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Socio-economic factors that can influence individuals
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Set in the slums of India’s Mumbai district, Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo guides readers into the undercity of Annawadi. Separated from the flourishing world city merely by “a coconut-tree-lined thoroughfare”(Boo 68) and billboards, illegally residing residents of Annawadi lives and stories are documented by Boo during her stay. As residents acclimate to her presence, they continue with their daily lives, and her work follows. From the female slumlord who dreams to hold power to the young boy with his head in the clouds, Behind displays the hopes that even the poorest and richest people have: to be better than their surroundings. But below these aspirations lies darker routes to success, including corruption. Forevers warns …show more content…
society and readers about how corruption by the wealthy destroys the welfare of the poor, how preconceived prejudices affect the daily lives of individuals, and warns that awareness of global issues is necessary in this global age. (155 words) One major issue concerning the newly developing India is the corruption individuals in power force upon the poor.
Further explained by Boo, “the poor of a country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity, corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remained” ( 566). Boos uses a female resident at Annawadi to allow readers to sympathize those who use corruption to advance. When readers encounter Annawadi inhabitants, one of the first citizens, Asha, is described as the slumlord’s wife who yearns to be in a position of power. In her pursuit to establish money and power, Asha creates false schools and nonprofit organizations for government funding. However, Boo turns a normally despicable situation into one of piteous pursuit. Asha yearns to become better than her previous life in a farming village, where laborious work brought death upon the population and gave fruitless results, and will do anything to improve herself. Similar to how others “prospered”, many impoverished residents in India turn to nefarious acts for money, power and a higher status, at the expense of others in similar circumstances. Boo describes this as “...Powerless individuals blamed other powerless individuals for what they lacked…[and] tr[y] to destroy each other” (3302). Boo allowed readers to identify with individuals who use fraud, bribery, and other elements of corruption to be liberated from the cycle of poverty. (226
words) Consequently, the corruption that poor Indian citizens are forced to rely on to advance negatively Likewise, another major issue that Behind illustrates is how prejudices negatively affect the lifestyle of minority populations. Living in the predominantly Hindu area Annawadi, Abdul and his Muslim family are constantly ridiculed solely for their religion, and the stereotypes attached. On on such occasion, these prejudices lead to deadly
In Stevie Cameron’s essay “Our Daughters, Ourselves,” she proclaims “ We tell our bright, shining girls that they can be anything: firefighters, doctors, policewoman, lawyers, scientists, soldiers, athletes, artists. What we don't tell them, yet, is how hard it will be. Maybe, we say to ourselves, by the time they’re older it will be easier for them than it was for us.” My parents raised my sisters and I very congruous with this view. They would always tell us that we could do or be anything we wanted when we got older. However, contrary to Cameron’s apprehension on the matter, my parents always told us how difficult it would be straight from the beginning. They told us how financially strenuous becoming a doctor would be. They told us how
The film, The Sapphires, (2012), directed by Wayne Blair depicts the story of four Australian Aboriginal women who travel to Vietnam as a singing quartet to entertain the troops during the war in 1968. The scene being analyzed in this text is the scene where The Sapphires are airlifted to safety following a bombing attack deployed on the place where The Sapphires were performing. In the heat of the moments two of the girls are split up and forgotten, Dave Lovelace leaves the rest of The Sapphires to recover the lost girls, as Dave frantically searches for the missing Sapphires, he is shot in the chest. This scene is filled with many emotional and intense camera angles, sounds and lighting.
Boo’s story begins in Annawadi, a trash-strewn slum located by the Mumbai International Airport. This “sumpy plug of slum” had a population of three thousand people living within 335 huts (Boo, 2011, xi). The land owned by the Airport Authority of India and was surrounded by five hotels that Abdul’s younger brother described as “roses” versus their slum, “the shit in between” (Boo, 2011, xi). Abdul is a Muslim teenage who buys garbage of the rich and sells it to recyclers to support his family. Abdul’s family, Muslim, is a religious minority in the slum of Hindus; in fact a major element of tension within the book can be distilled to these Hindu-Muslim tensions. This difference in religion makes Abdul fearful of his neighbors for two reasons: (1) they would attempt to steal the family’s wealth, and (2) if Abdul were caught, he would not be able to support his family. The other major character was Fatima, a woman who burned herself by attempting suicide through self-immolation. She accused Abdul, his father, and sister of beating and threatening her; in India, it is against the law to convince someone else to kill him or herself. With a corruption-ridden legal sys...
Mumtaz, the ruler of the brothel, runs the house with brutality and a sense of street smart. Cheating Lakshmi of her paltry earnings, Mumtaz tells the girl she will never leave until she can pay off her family’s debts, which will never happen given the way the process is set up. She is living what is essentially enforced slavery. Despite her dire circumstances, Lakshmi continues to live by her mother’s words “simply to endure is to triumph” and slowly forms friendships with Shahanna and Anita who enable her to make it through her new struggles (McCormick 16). She learns to speak English from “this David Beckham boy” (McCormick 140). In time, Lakshmi meets a disguised Ame...
The Lais of Marie de France is a compilation of short stories that delineate situations where love is just. Love is presented as a complex emotion and is portrayed as positive, while at other times, it is portrayed as negative. The author varies on whether or not love is favorable as is expressed by the outcomes of the characters in the story, such as lovers dying or being banished from the city. To demonstrate, the author weaves stories that exhibit binaries of love. Two distinct types of love are described: selfish and selfless. Love is selfish when a person leaves their current partner for another due to covetous reasons. Contrarily, selfless love occurs when a lover leaves to be in a superior relationship. The stark contrast between the types of love can be analyzed to derive a universal truth about love.
