Fiction enables us to gain a different insight into how we view the world around us and develop our sense of who we are in the world. Now banned in Vietnam because of its political views, Paradise of the Blind by Duong Thu Huong is the first Vietnamese novel published in America about Vietnamese women fighting to survive in a society where compliance to men and Communist corruption suppresses any kind of independence. The Bride Price by Buchi Emecheta is a novel that tells the story about a Nigerian girl who rebels against traditional marriage customs and the influence of Nigeria's European colonisers. Both texts explore the negative effects on an individual's identity and relationships in a society with traditional customs and values, influenced …show more content…
by both similar and conflicting values as a result of colonisation. Our identity is shaped by the values and limitations of the society in which we live in. Paradise of the Blind demonstrates how an oppressive corrupt communist society that arose as a result of more than six decades of French rule can influence one's identity through the theme of gender roles. Huong uses the motif of duckweed that "always glistened, radiant in the middle of the filth: the atrocious ornament of life snuffed out"(Huong, p131) to show how women, represented by the duckweed flowers that are trapped by the filth around them; whether the limitations are caused by Communism, their duties, or their country, their radiance is useless. The duckweed is also reminder of her homeland where a pond lost in some godforsaken village "young women bend like slaves at their husband's feet" (Huong, p130). Throughout the novel, Huong describes women as slaves, and in a way, they were, as women essentially belonged to men. This is a reflection of how women are perceived in society and as an extension, how Hang herself views women. Vietnam was a society ingrained with both patriarchal ideas and traditions, and so, with these beliefs, the subjugation of women was naturalised and seen as a way of life. In every way, women were oppressed even on a subconscious level as "the men who, according to custom, were seated separately" (Huong, p154). As a woman herself, growing up with these patriarchal ideas embedded in every action changed her own sense of self. We can see how this image of women has affected her very identity as the purple of the duckweed became ingrained in her memory. Thus, we can see how Hang's identity is permanently altered as years later she is still haunted by the constant oppression of women in society. Similarly, The Bride Price also explores how the subjugation of women can affect one's identity and sense of self through the theme of gender roles. In a similar fashion to Paradise of the Blind, Nigerian traditions and customs also were rooted with patriarchal ideas. 1950 Nigeria was a society that had a strong emphasis on family and was influenced by western ideas and values. The bride price is a concept that refers to the customary law in Nigeria where wealth is paid by a man to the parents of the woman he has marries. The symbolic nature of Aku-nna's name meaning "Father's wealth" highlights how Aku-nna was seen as nothing but a possession that would bring wealth to her father who owned her from the very moment she was born. In contrast, her brother's name Nna-nndo translates to "father is shelter", a position expected of men. Aku-nna and Nna-nndo are unable to develop and mature their own identities and sense of self when their own names are telling them who they are and they accept it because that way of thinking was normal. Men were seen as the supreme authority and that "a fatherless family is a family without a head, a family without shelter, a family without parents, in fact a non-existing family" (Emecheta, p 28), metaphorically representing a family as a person to highlight the importance of men, and by contrast the insignificance of women. Women couldn't be independent in a society that was constantly telling them that without a father they were nothing. In this respect, we can see how the patriarchal ideas and values affect Aku-nna's very identity as she is unable to express her opinions as she conforms to a society's idea of what a woman should be. However, "Lagos was such an unfortunate conglomeration of both [European and African] that you ended up not knowing to which you belong" (Emecheta, p16) and at school where they learned the white man's ways, they were told that in the sight of god, we are all the same. This conflicting value caused Aku-nna and her brother to feel like "helpless fishes caught in a net: they could not as it were go back into the sea, for they were trapped" (Emecheta, 28). The net represents Aku-nna's culture, which she feels that she is unable to escape. Hence, through the theme of gender roles in both Paradise of the Blind and The Bride Price we can see how the subjugation and oppression of women in society can irreversibly change one’s sense of identity. The society we live in shapes our relationships with others when the values they hold clash with our own.
