Previous
Dennis Prager
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Forgiveness and Compassion
Religion and Moral Truth
Remembrance
Anti-Semitism and Dehumanization
Silence, Guilt, and Resistance
Summary
Analysis
Pran, who is a witness and survivor of the Cambodian killing fields, admits he could never forgive or forget what the top leadership of the Khmer Rouge has done to his family and friends. His father died of starvation, and his three brothers and sister were killed.
Pran also focuses on the idea that one should never forget. Hearing from people who have experienced other genocides only highlights why learning to stop these atrocities is so important.
Themes
Pran feels that it is important to make a distinction between the leaders of the Khmer Rouge (who intentionally plotted to destroy human beings) and the individual soldiers on the ground (whom he feels were trapped, uneducated, poor, and feared death enough to be forced to do wrong). Neither group contains moral people, but he feels far more able to forgive the soldiers, and would have forgiven Karl.
For Pran, those who orchestrated the killing are those who should not be forgiven because they not only devalued the lives of these people but they do not even bear the guilt of physically murdering. They are able to claim innocence only through technicality when in reality they are the most guilty.
Themes
