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Quan leaves his village and boards a train to Thanh Hoa, where he secures a seat, thinking, “a train seat in wartime, like a bowl of rice in the time of famine” (154). A train attendant ousts the two young men across from Quan from their seats in order to give seats to two Party members. For rest of the train ride, Quan listens to the conversation of the Party members, who represent everything Quan (and by extension the author) dislikes about the Party: hypocrisy, manipulation, and corruption. Towards the end of the train ride, a young soldier attempts to call out the Party members for insulting Marx. In response, the Party members exercise their power, shaming the younger man into silence.
In these pages, Huong provides her most damning depiction of the Communist Party in Vietnam. Everyone on the train fears the Party members: “They sat like masters in the middle of the crowd […] Everyone [around them] was stiff, frozen, paralyzed” (158). Over the course of this section, the shorter of the two Party men explains to the taller man how one can use the Party to his advantage, and why pragmatism makes more sense than idealism.
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