Our Secret By Susan Griffin Summary

Marie Beatrice Umutesi, the author of Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire, and Susan Griffin, the author of “Our Secret”, are two females who explore the world around them and express their thoughts through their writing. Both women try to answer their own questions that have occurred to them, and these questions emerge throughout their works of literature. One such question is, “But is one ever really free of the fates of others?” (Griffin 235). Whereas, Umutesi asks, “What had led us to this extremity? What are the reasons behind the tragedy of the Rwandan refugees, whose existence has been forgotten and denied by the international community?” (4). However, these questions remain unanswered.
These questions appear to be open-ended, provoking the reader to interpret and answer them on their own; they serve a purpose. They cause us to think, to look at things in ways which are new to us. So, just as Marie Umutesi and Susan Griffin pose questions in their writing, so shall I. I am going to take their questions and incorporate them into one overall question: Where does violence stem from and who is involved and why?
First, let us explore events that have recently been occurring on our planet. Many of us are familiar with

ISIS, the leader of the group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the cruel actions that are related to this terrorist group. The perpetrators within this group have committed many crimes, killing hundreds of innocent people in their vicinity, taking hundreds more as hostages. These numbers do not show signs of stopping and they are increasing with every day; some may not even be known to us. But what is known is that this violence does not seem to have an end, and such viciousness has been seen before.
These acts of violence, in a way, lie parallel to those that are described in Umutesi’s and Griffin’s books. Both works of literature explore two different times in history. “Our Secret” deals with the Holocaust and the atrocities that had been faced during World War II, whereas Umutesi’s piece explores the violence met in the Rwandan genocide. Yet again, violence is present, but it seems to be the only main link between ISIS, the Holocaust, and the Rwandan genocide. It is not. The violence only serves as a mask, a façade, that tries to blind us from seeing what lies behind the reason for all of the violence that we see. Most only see the after effects: violence. So what can potentially lead to violence? I will be focusing on one reason among many: the longing for physical and/or emotional control, and where that desire arose from. Not all forms of control are the same, and not all desires of control are directed at others, but at the perpetrator himself.
The similarities between what has happened in the past and what has happened recently are so strong, it is surprising. Nonetheless, each situation has its own factors that differ from the rest. In all three scenarios, there is someone who tries to control others and who wants to be an omnipresent figure to the people under their control. The perpetrator, whether it is a group of people or just one person, wants to show that they are more powerful than they seem to be.
I first noticed this in “Our Secret”, when Heinrich Himmler, the perpetrator, wrote the following in his diary, “A real man,[…] should love a woman as a child who must be admonished perhaps even punished, when she is foolish, though she must also be protected and looked after because she is so weak” (Griffin 247). Himmler reveals his desire to “protect” his woman, whom he views to be an emotionally and physically weaker human being. Just as Gebhard “protected” Himmler, and tried to save him from facing shame in society, Himmler wanted to do the same. But why would someone who is “uncomfortable with the opposite sex” want to protect the opposite sex (247)? Could his use of the word “protect” be an excuse to make him feel less ashamed of sensing fear that soon even the opposite sex could tell him what to do, like his father did? It is my belief that Himmler’s desire to be protective was the first inkling of what was later to come. Just with the innocent gesture of wanting to protect someone, a person can easily evolve and yearn for something more, something concrete: control. Himmler’s fear of always being the weaker person in a relationship sparked his later thirst for control, because by being in control, his partner could not control him.
The situation where control is involved described in Surviving the Slaughter, is slightly different. We see one group of people wanting to control another group of people. The Tutsi, a people living in Rwanda, were given control over the Hutu by the Belgians. Umutesi wrote, “The colonial authorities, in order to simplify things, tried to differentiate between three ethnic groups” (6). The dissimilarities of their features showed that the Tutsi resembled the Europeans most, so they were put in control of the government in Rwanda. This division of power did not end without any future conflicts. The Hutu did not want to be controlled by the Tutsi, the Hutu wanted to have control over themselves. This particular situation shows that control does not always have to be directed at an outside group of people, but control that has already been in place causes the desire for the control of one’s own life. A rebellion seized the country and led to violence and attempts at regaining the Hutu’s freedom of governing themselves. This, in turn, led to more violence as the Tutsi rebels tried to fight back and gain the freedom they had lost (Umutesi). In the end, it was not about controlling the other; it was about gaining their freedom to control themselves. Hence, the initial perpetrator here was from the outside, Belgium, but because the two ethnic groups, the Hutu and Tutsi, fought for their own rights, they were perpetrators in each other’s eyes.
