The Spiritual Willow by Duong Van M Elliot

The primary argument of Duong Van M Elliot's 2000 The Spiritual Willow: 4 Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family book is that the Vietnam individuals experienced untold suffering and trials throughout the time of communist rule. It also consists of the myths that are discovered within the Vietnamese traditions provided in the English language. The text's information adds onto the information which I already have concerning Vietnamese history. The author mentions that she learnt that the tales in her society explained the households' continuity, customs, and worths.

These tales were the binding factors within the household ties and they made the author to understand what experiences the Vietnamese people used to travel through. For instance, Elliot explains that the Vietnamese once faced disaster from the surrounding communist nations. The author also explains that the Vietnamese were securely anti-communist, a principle that made the surrounding communist-inclined nations to be at loggerheads with the Vietnamese. The author discusses that the general concept behind composing this book was to highlight the history of Vietnamese people.

Get quality help now

Doctor Jennifer

Verified writer

Proficient in: Free Essays

5 (893)

“ Thank you so much for accepting my assignment the night before it was due. I look forward to working with you moving forward ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

This reality makes the readers to sympathize with the Vietnamese based upon the effects they dealt with when the French and Americans attacked Vietnam. Does the author adequately describe the subject of the book? Does he/she offer a well balanced viewpoint? Through the text, Elliot describes various occasions, experiences, and viewpoints that she deduced based upon her own subjective thinking. The book's content are rather biased with regard to strictly following objectivity steps. The rather in-depth text hence generally provides readers with the individual views of the writer and offers the author's individual viewpoints.

The writer says that she is writing this book so as to demonstrate the trials and tribulations that the Vietnamese faced in this tumultuous period. In turn, the author seeks to make the reader to sympathize with the Vietnamese who faced unspeakable malice in the hands of the communist forces. 1 The book’s content has clearly given the authors purpose, the theme, as well as the thesis of the text. The ability to make sense of such elements in written works is a basic requirement in reviewing books. 1Elliott, D. V. M. (2000). The sacred willow: Four generations in the life of a Vietnamese family.

New York: Oxford University Press. The author describes the cruelty which befell the Vietnamese in the hands of the communists. The author clearly describes what befell the Vietnamese. The author says that what she was writing was what befell the author’s forefathers. The author thus assets that what she finally wrote is an historic manual of the tragedy that befell the Vietnamese and this subject is well described in the book. The author provides an unbalanced viewpoint based on the claims she puts across through the book.

This is evident because the author gives a review of the whole life the Vietnamese people; herself together with her family in the land of Vietnam. The writer does not give a balanced viewpoint on the writing. This is evident since she gives a combination of two theoretical arguments in one writing, that is, the family chaos as well as the Vietnamese misfortunes. The author should have analyzed the two episodes in two different writings. This strategy could have given detailed report on each concept. For this deficiency, Elliot describes the subject clearly but the viewpoint was not balanced.