"Paper" by Catherine Lim

The short story paper is about greed and how a terrible sickness it can be to those who do not warn it off before it sets in your mind and soul and takes over your daily life.  The story is set in Singapore and it depicts the ambitious ways of the young people in that time who only seem to value material gain. The greed, which takes over the lives of Tay Soon and Yie Liang ultimately, costs the life of Tay Soon and the sanity of Yie Lang. People often associate money and material possession with happiness and joy, these are the great lies of the world. The world portrayed in the story and the world we live in nowadays is no different. Humanity has, since the creation of the monetary system and civilization, always took advantage of the poor and weak to gain more money and lands in a quest to be the richest and most powerful human on the face of the Earth. What the don’t realize is that when we die we are all turned to same thing, dust, and that no matter the virtues we acquired in life, and in death it is but a dream, as Shakespeare stated in his famous speech of Hamlet “To be, or not to be”. We live our lives, much like Tay Soon, working and lusting for money which is only paper that is worthless when we die, and the last image of the story of the burning house made of paper is the irony of which what was most precious to him in life, money, was something as fragile and easily burned as paper. In all to better ourselves as humans we must first change the structure and society we live in.