In Paradise of the Blind we can see how Que's relationship with her husband, brother and in turn Hang's relationship with her mother suffers as a result of the values and restrictions placed upon her. Hang, who disobeyed the tradition in Vietnam that required women to observe a three year mourning period after the death of her parents was subject to the "contempt and mockery of the entire village" (Huong, p20) when she married Ton. This recurring theme of individual vs. society demonstrates how Que's relationship with her village changes as a result of society's values and traditions that conflicted with her love for Ton. Que's brother Chinh embodies society’s values and is an icon that represents a new society influenced by patriarchal values. Chinh had joined Liberation Army and following the surrender of the French colonial government, Anti-French resistance came into power as rebels became the new authorial figures. Following the example of the Communist governments in China and the Soviet Union, the Viet Minh forced the redistribution of privately owned land to peasant families, creating a new social class as “landlords” were arrested and forced to labour camps. Que’s marriage to Ton and relationship with her brother, representing the values of the society disintegrates when her brother "forbid you [Ton] to see my sister" (Huong, p29) because of his landlord status. …show more content…
Despite this, years later, her loyalty to family as is the way of life in Vietnam prevailed and she sought recognition from her brother who had disowned her. Que's new mission was to "serve the needs of her brother" (Huong, p176) and Hang struggles to understand how her mother could continue "love people who enslaved her" (Huong, p127). The continual use of referring to women as slaves demonstrates to a certain extent Hang's desperate state of mind, unable to free her mother from an oppressive master that is her brother, and by extension the society she lives in. This in turn affected her relationship with her daughter Hang who sought love from her mother who "had already found another object for her affections and a kind of indifference had slipped into our relationship". Therefore, we can see how Que’s relationships with her family and people deteriorrate as a result of her society's values. Likewise, in The Bride Price, Aku-nna's deteriorating relationship with her mother as a repercussion of her society's traditions initiates her relationship with Chike.
According to Nigerian custom, following the death of her husband, Aku-nna's mother Ma Blackie marries Okonkwo, the uncle, as is the custom of the widow to marry into the brother-in-law. Following Ma Blackie's pregnancy with her new husband, Aku-nna felt that her mother no longer had time for her and "had heard it often enough that one's mother was one's best friend, but she was beginning to doubt it" (Emecheta, p150) .The feeling of abandonment suggested by her tone of voice is a catalyst for her relationship with Chike as she seeks companionship elsewhere. Their courtship However, Aku-nna's relationship with Chike was disproved by the society they lived in because of his slave status. In the 1700's the British Empire and other European powers had settlements and forts in West Africa as European slave trading began with more than 3,000 people taken per year. In 1807 the parliament of the United Kingdom imposed the Slave Trade Act, prohibiting British subjects from participating in the slave trade. As a result, a social class system was created and although slave trading had been abolished, "people did not forget which families had been slaves (Emecheta p,40)". Because of Chike's social status, Okonkwo refused to recognise their marriage and accept the bride price that according to tradition, if is not paid,
the bride will die in childbirth. Similarly to Paradise of the Blind, through the theme of individual vs. society we can see how Aku-nna's relationship with her family and Chike is affected as society tells them they can't be together. In this way, we can see how both these texts both highlight how our relationships are shaped when we are subject to the values of our society. To conclude, the texts Paradise of the Blind and The Bride Price, despite their different contexts draw upon similar values and ideas in society and highlight how it can affect us in different ways. Both books enable us to see how relationships with other family and our own identity can be manipulated as a result of the world we live in.
In the novel Paradise of the Blind, Doung Thu Huong explores the effect the Communist regime has had upon Vietnamese cultural gender roles. During the rule of the Communist Viet Minh, a paradigm shift occurred within which many of the old Vietnamese traditions were dismantled or altered. Dounh Thu Huong uses the three prominent female characters – Hang, Que and Aunt Tam – to represent the changing responsibilities of women in Vietnamese culture. Que, Hang’s mother, represents a conservative, orthodox Vietnamese woman, who has a proverb-driven commitment to sustaining her manipulative brother, Chinh. Aunt Tam embodies a capitalistic
Chapter one, The Observers, in the Death of Woman Wang demonstrates the accuracy of the local historian; Feng K'o-ts'an, who compiled The Local History of T'an-ch'eng in 1673. The descriptive context of the Local History helps the reader to understand and literally penetrate into people's lives. The use of records of the earthquake of 1668, the White Lotus rising of 1622 and rebels rising vividly described by Feng the extent of suffering the people of T'an-ch'eng went through. Jonathan Spence stresses on how miserable the two-quarter of the seventeen-century were to the diminishing population of the county. The earthquake claimed the lives of nine thousand people, many others died in the White lotus rising, hunger, sickness and banditry. P'u Sung-ling's stories convey that after the loss of the wheat crops there were cases of cannibalism. On top of all of this came the slaughtering of the entire family lines by the bandits. The incredible records of women like Yao and Sun in the Local History present the reader the magnitude of savagery the bandits possessed. All of these factors led to the rise of suicides. The clarity of events Spence given to the reader is overwhelming.
