The house, built before the 1960s, had cracks that were startlingly apparent, making one worry that it could collapse at any moment. The roof leaked everywhere, and the family's only modern electrical appliance was a decades-old black-and-white television. Their mother, who had been bedridden for years, worked from dawn to dusk in the fields to provide for her two sons' education, hoping they could make something of themselves and escape this poor ravine. Though she was only in her forties, she looked as though she were in her sixties or seventies, gaunt and withered, similarly bedridden from overexertion, no longer able to work the fields, relying solely on her sons to care for her.
This scene was somewhat shocking and stirred an urge to cry.
