Sin and a Lesson

   Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring is one of the beautiful Korean movie directed by Ki-duk Kim. The spring, the very first part of the film that we dealed with in the class, shows a monk and a little boy who will be raised as a monk. The monk teaches the boy with 'an eye for an eye' method and helps the little boy to grasp the important lesson by himself.
   I was in a peaceful state during watching the movie until the little monk started to tease some animals. He grabs the fish, ties a string on it, which has a stone on another side of the string, and put the fish back into the brook. The fish struggles painfully with the rock which does not let itself to move in a right way. Watching the tortured fish, the little boy chuckles. He chuckles as if he feels the biggest joy by harrassing the animals. My classmates and I, who were really into the movie, felt awkward and uncomfortable. What is he doing? Why does he giggle?
   However, I guess everybody has some kind of experience similar to the boy. When I was in elementary school, I enjoyed to trample on the small ants that moved around pedestrian roads. I stepped on it, leaned on that feet giving all my weight, and scrubbed the feet to the sandpapery ground. At that time, even though I was young and stupid, I knew that killing a living creature is the worst sin. I know these kinds of things happen, and I understand the little boy laughing by torturing animals. Looking back on it now, I think I, as a little girl, wanted to rule over a creature.
   The monk was looking all the process that the boy has been doing at the boy's back. In the middle of the night, the monk ties a big rock on the boy's back to make him be aware of what he had done to the animals. With the heavy rock on his back, the boy goes back to the pond and looks for the animals that he have tortured the night before. He finally cries when he finds the snake fallen to death covered with its red blood all over the skin. He surley figured out his lesson by himself.
   On the other hand, I didn't have any person to teach the lesson. Well, I have been taught that it is bad to kill a living thing, but that was all. I haven't had any real experience, and I didn't have to understand all the pain that the ants had to feel. I didn't have any teachers to help me figure out how the ants will feel like.
   I am very much interested in the method of education, and found an best answer today. From TOEFL topics and SAT writing topics, I have always have been writing that direct experience is the best way to get the real understanding, from science experiments to moral lectures, though I mechanically wrote it with prepared reasons and examples provided by my academies. It is totally true that it is better to see a thing one time than to hear about it hundred times. I only watched the very small part of the film, but I have learned a lot. The background is very peaceful, not provocative, and gives viewers a hand to get the lesson from the clip easily. I am looking forward to watch the rest of the movie.

I add a peaceful music that I really like : Utada Hikaru's First Love(Instrumental)