years, but his journey north to the Prison Camp 33 reveals a whole new level of misery to him. It's as though he's entered an alien landscape in which the children aren't really human, as though their own hunger, neediness and despair has lifted them outside human experience and transformed their bodies. It's telling that the normally stoic Jun Do is disturbed by the sight of these boys outside the gates of the camp.
Quote #5
He did as he was told and soon he was chewing a wad of them—their furry abdomens drying in his mouth, despite the goop that burst from them and a sharp aspirin taste from some chemical on their wings. His stomach hadn't been filled since Texas. (192)
Jun Do may not appreciate Mongnan's recipe for survival in the prison camp, but it's effective. We'd like to point out that it's not just the taste of furry, bitter moths in the mouth that constitutes cruel an unusual punishment. It's also the fact that Jun Do derives satisfaction from eating them because he's starving so hard.
Quote #6
On his forehead and scalp were pressure marks from the screws to the halo, a device that kept a subject from injuring his neck during the cranial administration of electricity. (203)
Despite all the different forms of torture that Jun Do/Imposter Ga endures throughout his adventures, he still has to suffer through some pretty classic torture sessions at the hands of the Pubyok. In this scene, the report of his torments is kind of ho-hum: all we get is a description of the contact marks from the equipment. It's left to our imaginations to fill in the blanks concerning the "cranial administration of electricity." That's a very clean term for a pretty nasty physical reality.