Selfishness and Sacrifice in "The Surrendered" By Cody R. Tucker

“The officer sharply gave an order and one of the soldiers stood over Sylvie and began unbuckling his belt. It was then that Benjamin began screaming again. He was screaming bloody murder, all the names of his compatriots, screaming them in a litany, most loudly his own” (Lee, 239).

            The passage above acts as an antithesis to the principle of survival. Originally, Benjamin holds back the knowledge of fellow communists to the Japanese soldiers. As a result, much of Sylvie’s missionary associates are killed or hurt by the soldiers. It is only when Sylvie is threatened (with rape, not death) that Benjamin sacrifices his communist cover to save her. It is interesting, because one missionary wishes to kill Benjamin, again for his own survival, but is killed in the struggle that follows.

             I’m noticing a pattern of moral circumstance in the realm of survival found in Chang-Rae Lee’s novel, The Surrendered. There are instances in which characters lose people close to them. To make these instances more crushing, the deaths seem incidentally caused by the character acting within their own self-interest, even for a moment. We were discussing how trying to survive in this narrative de-humanizes people to the point that they act like animals simply trying to not die at any cost. I believe that this applies to this set of patterns I am about to confer. Losing people as a result of self-interest goes back to the life-stories of two other main characters: June and Hector.

             June loses her siblings after falling asleep on the train, though she originally resolves to stay awake to watch out for them. She succumbs to sleep and they seem to fall off of the train and die as a result of this lapse in her watch. She even leaves her brother at the end of the chapter at his suggestion, despite his bad injury. Hector loses his father in a similar fashion. After leaving his father at the bar, Hector goes off to have sex with a local woman whom he is attracted to. It is later learned that without Hector to watch out for him, his father falls into the Erie Canal and drowns. Lee seems to focused upon this theme of death, selfishness, and sacrifice as he keeps using it throughout each of the character’s life-stories. I believe that we shall see a similar situation again.