The Garbage King Sparknotes

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The Garbage King

The Garbage King by Elizabeth Laird, portrays international issues that associate with the global context, Fairness and Development. This novel consists of a realistic view of a child who is living through a harsh life in Ethiopia involving child labour and poverty. The other side of this story shows the case of a boy who is a runaway because he receives harsh punishments at home.

The global context, fairness and development, is recognized by the issue taking place of this novel, child labour. As related to the global context, this part of the novel shows how a child is treated unfairly through child labour. The child worker (Mamo) does not have the same rights as other children in the area because …show more content…

Children’s developments and their future are affected deeply by poverty. Children have to beg to make money so they develop a bad habit of begging and also don’t know how to make money properly. Children on the streets do not have access to education so they won’t be learning the valuable lessons that most children are taught. Children on the street also don’t know what is right or wrong so they might do anything such as smoking or drinking alcohol without knowing that it is bad for their health. For example, when the gang was drinking tej (alcohol), they didn’t know how alcohol would affect their health and since they are young, the bad effects of alcohol are much more severe towards them. Furthermore, children have to survive on the streets and do not have equal rights as most kids. Kids on the street have very poor healthcare as stated in the novel, “Karate was very sick and died overnight”. This states the horrible health conditions of living on the streets. Poverty affects the development of kids very deeply as well as their …show more content…

The reason children run away is because they are treated unfairly at home. This shows a direct message of fairness and development because as humans, we should be treating others fairly but in this case, the children aren’t being treated as they’re supposed to be which is why they run away. Children feel neglected and are in fear of their own guardians. For example, Dani is clearly scared of his father because of the punishments he receives ,which is why Dani ran away and joined the gang so he can be protected by them.. The novel shows that Dani isn’t comfortable with his father at all. This affects their relationships with people because they feel like they cannot trust people and feel unsafe. As a quote from the novel states, “please protect me, I don’t want to be seen by my father”, said Dani. This quote states that Dani is scared of his own father because of the punishments he receives at home. These children are deeply affected by the treatment of other people, so they take a big risk of running away from their

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