A Good Fall by Ha Jin - Essay Example

The characters I this book seem to have lost all hope and to find accommodation in this new country becomes a struggle not with the American society but with the self. The characters manifest a sense of restriction and they seem to be in exile not only from chine their homeland filled with sweet memories and dreams, but from who they really are. This paper primarily offers a contrast between the lives of two characters in the book, the freedoms and imprisonment that they are encountered with. This story depicts the experience of a Chinese student immigrant who live in the United States and receives a call from his former much admired-professor who plans to visit the United States with a delegation of educators.

The professor and student visit an American scholar and the professor is proud to have outshone the American scholar. Due to this happening, the Chinese professor decides to stay in America illegally and he is imprisoned they the thought that any human being should be allowed to live free as a bird, uncontrolled by any man-made orders. He starts earning a living as a bus boy and when he is tracked down the professor runs away and opts for a life devoid of the world. A simple visit to the United States by the professor had turned into a spy mission that resulted to the professor to defect and refuse to return home.

He believes that any individual should be buried anywhere they die (Ha 58). This story brings forward the “wartime couple” this are two immigrants living together in the United States, though not a genuine couple, they help each other with not only their financial burdens, but also to ease each other’s loneliness. This so comfortable arrangement is disrupted by the arrival of their respective spouses, this incident not only leads to their separation, but also leads to a break up with their cultures as Panbin declares to never date another Chinese woman in his life.

This shows a move away from the