I'd like to read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as the odyssey of one man's search for identity. Try this scenario: the narrator is briefly an academic, then a factory worker, and then a socialist politico. None of these "careers" works out for him. Yet the narrator's time with the so-called Brotherhood, the socialist group that recruits him, comprises a good deal of the novel. The narrator thinks he's found himself through the Brotherhood. He's the next Booker T. Washington and the new voice of his people. The work he's doing will finally garner him acceptance. He's home.
People want to feel unique, but at the same time they do not want their differences to call negative attention to themselves. People can be made to feel isolated from others if they feel that they are different in a hindering way, such as having a disability. In Stephen Kuusisto’s Planet of the Blind, he uses allusions to convey to sighted readers the challenges and joys of being blind. In order to blend in with the crowd, Kuusisto attempts to hide his blindness. In doing this, he denies accepting himself and becomes lonely. Those who do know him cannot truly understand him because he does not express his vulnerability in being blind. Throughout his memoir, Kuusisto alludes to outcast characters, such as the creature in Frankenstein and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, because his “disability” often leads him to feel as an outsider. In his attempt to fit in with friends by hiding his blindness, he is instead left feeling isolated and conveys this through his passion for literature.
Eyes is the window of everyone’s mind and it always be the bridge to anyone’s heart. Like in Charles Baudelaire prose poem “The Eyes of the Poor”, the author states: “ The eyes of the little boy: “How beautiful it is! How beautiful it is! But it is a house where only people who are not like us can go.” The boy doesn’t say any words, but the author can still read his mind from his eyes. And Carolyn Forche does the same thing in his prose poem “The Colonel”, he stated “My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing.” Charles Baudelaire and Carolyn Forche us the different prose poem to tell us, sometimes if the people say noting, but you can still read their mind from their
The Portrayal of Blindness in The Outsider and Oedipus the King A primitive motif in Oedipus the King by Sophocles and The Outsider by Albert Camus is blindness. The protagonists in the novels are blinded to a personal truth, and are physically blinded as well. In The Outsider, Meursault’s blindness is metaphorical, as he is negligent to his own absurdity, which he later becomes categorized as. On the other hand, Oedipus’s blindness is literal, as he is ignorant to the truth of his life; and the fact that he is incapable of escaping the destiny that the Gods have set out for him, which resulted in him gorging his eyes out. The characters suffer an emotional and physical blindness, which leads to tragic irony in Oedipus the King and existential irony in The Outsider.
The film begins by introducing us to Yuyin and her husband Guigui as peasants whose hard work and long hours making bean curd have allowed them to accrue modest financial success within their town. However, their success coincides with the arrival of a work team that has been assigned to assess the inequalities of Hibiscus Town, which decides that Yuyin and Guigui are guilty of being rich peasants. This newly-prescribed label as “rich peasant” severely affects Yuyin and Guigui's status in their community, and they are subjected to sudden scrutiny and humiliation. Guigui's eventual suicide leaves Yuyin alone to deal with her newly-reduced position in society, and the rest of the story follows her as she adapts to her new role as a “bad element” in society. At the same time, the film also surveys how inhabitants of the town are affected by the ensuing power struggles and conflict that occur with the onset of the Cultural Revolution.
Because the ones crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do. And we will take Steve Jobs' word for it. Crazy is someone who parts the odds sea and makes her/his way through it, leading the way for countless many.
