Shot Through The Heart

"Love and Obstacles" and Serbrenica: Ten Years On are both interesting stories about the Bosnian Genocide. In both stories th reader is able to see the perspective of victims who had to leave and stayed in Serbrenica during the Bosnian conflict. These stories reminded me of a class that I took in high school about the genocide and for a couple of weeks the class covered the Bosnian Genocide. Reading through the facts about the genocide did not make me realize how real and impacting this event was. It was a film that we watched in class that showed how the people of Sebrenica had lived through these events. The movie was called "Shot Through the Heart" and it is based on a true story. The movie was about two childhood friends who eventually grew up to be olympic sharp-shooters and how they were made into enemies once the Bosnian War started. One of them is recruited by the army to be a sniper and the other is forced to make a decision to leave home because he is Muslim. At the end they both end up having to make a decision whether they should kill each other because of the sides they are on. It is great movie and the things that happen will really make anyone surprised that something like this happened not to long ago.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0171741/

Catholicism vs. Protestants in Ireland

At first I did not understand why the helping of the Protestants in the "Wood" was a big deal. I did further research and learned that there is some sort of feud between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. In the 1600s the English came and took control of northern Ireland. This part Ireland was soon colonized by mostly Protestants from England. The rest of Ireland is a majority of Catholics. Over time the north became more profound in their industrialization, while the Catholics in the rest of country somewhat suffered. And during the 20th century there are even a few more occasions where the Irish Catholics try to rebel and take back their country, economically, from the British. The boy keeps him and his mother's mission a secret from his father because what they are doing would probably be considered treason to him.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/northireland1.html

McCann

I found McCann's style of writing weird but impacting. Both stories have their own little scenario of being in an awkward situation. It makes reader's think of how they would react to the situation that the narrator is in. This was really different compared to the rest of the stories we have read, because we know for a fact that this story is fiction and McCann does not have any authority to really make a story of fiction based off certain events from the past. He does have an Irish background, but it is not sure if he has actually ever experience any of these sort of circumstances. It is said that "Everything in This Country Must" was based off a story from his uncle. I still enjoyed the story and after looking around the internet, it says that most of his stories are like this. They include the themes of loss, remembrance and conflict between different cultures.

http://www.egs.edu/faculty/colum-mccann/biography/

Islamic Revolution

Persepollis lightens up the seriousness of the Islamic Revolution. The main character Marji is a child who tells the story and tells it as someone would expect a child to interpret the war. The novel makes the revolution seem less dramatic than it actually was. The revolution brought upon unnecessary violence in Iran. But dwelling on that you could really question the motivation of the revolution.

Usually in history we see some sort of revolution happen because of disagreements in politics. The politics of this revolution is questionable. Religion is the main focus of why fundamentalist have started a revolution. Revolutions in the past like the ones in France and Russia have happened because of the reform wanted by the people. Iran however finds that there are flaws in their society. Flaws that concern people's personal rights to do what they feel in respect to their religion. Some of the people felt that traditional islam method were sacred and use authority to make sure that this was kept sacred. The revolution happened because of extremist alternative motives.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1988/jan/21/islamic-revolution/?pagination=false

Are We Really So Fearful?

After reading an article another article by Ariel Dorfman, I can see that his intention with this play is to show people what would a victim do if they were able to take revenge on their culprit. To me this story had a weird plot and as it progressed the story was to me even weirder. Though I thought it was a little odd, it had a lot to say about the affects of violence and torture. As he explains in his article, torture should not be revengeful punishment for people who have perpetrated others. He makes a good point about America punishing prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. He says that America should be ashamed that we allow ourselves to stoop down to the level of those people who torture. With this play, I think his point was that people should never degrade themselves to seek revenge.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/AR2006092201303.html