In the second chapter of the book "Planet of Slums," Mike Davis seeks to answer what characteristics and types of slums are prevalent in different parts of the world. Davis continues his startled, alarmed, disgruntled and depressing tone from the previous chapter. Overall, the chapter is divided into two parts. The first part attempts to explore and examine the global slum census, and the other part describes the various slum typologies
Thomas Hardy challenges the sexual principles of the late nineteenth century in his novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Tess Durbeyfield, a young woman, looks for work at Trantridge, where she meets the charming Alec Stoke-d'Urberville. Alec becomes attracted to Tess and later rapes her in a forest. This drives Tess to look for work elsewhere, and she meets Angel Clare at Talbothays Dairy, where they fall in love with each other and marry. However, when Tess tells Angel what happened to her at Trantridge, he leaves her and goes to Brazil. Hardy presents two men who inflict different types of pain on Tess; while Alec harms Tess physically, Angel harms Tess psychologically. Hardy establishes that people are victims of fate and, although both men have many faults, Angel is the better man.
Take a moment and think about how difficult it is going through an unexpected change having to do with leaving your old life, your hometown, and even your house by force. Well, that's what you call a sudden change that may leave a long-term effect on a person. Based on true story, In the book Night, movie called Life is Beautiful and article named “ The Journey to Europe: One Syrian refugee’s story” all show terrible experience through sudden changes of a person due to Religion and way life is going on in their own hometown that changes a person for life, but after going through the change they're able to continue a normal life.
The fairytale The Beauty and the Beast is illustrated as a love story, however when looking deeper into Belle’s nature it seems to be that she is affected by several disorders throughout the film. In Beauty and the Beast, we see Disney once again sugarcoat personal problems in order to present a young audience with a one dimensional and simple female hero. Belle has clearly shown symptoms of Schizoid Personality Disorder, Stockholm Syndrome and Schizophrenia which can be treated by a biological therapeutic approach or a psychoactive drug approach and therapy.
In the novel, The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga the main character, is Balram, one of the children in the “darkness” of India. Adiga sheds a new light on the poor of India, by writing from the point of view of a man who was at one time in the “darkness” or the slums of India and came into the “light” or rich point of view in India. Balram’s job as a driver allows him to see both sides of the poverty line in India. He sees that the poor are used and thrown away, while the rich are well off and have no understanding of the problems the poor people must face. The servants are kept in a mental “Rooster Coop” by their masters. The government in India supposedly tries to help the poor, but if there is one thing Adiga proves in The White Tiger, it is that India’s government is corrupted. Despite the government promises in India designed to satisfy the poor, the extreme differences between the rich and the poor and the idea of the Rooster Coop cause the poor of India to remain in the slums.
In Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo affirms that in some areas or situations like the slums of Annawadi, people's moral compasses are usually sabotaged or tainted. That many turn to such ways out of need to survive and commonly begin to think in ‘an every man for himself’ mentality. She says that in a “world so capricious that helping a neighbor is to risk the ability to feed your family” and that “the idea of mutually supportive poor community is demolished”.
The novel "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" written by - opens with a prologue that introduces the audience to Abdul, a garbage sorter in the Mumbai slums of Annawadi. Here Abdul is hiding in his family's garbage shed, hiding from the authorities in fear of being arrested for being falsely accused of setting his neighbor Fatima on fire. Abdul has tried his whole life to stay out of trouble and provide a well-off life for his family things seem to be falling apart. The novel then rewinds to January 2008, seven months before the burning of Fatima. Abdul, who is the Husain family's oldest son (sixteen or seventeen years old), he collects recyclables to sell to plants, which helps support his family of thirteen and his parents Zehrunisa
For all Annawadians except Asha, corruption ingrained in society prevents the impoverished citizens of a Mumbai slum from being able to become successful in life. Despite working hard, saving money, and only wanting to better the life of their family, the Husains’s story is demonstrative of the fact that an unintentional entanglement in the “great web of corruption” “in which the most wretched tried to punish the slightly less wretched” could easily lead to near ruin (Boo 115). Over the course of her narrative, Boo shows that Annawadians recognize the issues of corruption present in their society, and the fact that they lack the power to change the system. For Annawadians, the courage and aspiration to become more successful in life meant taking a gamble, and Boo shows that their gamble could only be made in a system where the odds were forced against their
Introduction To what extent did The White Rose oppose and act on their opposition of Nazi policies in Germany during World War II? Throughout World War II, hundreds of German organizations existed that opposed the Third Reich, one of which was The White Rose. A student led group, The White Rose published six leaflets that served to convince other Germans to defy the regime of Adolf Hitler. These students were persecuted and killed for their actions in Nazi Germany but are revered as heroes in modern Germany. I have always found myself interested in opposition groups, who had the courage to stand up when others would not.
Often times in stories symbols are created by the author to exemplify a meaning to the story such as happiness, evil, joy, and even death. Those symbols take on that role of developing a meaning to intrigue the reader. In terms of definition, a symbol can be seen in more than one way such as person, place, and object. Authors such as Amy Tan who wrote “Two Kinds”, Nathaniel Hawthorne who wrote “Young Goodman Brown, and Kate Chopin who wrote “The Storm” provide an essence of purity and vivacity throughout their story. Author Amy Tan who wrote “Two Kinds” shows the symbols of purity and vivacity representing what the protagonist Jing-Mei and what her mother wanted her to be which was a prodigy