Both of these situations are similar to that of ISIS, in that control is the main component behind the violence that ensued. Though control is involved, the reason behind the control is somewhat different. ISIS wasn’t seeking to gain its freedom or trying to gain control out of fear. ISIS wanted control out of selfishness and the desire to take over land and people. The group wanted to prove that they had the power to do what they wanted. Just as an example, in June of 2014, ISIS took control over Mosul and Tikrit, and al-Omar only a month later ("ISIS Fast Facts"). This control could not have been won without bloodshed and violence. Control is not taken without putting up a fight. And yet, there are people that would go through anything to get what they really wanted, even if violence was the only option left.
Therefore, violence can be deemed as a direct result of the need for control. It is directed at those who stand in the way of the perpetrator. There appears to be a connection between who the perpetrator deems to be in the way. Their victims are simply different from themselves. The differences in these cases include race and ethnicity. Though the differences appear to be minute, they are part of what caused issues with control and violence seen during the Rwandan genocide, the Holocaust, and even during events directed by ISIS. Nevertheless, that small difference is what makes a difference. That difference is what leads to the distinction between the perpetrator and the victim.
Umutesi described the Tutsi and Hutu based on appearance almost at the very beginning of her book: “The Tutsi are tall, slender, and have refined features. The Hutu are of medium build with negroid features” (Umutesi 6). By mentioning these differences right near the beginning of her book, Umutesi emphasized how important this discrimination was to the entire affair. This subtle and generalized difference in appearance of the two peoples caused the violence and bloodshed to ensue upon the initial introduction of the issue of control. This differentiation that was invoked by the Europeans led to a schism between the Tutsi and Hutu and a misbalance in power. All it took was a higher power to divide two ethnicities that “share the same language and culture” (Umutesi 6). We see that the difference was small, but because the difference was taken and used in the wrong way it led to something explosive and brutal.
In Griffin’s book, Heinrich is said to be physically frail. He lacks the strength and build that those like his older brother have. However, this lack of strength did not stop Heinrich from seeking out others who were also different, but different in another kind of way. He focused his attention on the current events and the victimization of the Jews. He even comes out and says, “He knows now who he is and who he is not. He is not Jewish” (Griffin 248). By saying these words, Heinrich makes it clear that his target is the Jewish population by differentiating between himself and the Jewish people. This ethnic difference sets up the boundary between the perpetrator and the victim. This difference is acted upon when Heinrich Himmler reached a higher position in the military. He automatically put himself to work and did what he could to eradicate the people who were not like him (Griffin). I believe he did this to have the satisfaction of having control over someone, especially because he had lacked control over himself as a young boy.
Control, in terms of ISIS, was directed at minority groups in some cases as well. The easiest way for ISIS to attain control was to strike out at their weaker victims first and move from there on. In August of 2014, ISIS struck out against a minority group in Sinjar: “hundreds of Yazidi men [were] killed, thousands of Yazidi women and girls [were] captured and raped and sold into slavery, and more than 40,000 [were] stranded in the Sinjar Mountains” ("ISIS Fast Facts"). What did the Yazidi people do to deserve such harsh punishment? They were different and were in the way of ISIS being in complete control over Sinjar. They turned to violence, because it was an easy way out, and because ISIS was able to maintain an air of dominance over the people they conquered along their path to complete control.
Race and ethnicity.

These distinctions make people different. These two words, among many, can be the boundary between the perpetrator and the victim. According to the perpetrator, these words determine who is different and who does not deserve equal treatment. What I find interesting is that people can sometimes forget something: everyone is different from everyone else. Our own DNA sequence is proof of that (with the exception of identical twins, but even they have their differences). So why can we not just be considered those unique human beings we are? If it were as simples as that, violence would probably not exist. Yet, because nobody is perfect, just as everyone is different, our world will never be

flawless.