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Persuasive Essay: The Golden Kite The Silver Wind

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September 14, 2017
Language and Literature
Mr. Todd
Hajin Kim

Persuasive Essay: “The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind”

There is a quote that Plato once said to his students; “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” (Plato, goodreads.com). This quote tells us that there are always sacrifices to be made in war. People suffer and die, and that is a shameless fact. It is, however, unbefitting of someone to die or suffer because of someone else’s actions. In fact, the story “The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind” just so happens to be a metaphor for the Cold War, which took place between 1947 and 1991 when America and Russia collided. This caused their people to endure a massive amount of stress and tension, which lasted approximately 50 years. In this …show more content…

In “The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind”, we see that the villages of Kwan-Si and another un-named village are competing against each other. This starts because the wall’s shape apparently holds meaning. “They build their wall,” said the mandarin, “in the shape of a pig! Do you see? Our own city is built in the shape of an orange. That pig will devour us greedily!” (Bradbury, 369). This belief that the “Pig” will devour the “orange” starts a chain reaction that is between a petty argument and serious war. The Cold War was the exact same. When Russia had successfully launched a person into space and brought them back, America immediately retaliated with the Apollo missions (that, mind you, was mostly failure upon failure with a hint of success). This kind of competition only led to mass obligation of support in terms of taking sides for only America or The Soviet Union. The space race was a result of the two super power’s competition on nuclear weapons and missiles “The original purpose of the rocket tests was for missiles that could be used for war. When the Soviets launched a rocket into space, America was in pandemonium.” (coldwar.org). To put it into perspective, it was like two five year olds playing around with knives and guns, only to end up with an F-2000 Assault Rifle and an LHR combat knife for …show more content…

Well now they’ve decided to play with C4s and Defcon-2 style ballistic missiles. On July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was created in America, and tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico at a site called ‘Trinity’. There were two objectives that the bomb had; a quick end to World War II and US control of foreign policy. As President Truman authorized the Truman Doctrine to stop the spread of communism, Russia had obtained the original blueprints for the atomic bomb in secret. As the Soviet Union launched its first atomic bomb on the 29th of August, 1949, the supremacy the United States held in the foreign policy business came to an end, spurring on the Cold war. One bomb after the other, the United States and the Soviet Union were head to head as they wanted supremacy over the other. In “The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind”, the constant changing of the walls reflects just that. When Kwan Si was built like a pig, the Mandarin told his stonemasons to build “our walls into a club which may beat the pig and drive it off!” (Bradbury, 397). However, this does little to help the un-named city, as the next day the messenger arrives and reports that “They (Kwan Si) have built their walls like a great bonfire to burn our stick!” (Bradbury, 398). After receiving the news of Kwan Si’s changed wall, the Mandarin orders for the stone masons “to build our walls into the shape of a shining

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