Summary Of The Book 'Happiest Refugee'

The “Happiest Refugee” is the official autobiography of the Australian comedian Anh Do. The book is based around his life story starting in Vietnam and then becoming a fascinating story about his triumphs and darkest hours. Anh and his family went through many challenges as depicted in his text and these included the struggles Ahn faced at St Aloysius School, thereby depicting his social context. Ahn Do's journey over to Australia was also conveyed through the use of descriptive and emotive language and depicted his social and historical context. Another struggle was how survived by using some strong survival instincts, Ahn conveys this through the use of descriptive, characterisation by the use of thought and dialogue and the use of emotive …show more content…
Firstly he never had the privilege to afford any equipment for the school such as books,laptop etc and never had enough money for excursions and camps. Ahn Do has used many powerful and moving techniques to tell the readier how he felt while going through his school. In the book he used language techniques to describe how he felt about St Aloysius. For example it states, 'It was about halfway through Year 10 when I decided enough was enough. I told mum I hated St Aloysius, it was too far away, taking almost two hours of travel to and from Milsons Point each day. I told her I wanted to attend the local public school. It was a total lie. At the time I was the student council representative, my marks were good and I loved my sport. Most of all I loved my mates. But none of this mattered when weighed up against the hardship my mum was going through and I would've happily given it all up to see her work a little bit less; to have her fall sick less frequently.' From the word 'hate' it shows the technique of lexical choice to show us how he felt about St Aloysius and how he felt about his mother's financial stress. Other evidence showing how he felt at St Aloysius, and his mother financial struggle is, "St Aloysius was a great school but what is caused was a lots of discomfort for Khoa and I was the socio-economic mismatch of a private school expenses verses our single mums wages". Through the comparison of an 'economic …show more content…
All that keep them alive was the there strong survival instinct and their sense of hope that there is a future out there. During the beginning of this book it tells the hard felt story of how Ahn Do and his family journeyed his way over here from Vietnam through the treacherous seas and pirates and nearly died by the sheer luck they were saved by the Germans. This depicts their historical context as they escaped out from Vietnam on a small fishing boat. While on the boat, they encountered pirates and one of them picked up the closest smallest baby to him and threaten to throw him over board. When this happened his father response was, 'We must fight to the death to SAVE THE CHILD, Suddenly guns were lifted machetes were raised. The robbery now turned into a full-blown standoff: nine men with weapons against thirty-seven starving refugees and a baby dangling over the sea" Form this piece of text it shows that Ahn used strong emotive language to convey his experiences when his father said that he would fight to the death to save the child. Another piece of evidence is when Ahn told the story of when they were saved by the Germans,' On the fifth day Mum squinted at a distant shape. The boat grow bigger and bigger and bigger still. We saw a flag waving on its mast. It was a huge boat. A ship, actually. Our boatload of beaten refugee stirred and stared-waiting, hoping, but terrified to hope too