Life Changing
War. In the book In Side Out & Back Again there is a girl named Ha. Ha is 10 years old, has three older brothers and a loving, supporting, yet at times stressed mom. Ha’s father isn’t present at this moment. He left when ha was 1 year old. Ha’s fathers absent was a turn for the worse, but Ha still
had hope that her father would return. With the help of her papaya tree, that she had just thrown into her backyard. In the book Inside Out & Back Again this papaya tree is a main focus. Ha watches this papaya tree everyday and waits to see if it is ripening more and more. The papaya tree doesn’t only symbolize hope of father returning it also symbolizes hope that the war in Saigon (her city) would end. In the south there is war going on between Saigon and communists. Communists are people who hold property of any kind. Communists want to take over Saigon but the south won’t allow that to happen. So now Ha might have to face the fact that she might be losing her city or even her family.
Ha’s father has been gone for nine years. Ha’s father went on “a navy mission on” March 10th “nine years ago when I was almost one” (Lai, page 12). Ha’s father went on a navy mission, one day and just never came back. Ha and her family know that “he was captured on route 1 an hour south up the city by moped”(Lai, page 12). Ha’s father was captured during the navy mission he went on the 10th of March.
In the book Inside Out & Back Again there is a papaya tree, that Ha has just thrown into her back yard. In which it symbolizes hope. Ha feels a sense of owner ship, that she ”vowed to rise first every morning to share at the dew o the green fruit shaped like a light bulb I will be the first to witness its ripening”(Lai, page 9). Ha feels like its her responsibility to see her tree grow as well as the papayas.