Stephanos Reglis

ENGL 1001

Prof. Ferrara

16 November 2023

What if suddenly your family was torn apart by war and famine, damaged in irreversible

ways, and you were forced to leave your home just to survive? This is a question that was

presented to Sophal Ear at a very young age in Cambodia, and one that he answers in his Ted

Talk: “Escaping the Khmer Rouge” In his presentation, Sophal uses numbers, pictures, and

personal accounts of the horrors he witnessed to show his uninformed audience how war and

dictatorships destroy countries.

In his speech, Ear uses logos to help show his listeners just how extensive the damage of

war was to cambodia. The first example of this comes in a documentary clip he shows. In this

clip, a brief history of the Khmer Rouge is given, and it is explained that during the Vietnam War

the Khmer Rouge stepped in to help evacuate many citizens into Cambodia to avoid the war in

Vietnam. The regime led these people to the Cambodian countryside in order to build a

communist utopia such as the one Mao Zedong attempted to build with his Cultural Revolution

and the Great Leap Forward. The numbers in this video are what are really meant to shock

people. Upon an image of a bloody corpse beneath a blanket, the narrator says that, “in a country

of only seven million people, one and a half million were murdered by their own leaders, their

bodies piled in the mass graves of the killing fields.” As one can imagine, these images and

words are more than enough to effectively portray the devastation wrought on the people of

Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge. But what about the United States? Well, with the war in
Vietnam going on right at Cambodia's doorstep, and with them openly accepting Vietnamese

refugees (NVA and VC most likely among them), it is easy to see how some bombs may have

made their way over to Vietnam’s neighbor. This was another one of the reasons the Khmer

Rouge was able to gather so many refugees. In another use of logos, Ear uses a graphic to show

just how many bombs were dropped on his mother country, showing that from 1965 to 1973

more bombs were dropped on Cambodia than Japan during all of World War Two, including the

two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not only are these numbers very

effective in communicating the jaw dropping amount of firepower Cambodia had to withstand,

they also help the listeners understand what kind of toll this may have had on individuals,

families, and children. This is what Ear goes on to talk about in the next section of his talk.

Alongside the jaw-dropping numbers he shows, Ear also uses pathos to further

communicate to his audience the wrath of the Khmer Rouge. One way he does this is by showing

pictures of child soldiers that the Khmer Rouge used throughout its reign. Showing children in a

war scenario is always a good way to get at people’s emotions. Another way Ear does this is by

recounting his own family’s experience living under the boot of the Khmer Rouge. By doing

this, Ear also uses ethos as these are first hand accounts of what happened, coming straight from

the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Ear starts by talking about the place they were moved to, that

being Pursat Province. He describes it as a beautiful area and shows pictures to corroborate his

statement. This display of natural beauty is also effective in activating the listener’s emotions as

they can now compare that sense of beauty to the senseless brutality wrought upon the people of

Cambodia by their very own “protectors”. Sophal then talks about how his parents were forced to

work in labor camps and that they were only ever afforded porridge with a few grains of rice in

order to sustain themselves. He also talks about how Vietnam wanted its citizens back from
Cambodia and that his mother saw this as a way out of the country for them, as she grew up

speaking some Vietnamese with her friends. Unfortunately, Ear’s father died shortly following

this revelation, but it did allow them to take on the task of escaping, as he did not speak

Vietnamese and would have been unable to pass the language test that was given to the

Vietnamese attempting to re-enter their country. Since Ear’s mother’s Vietnamese was so poor,

she decided to give the children fake Vietnamese names to make their story seem more credible.

The error she made, however, was giving the boys female names and giving the girls male

names. This was only revealed to her by a Vietnamese woman she met who intensely tutored her

for two days before her language exam. This moment here shows just how much Ear and his

family had to go through just to survive; the astronomical odds they had to overcome simply to

escape oppression. This greatly helps solidify the message he is sending about the horrors of war

and totalitarianism.

In conclusion, Sophal Ear’s use of both logos and pathos are supremely effective in

communicating the horrors his country and family endured at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. He

does this not only by showing images of the atrocities, but also by giving personal accounts of

what he had to go through as a very young child. Showing the audience the hellish conditions

that so many thousands of people had to endure under this dictatorship helps get across Ear’s

message that humanity should always be wary of those seeking absolute power.