The smell of human waste intoxicated our noses. All my senses became weary as I endeavoured to stay awake. I had to keep strong. Dayo rested besides me, helpless, on the floor barely covered. Her eyes withering as the light dawdled through the splinter in the walls. Lips arid from the lack of food they had not been feeding us. She had been drained of all the energy she used to have. There were 60 other women like me and my sister, all different ages. We were captive in steel cages like animals with nothing but each other. The number had decreased rapidly. The women became far too ill and had no more vigour to keep them going. I watched them as they took their last breath, said their last prayer, seeing the light for the last time. Just yesterday, one of the girls Abeni came from the toilet, which was a hole in the corner of the room and collapsed. She fumbled feebly to the ground. Her eyes closed with not a movement in sight. There was an impulsive cry ‘Dood’ ‘Dood’. She was only nine years old, her limbs thin as twigs. No family. She lay dead. Before we were captured, Dayo and I would play for endless hours in the fields. As the sun began to set the spectrum of colours lit the Serengeti. Its radiance drew all life to a calm and serene atmosphere. There was not a sound heard for mile as the inhabitants and animals prepared for nightfall. The cool breeze ran around the plains playing like innocent children with the trees and shrubs that crossed it, its warmth welcoming the somnolent moon. Dayo was the type of girl that when she set her mind on something she would get it. She was energetic, always humorous and rarely aggressive. I looked after her as best as I could. Our parents had left the two of us after our village was rai... ... middle of paper ... ...wearing a hat the same tanned colour that now filled the room with dust. I tried to speak, but not a single word came out, only mumbles of quiet gibberish. What was happening? I no longer knew the world. It was like I was in a dream, deeper than a dream; my mind had been taken to a place where all erratic thoughts became a reality. A lie full of life, still forming a great future of sorrow. It had been inevitable to me that I would end up in some sort of profound universe, one where Dayo did not exist. I had to find some way to leave, escape this horror, this painful unreality. He stood still at the door glaring at me, with no facial expressions. I didn’t know what to do. Was I to leave Dayo? How could I even think about leaving? Slowly lowering my head to look at Dayo the white boy started to walk towards me, his shoes scraping against the sand on the floor.
In Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone, Beah’s imagery represents the struggle and misery of the Sierra Leone people are going through with the rebels invading. To begin, after Beah spends two days straight walking he arrives at a village that has already been condemned by the rebels. In the village Beah sees dead bodies everywhere, which fills his mind with the gruesome ways of death the men and woman suffered through: “I had seen heads cut off by machetes; smashed by cement bricks, and rivers filled with so much blood that the water ceased flowing… my body twitched with fear”(49). During this event Beah could not get these gruesome images out of his mind. Beah tries closing his eyes trying to hide away his vision to help the thoughts leave.
In today’s society not many people realize that they are thankful to wake up and live another day. Just imagine being lost at night in an area you are completely unfamiliar with. Imagine it being cold, and you having no clothing. You don’t have any money and you are starving. Now, all your ears hear are the screams of the one’s around you being killed. To add to the torture, you are unable to control your next move, nor the next. There is constant death, starvation, and suffering happening all around you, but you cannot do anything to help the situation besides fending for yourself to survive. This is the devastating and cruel world that Chanrithy Him’s When Broken Glass Floats introduces to its readers.
The mind is a very powerful tool when it is exploited to think about situations out of the ordinary. Describing in vivid detail the conditions of one after his, her, or its death associates the mind to a world that is filled with horrific elements of a dark nature.
In the novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold by, Gabriel Marguez, the characters lack individualization and the communal values determine the events of the town. The characters in this novel only watch what happens but never try to stop it. The character’s thought that nothing evil could happen when the bishop was coming to their town. Therefore they never believed all the threats that were made toward the main character, Nasr Santiago. The communal values evolve around religious events, having family honor and virginity.
The growing crowd of railway attendants leaned in. As he pulled away the blanket, the attendants gasped and covered their mouths. Doubled up in fetus position was the naked corpse of a young woman, her thin shoulders draped with thick, golden curls. Her body had been crushed into the trunk, her head forced over her breasts and her limbs drawn in tightly. Her mouth hung open in awkward distortion and her bright blue eyes stared blankly from their pale, discolored sockets. The pelvic area was bloody and decomposed.
