The Happiest Refugee

The book The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do is about a young family in Vietnam who risk their lives to travel illegally to Australia. In the middle of the ocean with the sun beating down on a jam packed boat, with water supplies already running low, more trouble arrives, a pirate ship. With all their goods taken, hope for survival is at their lowest. Just as everything seems lost, a German ship arrives. The family reaches Australia safely and kindness surounds them. Anh lives with his mum, dad, brother Khoa and sister Tram in a suburb in Sydney. He is now famous as a comedian and is happily married with 3 children. There are many good examples of positive character traits shown through Anh Do’s Life. Some of these include the kindness from Anh’s mother, bravery from Anh’s father, forgiveness from Anh and generosity from two nuns from St Vincent de Paul.

There are many positive character traits demonstrated in The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do. “Kindness” was one of the main character traits shown throughout the book. This was demonstrated by Anh’s mother when she invited people to her home to live with her and her family. You can see this as she is always helping others even if she wasn’t in the greatest position. “Mum and Dad naturally seemed to attract these people........ my mother would hear about people with nowhere to go and simply say ‘Send them to me’.” (pg 45) This quote proves that she was kind as she knew how it felt to have no where to go so she let people stay with her. The way Anh’s mother lets other people into her home is an example of kindness demonstrated through Anh’s life.

A positive character trait that was demonstrated through the life of Anh Do was “bravery”. This was shown by Anh’s father. There are many moments in this autobiography where bravery can be seen by Anh’s father.   An obvious example of this would be when he dressed up as a high- ranking communist officer at a re-education camp and freed his two brothers. If he was caught doing...