Kosinski's Belief

Kosinski puts a lot of emphasis on the beliefs and spirituality of the many religions that are mentioned in this novel. The main character describes how most of the people's lives in this story is totally affected by religion. My assumption is that Kosinski's intention was for this novel to make a point about religion. Towards the end, once the main character meets Gavrila, he is taught that God has nothing to do with life at all. To me this moment in the novel was ironic. Everything that the main character had learned was based off religion, even the war seemed to be feuded by religion. Once he meets Gavrila he is told that God is irrelevant and it makes sense to him. I think that Kosinski wanted to make a point that religion is not what people make of it.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-01-31/entertainment/9303174117_1_hermit-of-69th-street-early-novels-beliefs

Jewish Burden

After reading through the first half of "The Painted Birds" I have came to the conclusion that this novel is definitely fiction. It is extremely difficult to believe that so much misfortune could happen to anyone. The author may have put together a story of recollections of multiple people's past during the Holocaust, but this story is still so horrific that you cannot believe that any of these events happen to anyone. However after thinking about it, this novel does seem to have a connection with the history of the Jewish people. It reminded of how many times the Jewish people have been oppressed throughout history. Even though this story is not real, it has some real meaning to it. I think that Kosinski is trying to relate this boy to Jewish ethnicity as a whole. Throughout history, Jews have been continually mistreated by other nations who have are committed to other religions. In this story after each bad situation, he finds himself out of he ends up another one. Jewish people throughout history have had this same sort of sequence. Even today the people of Jerusalem who are mainly Jewish are having conflict with the Muslims and are being threatened by annihilation. Maybe this is not what Kosinski is trying to do at all, but it is something to think about.

http://www.jewishhistory.org.il/history.php?startyear=1940&endyear=1949

Women Awareness

Before reading "The Road of Lost Innocence", I was unaware of any of the prostitution activity happening around the world especially in Cambodia. Most of the western countries ignore foreign problems such as prostitution. This autobiography has so many unbelievable tragedies that it is hard to believe that is a true story. I learned a little more on the internet and found out that there are about 10,000 to 20,000 women who are prostitutes in Cambodia. An amazing fact is that 35% of them are under the age of eighteen. Also about 87% of men in Cambodia are consumers of prostitution.

Mam's autobiography has a different view of what the other novels in the class have had. This is the first time us readers are able to look into the eyes of women. In the other novels we see what value women have to men. Somaly Mam let's the reader see what it is like to be a woman who is manipulated by man. Also unlike the other novels, this novel shows the main character triumphing from oppression. In the other novels the characters go through war and some of the worst conditions of mankind but are not able to recondition after war. Even though Somaly was traumatized, she is the only character out of all the novels who has not dwelled on her past. She made something out of her hard past and helped others who are just like her and also built awareness around the world.

http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/cambodia.htm

Hating One Another

"Luxurious Hearses" has a lot to tell about the complexity of relationships between people. It was almost amusing to look at the characters and their circumstances in this story and see how similar they are but how much they hate each other. The barbaric violence that occurs during the story is over two religions that have a number of same beliefs. What the slaughtering emerged from is uncertain, but still Nigerians were able to have enough rage to kill strangers and even people who were family. I was shocked by the story of Jubril's brother. It was hard to believe that Yusif's own family would plan to kill him. I was in awe when the story concluded with the Christians on the bus killing Jubril. Even after hours of being friendly and even showing compassion towards him, they were just able to suddenly have a change of heart and kill him. That says a lot about what people feel about each other ethnically.

We all have qualities that differentiate ourselves, but we are not supposed to let these differences tear our human relationship apart. I think that Akpan wanted his readers to really struggle with their opinion of Jubril. Jubril is immediately easy to hate at the beginning of the story simply because of his beliefs. At first I thought that Jubril was very illogical and inconsiderate for his opinions of Christians and women. I had know sympathy for him or his awkward situation. At the end I felt awful, because of the things I saw that he had to go through. Jubril towards the end even starts to show grace towards the Christians on the bus. I think that Akpan wanted the reader to understand what it felt like to be the one who is different from his or her self.

This article has more information and statistics about the conflict in Nigeria.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/feb2000/nige-f28.shtml