Book Review: The Orphan Master's Son

The Orphan Master's Son: A Novel of North Korea by Adam Johnson (Random House, 2012. 443 pp)

Adam Johnson is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow and teaches at Stanford University. His fiction has appeared in Esquire, Harper's, and The Paris Review. He is the author of Emporium, a short story collection, as well as the novel Parasites Like Us, which won the California Book Award.

An “Everyday” Story

I’ve taught several international students from North Korea. I especially remember one, as he has an amazing story regarding how he came to the United States. He was imprisoned, along with his father, in North Korea. He was beaten over the head repeatedly during his incarceration, and as a result became brain damaged. He managed to escape from the prison, cross the border to South Korea, and flee as a refugee to the United States where he found sanctuary.

From what I understand, this kind of story is far from rare for those that call North Korea home. From my student I learned that the propaganda provided by the North Korean State acts as an official narrative to an entire people. It doesn’t matter if a story is complete fiction, every citizen is required to mold their lives around the script of the state.

So, when I heard of The Orphan Master's Son, a story set in North Korea, I had to pick it up.

Timeliness 

Photo by Lars Plogmann

In a timely fashion, Johnson managed to publish The Orphan Master’s Son just as the “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il perished. The author depicts the misadventures of a character named Jun Do, a soldier-turned-kidnapper/surveillance officer in the dictatorial Communist state of North Korea. His grim narrative is in direct contrast to the alternative narrative of the state and Kim Jong Il, both of which are presented in the novel. Jun Do is nothing special; he’s just an everyday man—Jun Do seems to reference a homonym for the American placeholder name, John Doe—who trained in the North Korean military in the art of subterranean martial arts. Jun Do is uneasy about his position as a pawn, set in rigid uniformity within the North Korean end game, and is unsure about why he does what he does.

With accurate descriptive language, Johnson describes unsettling scenes throughout the entire novel in a way that actually makes you feel and taste the fear the characters encounter. Perhaps more importantly, he very easily depicts the struggles of conscience that our protagonist endures.

A Hero Emerges

Photo by John Pavelka

Despite his best efforts and his dislike of his job, Jun Do unintentionally gets promoted from a kidnapper to a translator, where he listens to American sentences and translates them into Korean. Then, he ends up impersonating a North Korean military hero, named Commander Ga, whom he most likely killed (it is up to the reader to ultimately decide). For me, the latter part of the novel during which Do impersonate the military hero ends up being more of a compelling and convicting commentary on North Korean Society.

“Dr. Song turned to Jun Do. ‘Where we are from,’ he said, ‘stories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he’d be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change...but in America, people’s stories change all the time. In America, it is the man who matters” (121-122).

As Jun Do progresses through the novel, he learns that people’s identities are subordinate to what the state and The Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, declares to be true. Words or stories don’t matter. Facts and actions don’t matter. If doubt is cast over a situation, the North Korean government reserves the right to imprison, torture, or kill any person they please. Even General Ga (formerly Jun Do), a North Korean hero, fears the government greatly.

“The Dear Leader closed his eyes and smiled. I didn’t know which was worse—to displease him or to please him” (392). 

A Horror-Filled Reality

North Korean Propaganda

The characters in The Orphan Master’s Son fear all that they do. Their fates are subject to any ruling at the whim of the state in general or the Dear Leader in particular. Through his travels and impersonations, Jun Do finds that the rulings of a megalomaniacal leader ring incredibly true. As a result, the reader grieves in Do’s losses and cheers in Do’s victories.

Living through nightmares, Jun Do reveals the mystery and frightening nature of North Korea. The reader learns through Jun Do’s journey the true meaning of independence, freedom of speech, love, and sacrifice. This story brings to life the story of my student, one who actually had to live through the North Korean reality. I was moved by his story, and astounded at the truths of the North Korean state. As it functions both as fiction and as a report on the issues North Korean’s actually face, I think The Orphan Master's Son is a must read due to its timeliness as well as the fact that it is based partially in reality.

Verdict: 5 out of 5

---

Posted By: Andrew Jacobson

Affiliate Links:  

Book Review: The Magician King

The Magician King by Lev Grossman (New York: Viking Press, 2010. 400 pp.)

Born in 1969, Lev Grossman has a degree in literature from Harvard, and spent three years at Yale in the Ph.D. program in comparative literature. He writes for TIME as their book reviewer and as one of its technology writers. Codex (2004) became an international bestseller, and The Magicians (2009) was named one of the best books of 2009 by The New Yorker. In August of 2001, he won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He also has a wife and two daughters.

