1. Escape from Camp 14
Chapters 1 and 2

2. Chapter 1 Summary Points
The quarters where Shin and his mother lived were supposedly the “model village”, however they had no running water or furniture and shared the one-story building with four other families. There was power two times a day, morning and night for 2 hours.
(Description found in first three paragraphs of chapter one)
Camp 14 was almost completely self-sufficient. For the farms plants to grow they had to use human excrement as fertilizer.
Shin’s mother made her son breakfast and lunch (when she could), however it was never enough. Shin would steal his mother’s lunch while she was working and when she discovered he ate it, she would beat him badly. It never occurred to Shin that if he ate her food she would go hungry.
“When he was in the camp-depending upon her for all his meals, stealing her food, enduring her beatings- he saw her as competition for survival.” –Page 16
Rule number 8: “Should sexual physical contact occur without prior approval, the perpetrators will be shot immediately.” – Page 16
If a woman became pregnant from unauthorized sexual contact, both woman and child would be shot.

3. “Catching and roasting rats became a passion for Shin.”
There was possibility for marriage. These marriages are called “reward marriages.” These are given to prisoners as “the ultimate bonus for hard work and reliable snitching.” (page 16)
That is how Shin’s mother and father were married and how he and his brother were born.
Shin’s father lived separately, but could spend 5 consecutive nights a year with his wife. He ignored his son, and Shin was indifferent to him.
Shin’s brother lived in the boy’s dormitory because he was too old to live with Shin and his mother. The “move out age” is 12.
One notable event regarding rule 8 is Shin’s mother letting a guard have sex with her despite the risks.
Shin and the other kids learned how to catch and cook rats. The guards didn’t care if they did this, so it became a regular part of Shin’s diet. He even enjoyed it.
“Catching and roasting rats became a passion for Shin.”
“He would meet his friends in the evening at his primary school, where there was a coal grill to roast them.”
Page 20
Shin learned to find other food on his own too.
He taught himself how to “spear grasshoppers, longheaded locusts, and dragonflies, which he roasted over a fire in the late summer and autumn.” - page 21
He picked wild grapes, gooseberries and Korean raspberries in the mountain forests.
During winter there was little to hunt or pick, so he would try things older prisoners said would help ease the hunger. Those tricks included: eating meals without water or soup, regurgitating a meal and re-eating it, and even refraining from defecating.
The shortage of food was referred to as the “eating probem”. Food in all of North Korea is short. Many people are suffering and dying from starvation, even in the big cities. Camp 14 is actually better off than some people outside of it. The people in the camp had no idea that their government was struggling to feed its people.

4. Chapter 2 Summary Points
A teacher was having a bad day and decided to do a search. Rule 3 says: “Anyone who steals or conceals any foodstuffs will be shot immediately.” – page 25
One of the girls in the class had hidden corn. The teacher beat the girl to death for stealing. The classmates watched without protest.
“Shin thought her punishment was just and fair, and he never became angry with his teacher for killing her. He believed his classmates felt the same way.” – Page 26
The students were given uniforms to wear to school every two years, however, they began falling apart within a month or two.
Shin’s mother used to sew him underwear and socks out of rags. When she died, he struggled to find rags for his shoes.
“Chonghwa” was a lesson where teachers would yell at kids for what they did wrong the day before.

5. They were not taught their history, geography or its leaders.
Attendance was checked daily. No one was allowed to be absent. Many times Shin and his classmates would help carry a sick student to class.
At school Shin learnt how to do basic skills: adding, subtracting, speaking, writing, and reading.
“Shin learned to add and subtract, but not to multiply and divide. To this day, when he needs to multiply, he adds a column of numbers.” – Page 27
They were not taught their history, geography or its leaders.
“Shin had only a vague notion of who the Great Leader and the Dear Leader were.” – page 27
In secondary school they were prepared for hard labor. They were readied for work in the mines.
One of Shin’s friends had an accident in the mines and had to have her toe amputated. The gave her no anesthetics and treated it with salt water. (Full description found on pages )
The students were made to admit to wrongdoings in front of the class and be punished by their teachers. In order to have something different to admit as well as something that would satisfy the teachers, but not be too brutal of a punishment, the students would meet up and discuss what each would admit to.  
Living in the dormitories, there was twenty-five boys sleeping on concrete floors. The stronger boys slept by the coal-heated flue and the weaker ones risked laying on top of the flue, where they could easily get burned when they flared up.

6. Diction
Bowijidowon- guard in charge of the rice farm
Pellagra- lack of protein and niacin in their diets, suffering weakness, skin lesions, diarrhea, and dementia
Arable- used or suitable for growing crops
Toibee- fertilizer, ash mixed with human waste
Desultory- lacking a plan, purpose, or enthusiasm
Iniquitous- grossly unfair and morally wrong
Chonghwa- means total harmony but was when teacher criticized the wrongs of the previous day
Inoculated- to introduce something into the mind of
Osmunda- a type of fern grown on the camp
Sorghum- a type of grass raised for its grain that is used in fodder
Draconian- excessively harsh and severe
Flue- a duct for smoke and waste gases produced by a fire, a gas heater, a power station, or other fuel-burning installation
Escape from camp 14 is written in a third person limited point of view.
Most of the words are very concrete and factual.
Korean words are included to boost ethos.

7. Syntax Short sentences
Simple sentence structure with prepositional and verbal phrases
Short sentences give it a choppy rhythm but make it easy to comprehend.
“There were no beds, chairs or tables. There was no running water. No bath or shower.”
“Questions were not allowed in school. They angered teachers and triggered beatings. Teachers talked; students listened”
“Swinging his long wooden pointer, he struck her on the head again and again. As Shin and his classmates watched in silence, lumps puffed up on her skull, blood leaked from her nose and she toppled over onto the concrete floor”
“Every meal was the same: corn porridge, pickled cabbage and cabbage soup”
“At the start of school, he was given a black uniform: pants, shirt, an undershirt and a pair of shoes”

8. How does this contribute to the author’s purpose?