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Chapter 22
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in In Order to Live, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Propaganda, Indoctrination, and Truth
Family and Community
Survival, Desperation, and Adaptation
Identity and Freedom
Gender and Violence
Summary
Analysis
Eventually, Yeonmi’s classmates at Dongguk saw her on Now on My Way to Meet You and were stunned that she hadn’t told them she was North Korean. She pushed herself relentlessly during that first semester of school—barely sleeping, losing weight, and even collapsing during a physical exam for her criminal studies program, landing her in the hospital. But when grades were posted, she discovered she ranked 33rd out of 90 students in her major. By the end of her second semester, she’d climbed to 14th. In the summer of 2013, she traveled to Tyler, Texas with Youth With A Mission, the Christian group she’d first encountered at Heavenly Dream School, to give back in honor of the missionaries who helped her reach Mongolia.
Being “discovered” by her classmates compromises the boundary Yeonmi had built between her public and private identities, and she must once again live openly as a North Korean. The physical strain she endures at school reflects her fear of falling behind, as academic success has become her way of proving her worth. Her high rank in class shows how the same discipline that once kept her alive—first under an oppressive regime, then as a refugee—now fuels her achievements. And traveling to Texas with the YWAM group gives her a chance to repay the support that helped make those achievements possible.
Active
Themes
Experiencing America for the first time cured Yeonmi’s lingering delusion that the United States was the enemy. She was especially amazed by Walmart, its shelves overflowing with everything she’d ever dreamed of. She had hoped to practice English but found that Spanish was more commonly spoken in Texas, so she decided to learn it, too. After training, her YWAM group flew to Costa Rica for service work. There, she realized she wasn’t alone in her suffering and that she could use her past to help others. She also learned, for the first time, to extend compassion toward herself. After Costa Rica, the group traveled to Atlanta to assist the homeless, and through broken English and hand gestures, she shared her experiences in North Korea with a man who was moved to tears by her story.
Yeonmi’s trip to the United States is a necessary step in dismantling the remnants of North Korean propaganda still embedded in her thinking. If she can see for herself the country that was demonized by her leaders, then she can form her own judgments about what’s real. Her amazement at the sheer abundance of items in Walmart underscores how accustomed she is to scarcity, making consumerism that might feel mundane to those who are used to it feel novel and exciting to her. Her willingness to learn Spanish, meanwhile, reveals a pattern in her behavior: whenever Yeonmi enters a new environment, she adapts quickly and without ego. Through her humanitarian work, she begins to understand that healing is only possible when she stops treating her pain as something to endure in silence. Community, she learns, is the only way forward.
Active
Themes
While celebrating her first American Thanksgiving with a friend from the YWAM group, Yeonmi received a call from Keum Sook, saying that Eunmi was at the National Intelligence Center in South Korea. Days later, Yeonmi saw her sister for the first time in seven years. She recalls that Eunmi’s voice sounded like Jin Sik’s after his release from the prison camp: small and cautious. Though Yeonmi stresses that “Eunmi’s story belongs only to her,” she does share that Eunmi had been living in Shenyang while Yeonmi and Keum Sook were there, and their paths had nearly crossed several times. After reuniting, Eunmi moved in with Yeonmi and quickly earned her middle and high school GEDs. At first, she seemed guarded, but over time she opened her heart to her mother and sister again.