In this story, the narrator is exposed to the harsh reality of the economic divide before the Chinese Civil War between the Communists and the Nationalists. The symbolic narrator and his new friend, represent the rich and the poor in today’s society. Although this story occurred prior to the Chinese Civil War, the separation in society due to social class is still pertinent today. As the narrator starts talking to his new friend, they were both oblivious of the separation in the social hierarchy. When the story progresses, the narrator begins to realize his privileges that are not accommodated to his friend and is treated differently by the staff and their families. This story highlights the social divide between the rich and the poor in society and how that influence our future. The narrator and his friends were newborns that had never left the hospital premises. At first, they were naive and unaware of their identity in the society. However, as they become more aware of who they are and where they belong in the social hierarchy, society begins to shape them differently.Their unawareness did not protect them from the truth about society. During the ten days the narrator and his friends were in the hospital, they were perceived as equal. They were not aware of who they were and what role they had in society. However, when they left the safety
Humans are often motivated to ignore the ethical implications of others’ behavior because it is in their best interest to do so. These scenarios are defines as motivated blindness, which reflects the self-serving nature of human decisions. Regularly, the motive for the thoughtlessness of other’s ethical fallacies is centered on incentives such as financial reward. Further, the concept of indirect blindness argues that humans hold others less accountable for unethical behavior when that behavior results from actions of a third party. Correspondingly, humans will gradually intensify unethical behavior by becoming increasingly more acceptable to the moral wrongdoing. The gradual increase of unethical behavior, known as being on a slippery
For the final assignment I chose to write about the blind side. “The Blind Side” is a true story, the life of Michael Oher, a homeless teenager who was able to defeat great obstacles in order to achieve his goal- to be a first round draft pick in the national football league. Michael Oher had an extremely tough upbringing, as he had an absent father and his mother was hooked on drugs. Oher was in and out of foster homes and sometimes even living on the streets. The head football coach at Wingate, a very exclusive private school, saw the possibilities that lay inside Michael and got him accepted into the highly regarded school. Although Michael was a student at an excellent school he still had major issues such as learning disabilities and
If one’s brain has being taken out from one’s body and being graft to another body. The brain is unscathed and active under careful measurements. It is the same brain with the same function, same memory. Can that body with the brain be define as the same person? In The Mind’s Eye, Oliver sacks explores how human brains reallocated sensory system to recall and recreate the world after eyesight has being deprived. When the real world is no longer visible. Two categories of blindness appear: deep blindness and visual blindness. If someone is deep blindness, he or she went completed blind. His or her brain cannot create images for one to “see”. Visual blindness, however, allows the person to “see” hypothetically
When a society goes blind, things begin to change. Things become harder to do with the lack of vision. People 's behaviors change when they are filled with darkness, when they can 't do anything for themselves, and when violence erupts. They start to forget who they are and lose their humanity. They are no longer human, but animals. In "Blindness," Jose Saramago demonstrates how his characters that lack vision act like animals by being brutal, disheveled, and absurd. Instead of coming together and help each other, his characters are hostile and vile towards each other.
John Milton was born on December 9 1608. He graduated from Christ’s College at Cambridge University. Once he had graduated, Milton became a big supporter of Oliver Cromwell, a man who opposed the power of the monarchy. Milton worked diligently to write and print pamphlets for Cromwell. He was warned that all the work would damage his already poor eyesight, but he didn’t listen and in 1651 at the age of 44 Milton became blind. In his later years he lived in the country and wrote poetry. His poem Paradise lost is considered to be one the most important poems written in English.
In blindness by Saramago the doctors wife took the role of the leader. As the doctors wife takes on the role of the leader she is often questioned by her husband. When the eye doctor feels the willpower to have a say he decides it is his duty to alleviate the situation. “The doctor asked his wife, Guide me to the main door, Why, I 'm going to tell them that there is someone here with a serious infection and that we have no medicines,” Saramago, (page 25). The doctor felt as if it was his duty to find a solution to the wounded man problems. Though he can not see, it is indisputable that he will not accomplish anything by asking soldiers for medical assistance. His wife, in a concern manner questions him, but he is reluctant to ask anyway.