Sorrow, the Straight Matter of Life. During the process of growing up, we are taught to believe that life is relatively colorful and rich; however, if this view is right, how can we explain why literature illustrates the negative and painful feelings of life? Thus, sorrow is inescapable; as it increases one cannot hide it. From the moment we are born into the world, people suffer from different kinds of sorrow.
It was rainy on the day of Santiago Nasar’s murder, and yet by the account of others, it
The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of tree, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved” (Le Guin, 466). In essence, the city of Omelas is an allegory to Western culture. While both the city of Omelas and Western Civilization are the land of opportunity and freedom, Eastern Civilizations are plagued with child workers, sex trafficking and poverty. It is evident that suffering exists in all parts of the world but in the city of Omelas, such suffering is said to only exists in the basement of a building. “In the room, a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect...the door is locked; and nobody will come. The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes” (Le Guin, 469). The child in the basement symbolizes all
Chronicle of a Death Foretold In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the narrator tells us that two people were responsible for the death of Santiago Nasar, however the narrator is wrong. Ignorance killed Santiago Nasar. There are three specific townsfolk responsible for the murder; Leandro Pornoy, Divina Flor, and Colonel Lazaro Aponte. Each of these three people had an equal opportunity to stop the murder; however each person’s ignorance caused them to fail in their duty as a fellow citizen. It was their duty after they heard of the Vicario brothers’ plot to kill Santiago
In the short story “From a Secret Sorrow”, by Van De Zee the author depicts the protagonist Faye as a weak character. In the short story Faye loves Kai, but is afraid that what she has been hiding from him may make him not want to marry her. By analyzing the characters through a present lens, we can see how Faye is a weak character by her not telling the truth as soon as she heard the news, by thinking Kai wouldn’t love and marry her, and Faye stealing Kai’s car and running away from her guilt.
How does chronicles of a death foretold by Gabriel Marquez shows the way in which people are corrupt in society?
The story of an unfortunate orphaned woman, stricken with epilepsy, is marked as a disgrace to her cousin and his wife, her only local family. They provide no comfort to her during her seizures, and their treatment of her can only be described as callous and cruel. Haldar, her cousin, described her in a way unimaginable for a family member: “She was a bane for business, he told her, a liability and a loss” (p 164). Lahiri’s employment of pathos in this description evokes deep empathy within the reader. Despite her condition seeming incurable, shunned by her family, this story showcases the power of community that rallies around even their most desolate members.
We all remember these grey gloomy days filled with a feeling of despair that saddens the heart from top to bottom. Even though, there may be joy in one’s heart, the atmosphere turns the soul cold and inert. Autumn is the nest of this particular type of days despite its hidden beauty. The sun seems foreign, and the nights are darker than usual enveloped by a thrill that generates chills to travel through the spine leaving you with a feeling of insecurity. Nevertheless, the thinnest of light will always shine through the deepest darkness; in fact, darkness amplifies the beauty and intensity of a sparkle. There I found myself trapped within the four walls of my house, all alone, surrounded by the viscosity of this type of day. I could hear some horrifying voices going through my mind led by unappealing suicidal thought. Boredom had me encaged, completely at its mercy. I needed to go far away, and escape from this morbid house which was wearing me down to the grave. Hope was purely what I was seeking in the middle of the city. Outside, the air was heavy. No beautifully rounded clouds, nor sunrays where available to be admired through the thick grey coat formed by the mist embedded in the streets. Though, I felt quite relieved to notice that I was not alone to feel that emptiness inside myself as I was trying to engage merchant who shown similar “symptoms” of my condition. The atmosphere definitely had a contagious effect spreading through the hearts of every pedestrian that day. Very quickly, what seemed to be comforting me at first, turned out to be deepening me in solitude. In the city park, walking ahead of me, I saw a little boy who had long hair attached with a black bandana.
The sunset was not spectacular that day. The vivid ruby and tangerine streaks that so often caressed the blue brow of the sky were sleeping, hidden behind the heavy mists. There are some days when the sunlight seems to dance, to weave and frolic with tongues of fire between the blades of grass. Not on that day. That evening, the yellow light was sickly. It diffused softly through the gray curtains with a shrouded light that just failed to illuminate. High up in the treetops, the leaves swayed, but on the ground, the grass was silent, limp and unmoving. The sun set and the earth waited.
In An Abandoned Bundle, Mtshali recounts his discovery of an abandoned child, on faeces and garbage, attacked by wild dogs. Mtshali begins the poem with very soothing image of “morning mist” over a “white city”, however this is quickly distorted by the harsh, graphic simile