Cri De Coeur Romeo Dallaire

"Cri de coeur", also known as "A cry from the heart", a tragic, eye-opening and heartfelt true story

told from Romeo Dallaire's point of view. From reading his essay, one appeal stood out above all, pathos.

Dallaire wanted to share something with the world that the majority has not experienced or hopefully will

never have to. He tells a truthful story of what he has witnessed and how much he wanted to help the

people in Rwanda, but failed to do so. He told his story by unleashing a handful of emotions, giving us as

outsiders looking in a heart-to-heart feel of the numerous, horrendous events in Rwanda. Dallaire has

portrayed pathos in his story by using many types of poetic devices including tone, imagery, and

connotation.

One way to keep the audience intrigued to continue reading on in his essay was by connecting to

the audiences emotions.

And due to the fact that Dallaire has experienced all the pain, sorrow and tragedy

first hand, he tries to evoke the readers feelings by incorporating a lot of serious and negative tone into

his writing. He has portrayed a serious tone when he writes, “ It is time that I tell the story from where I

stood - literally in the middle of the slaughter for weeks on end” (484). He implies it in a serious tone to

ensure his readers will clearly understand his point of view on the Rwanda genocide situation. Dallaire

also implicit another melancholic tone when he says, “the inflexible UN Security Council mandate, the

penny-pinching financial management of the mission, the UN red tape, the political manipulations and

my own personal limitations” (484). He mentions how helpless and weak he feels toward the Rwanda

genocide, and how he was limited to the amount of resource and help that he could obtain. Another

negative tone that Dallaire implied was when he says, “through an inept UN mandate and what can only

be described as indifference, self-interest and racism, aided and abetted these crimes against
humanity” (484). Dallaire states how the U.N. were unwilling to act upon the genocide situation and

do

not act unless there was something to be gained from it. None of the citizens in Rwanda were being

protected, only the ones in the peacekeeping force. He was put out on a mission to maintain peace and

protection in Rwanda but failed to do so due to the limited access of help from the United Nations

headquarters. Negative tone was not the only poetic device used in his essay, imagery was also portrayed.

Dallaire has portrayed a lot of imagery in his essay to allow him to capture the readers attention and

to aid the reader in visualizing the events. It gives us a more thorough understanding of his experience and

a mental picture of what he has witnessed. He says, “ He was about three years old, dressed in a filthy,

torn T-shirt, the ragged remnants of underwear, little more than a loincloth, drooping from under his

distended belly. He was caked in dirt, his hair white and matted with dust, and he was enveloped in a

cloud of flies, which were greedily attacking the open sores that covered him.. Maybe it was the condition

I was in, but to me this child had the face of an angel and eyes of pure innocence” (482). This implies of

the poverty in Rwanda and the cruelty of the genocide. The little boy had no sense of the terrifying

situation he was in. The boy may have been in a horrifying situation but to Dallaire, it gave him a sense of

hope for Rwanda. Another imagery Dallaire has portrayed is when he says, “ As I stumbled over the body

and into the hut, a swarm of flies invaded my nose and mouth.

It was so dark inside that at first I smelled

rather than saw the horror that lay before me. The hut was a two-room affair, one room serving as a

kitchen and living room and the other as a communal bedroom; two rough windows has been cut into the

mud-and-stick wall. Very little light penetrated the gloom, but as my eyes became accustomed to the dark,

I saw strewn around the living room in a rough circle the decayed bodies of a man, a woman and two

children, stark white bone poking through the desiccated, leather-like covering that had once been

skin” (483). He describes the cold and darkness of the small hut that lies a few deaths of the people in

Rwanda and the death of the child’s mother that he found. Dallaire says, “It’s as if someone has sliced into

my brain and grafted this horror called Rwanda frame by blood-soaked frame directly on my

cortex” (483). In this quote, he states that even though he has left Rwanda, every cruel and horrifying

experience he encountered, is all still too vivid and will never leave his mind no matter how hard he tries

to get away from it. His genocide experience has taken over his life. Another poetic device Dallaire

has

portrayed in his essay was the use of connotation.

Dallaire has expressed a lot of negative connotation in his writing, in order to give the audience a

sense of feel of his point of view during his time in Rwanda. He states, “This book is a cri de coeur for

the slaughtered thousands, a tribute to the souls hacked apart by machetes because of their supposed

difference from those who sought to hang on to power” (484). He implies that his essays purpose was not

mainly to talk negatively about how the U.N. who failed to help protect the citizens in Rwanda, but to

hope that this may never have to occur again. And to let everyone across the world to be aware of what

did occur and how things do not need to turn out the way it had been. He says, “..the annihilation of an

ethnicity, the butchery of children barely out of the womb, the stacking of severed limbs like cordwood,

the mounds of decomposing bodies being eaten by the sun” (484). Dallaire implies that he is being

punished for not protecting Rwanda. Lastly, Dallaire expressed connotation when he says, “..we watched

as the devil took control of paradise on earth and fed on the blood of the people we were supposed to

protect” (484). He implies that through his journey as a U.N. peacekeeper, he was helpless in protecting

the people of Rwanda. He had to watch the horror instead of stopping it from happening. People were

destroyed and devastated, but there was nothing he could do without the help of U.N.

From the evidence provided, we can say with great certainty, that pathos can be found throughout

Dallaire’s “Cri de coeur”. From the poetic devices used; tone, imagery and connotation, Dallaire has

incorporated each and every one of these devices in his work to help the audience picture and to get a

sense of realization of the devastating terror that he had to go through. Also, it allows the audience to be

able to take his story to heart and keep them thinking about his point of view.