Summary: The Marrow Thieves

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Arabella Ho Ms. Ho ENL1W1 31 May 2024. Understanding Sacrifice and its Reverberations in Dimaline’s “The Marrow Thieves”. James Allen once said, “There can be no progress, no achievement without sacrifice.” In both the fictional and real world, characters and people who do not face or experience sacrifice lack the ability to truly develop and progress. In Cherie Dimaline’s “The Marrow Thieves”, the oppressors (Recruiters) hunt and pursue the Indigenous communities to take their bone marrow so they can regain the ability to dream. The FNMI (First Nations, Métis, Inuit) community have to sacrifice themselves and their heritage for the sake of survival, as well as recovering their ancestral past. Sacrifice plays a significant part in “The Marrow …show more content…

This grants them the strength to explore the author’s message on sacrifice. Moreover, the outcome of the cultural sacrifice allows the community to come together and create a superior life or legacy for future generations. This was proven in Miig’s second part of the story: “We go to the schools and they leach the dreams from where our ancestors hid them, in the honeycombs of slushy marrow buried in our bones. And what about us? Well, we join our ancestors, hoping we left enough dreams behind for the next generation to stumble across.” (Dimaline 90). In Miig’s narrative, he mentions how after their dreams have been taken, they would join their ancestors hoping they left enough dreams for the next generation. Miig’s recitation illustrates that the group’s collective sacrifice has a beneficial impact. Though the characters in “The Marrow Thieves” have to sacrifice themselves and their identity, this helps them grow and improve as people as they gain the understanding that they are keeping dreams and hope, not only for themselves but for future generations. To conclude, sacrifice as a greater community group benefits them as they continue to grow, learning to look after not only themselves, but future generations and their families. In “The Marrow

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