Sequels are Dangerous

Sequels are a dangerous thing. In looking at literature throughout the ages, sequels fall into one of two categories: either they rest on the laurels of their predecessors, or they continue to develop characters and plot even deeper than before. I think that The Magician King falls into the latter category for one reason in particular—Lev Grossman develops Quentin, the protagonist, as a character. In this sequel, the reader delves into the deeper inner-workings of Quentin’s soul. We find out that he, like so many of us, wishes to be a hero.

Didn't You Know that You're My Hero?

As a child, I paraded around the house wearing my Superman cape. I know, in retrospect the far more logical, far more bad-ass choice would have been Batman, but you can’t win them all. I thought Superman was the coolest—he could fly, shoot lasers out of his eyes, couldn’t be penetrated by bullets, and won the affection of a lady (Lois Lane). So, I wanted to be Superman, despite the red underwear eccentrically worn on the outside of his pants/tights. I ended up falling a little short (still working on the shooting lasers thing), but I think in my heart I still want to save the world, or at least save something.

I think that in every person’s core, there is a desire to be heroic. Now, I don’t mean that everyone wants to save the world from hunger, cure cancer, or even do something so minute as to give a dollar to someone who is homeless. I mean that people want to have a positive impact on their surroundings in some way—even just to one person. The protagonist, Quentin, is immersed in his new world, Fillory (discussed in a previous review), as a King, and yet he feels that his life is incomplete. Something just isn’t right. He wants an adventure. Or does he?

Quentin’s Heroic Quest

Photo by Ranga Krishna Tipirneni

Quentin, convinced that he needs to go on a new adventure (the previous having occurred in the novel The Magicians), does just that. He finds an excuse to round up a ship, in order to travel to an island in the middle of nowhere to collect taxes for the kingdom. While on the island, he finds a quest—to search for seven golden keys (whose purpose I won’t reveal to you, so the book isn’t spoiled). Along the way, he has some introspective revelations about his character.

“If he hadn’t been so tired, and a bit drunk, it probably wouldn’t have struck him the way it did. But as it was he felt himself filling up with a sense of—how could he put it? He thought he’d learned a lesson about the world, and now he was realizing that the lesson he learned might have been the wrong one. The right adventure had been offered to him, and he walked away. If being a hero is a matter of knowing your cues, like the fairy tale [the one about the golden keys] said, he’d missed his. Instead he’d spend three days faffing around on Earth for nothing, and nearly got stuck there forever, while Eliot was off on a real quest” (223).

What it Really Means to be a Hero

Finally, Quentin has an epiphany. Everything he is missing, the hole he had in his life, is because he didn’t realize he wanted to be a hero. And, he is given a chance.

Photo by Christopher Hawkins

Quentin finds himself to be a rather adept magician, and he follows the trail of the golden keys; he travels to Brakebills, Venice, and throughout Fillory. He and his friend Julia (who, as a side-note, also takes up a large portion of the novel with her own story and how she developed magician herself) even fight death in order to restore the world (again I’m purposefully not revealing some details here).

In the end, Quentin finds that being a hero frankly sucks.

“‘This isn’t how it ends!’ Quentin said. ‘I am the hero of this god-damned story, Ember! Remember? And the hero gets the reward!’

‘No, Quentin,’ the ram said. ‘The hero pays the price’” (396).

Quentin is forced to find, through his adventure that being a hero doesn’t mean that the grass is greener. Being a hero requires sacrifice—it happened to Superman whom I tried to so fiercely imitate as a child. And, sacrifice changes people for the better, as Quentin finds out.

This book surprised me, as I’m eternally dubious of sequels. They tend to lack substance, plot, and redeeming qualities. Not so with The Magician King. In fact, I liked it just as much as the first book, if not more. As a result, I’m very much looking forward to his next novel in the series, entitled The Magician’s Land, which will be heavily influenced by The Tempest, The Phantom Tollbooth, Casino Royale (James Bond Novels), and some P.G. Wodehouse of all people. I’m also looking forward to the FOX TV Series based off The Magicians, which is currently in the works—this series could turn out to be quite the entertaining enterprise.

Verdict: 5 out of 5
---
Posted by: Andrew Jacobson

Affiliate Links: