Around the River Bend Essay Example

brother’s death. She didn’t know the North Vietnamese were fighting the South Vietnamese. She didn’t know the whole story. She didn’t know, but when after she told her side of the story, Trung says, “All American brave….help my village build wall to keep out the North Vietnamese……My mother cook fish for soldier name Joe Bailey.” Then Trung continued to tell her, “When the North Vietnamese discover our village helped Americans, they come and kill our village leaders…… They kill my mother for feeding fish to Joe Bailey.” After Trung tells her the truth, she now knew the facts.

At the start of the story, the young narrator makes incorrect assumptions. For example, when she first saw Trung, she assumed he was American because he wore an American uniform. When he helped her up, she realized he was Asian. When she finds out Trung is Vietnamese, she got so upset, and she turned blue. Listening to Trung, she finds out that Trung, with the Americans, are fighting Northern Vietnamese. Then she realized that the South Vietnamese aren’t responsible for her brother’s death. Consequently, she learned “not to judge a book by its cover”.

In my opinion, this story teaches the saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover” very well. At the end of the story, the narrator learns to have facts before judging somebody or something. The narrator let emotions cloud her ability to judge. Have you ever let emotions and uneducated assumptions cloud your ability to judge?