In the poem “Tiananmen Square,” Lin starts off with a vivid image of the soldiers, showing us what was going on at the moment and what they were going through. Lin tells us about the bodies under the sun, explaining all the innocent people that sadly passed. It doesn't tell us how many exactly were there. “A single protester” stood up to the tank, almost as if he were sizing the tank up, showing his resilience and willingness to stand up for himself and for what he knows is right from wrong, “the way one stands / before God.” Which then relates the man back to the speaker’s dad, who also protested during the massacre in the U.S.
These lines are representing how and what they did to stand up for what they thought was right. Just like the dad who walked “down the dusty pavement who stood on a multilane highway,” showing us how brave the dad also was and also stood up and wasn't afraid of what was right for not just him but his peers as well.
Antigone is a story of a woman who rejected and/or disobeyed the king (Creon) by honoring her brother and burying him, which the king said was forbidden because her brother was seen as a traitor. “I dared. It was not God’s proclamation. That final justice that rules the world below makes no such laws.” Antigone knows that burying her brother was the right thing to do, and it showed her accountability as well because she was not ashamed of what she had done, for it was the right thing for her. She stood up to the highest authority, just like the dad in “Tiananmen Square, 1989” stood up to the government through the tank.
How can I connect this to a personal event that happened to me? It was during class, as a third grader, sitting taking a test. I stood up and went to my locker to get something that I needed (was what I told my teacher). I really went to draw on the walls with a marker and afterwards told the teacher that someone had been drawing on the walls. That same day they got the principal involved. The following day they started calling people up to the office, and eventually it got down to one of my friends that was getting blamed. Out of fear that something might have happened to him, I told the principal the truth and took accountability for what I did.
There are a lot of examples that I can connect these stories to the real world, but I want to use one that is really famous and not too long ago. Martin Luther King was a huge and impactful leader for a large portion of the population. For starters, he stood up and advocated for nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and racial discrimination. Which caused many people to be inspired to do the same because they all knew it was the right thing to do, even though they had to go against the government.
One of the things that inspired me to write this reading was because I wanted to write about how standing up and taking accountability is always the right thing to do just based on personal experience, as shown in the reading above. The process for this writing was a bit long for me. I had to really understand the poem and what was going on in it to contrast the meaning of it back to “Antigone,” which is probably four times longer than “Tiananmen Square.” I did enjoy finding similarities in both of these distinct pieces. Some literary devices that were used in this writing were similes, metaphors, flashbacks, and imagery. The theme I was exploring or trying to convey would be bravery or courage because that is what it takes to own up to things you did well or badly. I didn't really have much writing or pieces that helped me with my own, only a little bit. The show Attack on Titan helped me with the title, but that's about it. There was a scene where a commander in the show was getting dragged by an animal and was still yelling out to everyone in his group/under his orders to keep moving forward because his soldiers don't fear. This is where I got my inspiration for the title.