Devil on the Cross was written by Ngugi while he was imprisoned. He was held without trail by a government that tried to silence him. The out come was a book that was “One of the century’s greatest novels” by the Tribune. In the following passages I plan to explain the meaning of four characters that are affected by capital class. The speaker of the passage “She sat down on a box…” is the gorgeous protagonist; Jacinta Wariinga. Jacinta Wariinga is a young beautiful black woman who easily stops “men in their tracks.” She is like Thanksgiving dinner, a feast for the eyes. Jacinta moves with grace when she is without self-conscious. Underneath all her beauty, she is a suicidal person who hates her blackness. Jacinta truly hates her blackness because she uses “skin-lightening creams.” The skin-lightening cream rejects her skin color because the cream knows “that which is born black can never be white”. She clearly suffers from Cultural Imperialism. Cultural Imperialism has wiped out the music, culture and art many. The military has taken over lands for their own personal use, economic stability can not be reached between classes because the gap between the rich and poor has increased and political power is the only thing of importance. The people are of no importance because if they were better living conditions and necessary items would be more accessible. Jacintas’ color coated thinking has led her to believe “that her appearance [is] the root cause of all her problems.” Jacinta analysis’s her many problems with a small mirror. Jacinta is using a small mirror for petty problems when she needs to be using a mirror like the one in my room, 7feet tall by 5 feet wide. With that mirror she can examine all the cultural imperialism flaws and not just her materialistic problems. The small mirror depicts her problems to be petty. If Jacinta truly wanted to analyze all of her problems she should a use a mirror like the one in my room, 5’ by 7’, she can clearly notice all of her flaws. Ngugi, clearly tried to show that her problems are petty because the size of the mirror. The speaker of the passage “Have I been on the road all this time…” is Robin Mwaura the “rapper.” Robin Mwaura is a false artist. He is a trickster, a con artist, in today’s society Robin Mwaura would is considered a rapper, a great one at that. Mwaura would be an excellent rapper because h... ... middle of paper ... ...He thinks he does, but in reality he doesn’t. Professor Gatuirira is trying to create a lie, but he doesn’t know he is. Music can create art “for many human voices” when it is true. The art the professor is trying to create is false. It is a cross over from American culture to African culture. He has “yet found the tune” because it is all white wash. Nothing that the professor studies to create his national anthem is relevant to his current situation. Even though he thinks it is right to create a national anthem, there is a flipside to this. That reality that the professor fails to see includes factions and class struggle. Africa is plagued by gender and sexism. It makes it difficulty for women to find jobs. The exploitation of middle and lower class by the upper class is selfishness. The selfishness leads to high corruption because everyone is trying to get rich. Nothing of what the professor wants the people to sing is true. Devil on the Cross shows the affects of the capital class. The age of Enlightenment dealt with reason and progress. Where the capital class tries to roadblock the ideas of the age of Enlightenment, it is up to the people to pick up the ball and succeed!
Born Sinner Aren’t we all sinners? We all have committed acts of violence at some points in our lives, and our answer we are human, we are wired that way or it is our instinct. People have a habit of hurting one another and it comes naturally to them. After reading Flight by Sherman Alexie, violence is a prominent theme throughout the novel. This idea of aggression is represented in many different ways, shapes, and forms.
In this analysis includes a summary of the characters and the issues they are dealing with, as well as concepts that are seen that we have discussed in class. Such as stereotyping and the lack of discrimination and prejudice, then finally I suggest a few actions that can be taken to help solve the issues at hand, allowing the involved parties to explain their positions and give them a few immersion opportunities to experience their individual cultures.
He imagined his mother lying desperately ill and his being able to secure only a Negro doctor for her. He toyed with that idea for a few minutes and then dropped it for a momentary vision of himself participating as a sympathiser in a sit-in demonstration. This was possible but he did not linger with it. Instead, he approached the ultimate horror. He brought home a beautiful suspiciously Negroid woman. Prepare yourself, he said. There is nothing you can do about it. This is the woman I have chosen. (15)
Michael MacDonald’S All Souls is a heart wrenching insider account of growing up in Old Country housing projects located in the south of Boston, also known as Southie to the locals. The memoir takes the reader deep inside the world of Southie through the eyes of MacDonald. MacDonald was one of 11 children to grow up and deal with the many tribulations of Southie, Boston. Southie is characterized by high levels of crime, racism, and violence; all things that fall under the category of social problem. Social problems can be defined as “societal induced conditions that harms any segment of the population. Social problems are also related to acts and conditions that violate the norms and values found in society” (Long). The social problems that are present in Southie are the very reasons why the living conditions are so bad as well as why Southie is considered one of the poorest towns in Boston. Macdonald’s along with his family have to overcome the presence of crime, racism, and violence in order to survive in the town they consider the best place in the world.
“From Lieutenant Nun,” a memoir written by doña Catalina de Erauso, tells an intriguing story of a young Spanish female and her advantageous journey through Spain and the New World. Her family intends for her to become a nun but, that is not the life she seeks for herself. Therefore, she breaks away from the convent in hopes of finding somewhere to make her fortune by passing as a male. Catalina’s story is noteworthy because it gives readers another perspective of exploration focusing on self-discovery during the seventeenth century emphasizing how passing as a male is the only thing that secured her ability to explore. In the memoir, Catalina repeatedly reminisces about clothing and, whether she consciously or unconsciously does so, she allows the reader to see that this is an important aspect of her exploration. Throughout Catalina’s journey, clothing plays an increasingly important role not only in her travels but, also her personal life because it symbolized ones status, role, gender and privileges.
prejudice can be defined as the judgement inflicted toward an individual or on a group because it or they appear to be different in social status, nationality, and all other superficialities which pertain to the individual or group. However, prejudice comes from both within and with out. Such acts appear within the novel, Obasan by Jow Kogawa. In Obasan, the main character, Naomi Nakane, journeys through a path of old, forgotten memories which she remembers as the times of discrimination which she and her family experienced together. Through the past experiences of Naomi, Kogawa demonstrates that prejudice comes from noth within the individual and with out by the society.
Black anthems have a long standing history that can be traced through their African roots to modern day songs. Political groups have used these anthems to both lead and thrown into crisis their aims and objectives of their political messages. Not only have anthems been used in political areas they have also been used to showcase the culture at the time of their prominence. These anthems have many benefits such as uniting people together for certain causes, however, some of the anthems drawbacks are that they have been nearly forgotten as their respective political groups have faded away into history. The book Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora by Shana L. Redmond proves that anthems have been used
According to Webster’s dictionary, a tragic hero is a protagonist that is otherwise perfect except for flaws that are intrinsic to his or her character, which often leads to his or her demise. In Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo, the protagonist was unlike tragic heroes such as Oedipus, Iago and Beowulf, because he was not born into nobility, but had to rise to fame and earn respect through his exceptional stamina, hard work and his historic unrivaled success at defeating the famous Amalinze the Cat. Like Beowulf and Oedipus, Okonkwo shares traits that are characteristic of a tragic hero. These traits exposed his mortal fear of failure, his fear of weakness and his fear of becoming like his father who was lazy and poor. Okonkwo also possesses an unwavering pride and an irrepressible anger. Fear, pride and anger are some of the traits of a tragic hero that were inherent in Okonkwo, and this paper will seek to explore how these traits contributed to his downfall Okonkwo’s connection of manliness with rage, ferocity and recklessness eventually leads to his downfall. Okonkwo finds it difficult to accept the changes the Missionaries have brought to Umuofia. The missionaries changed the way the people of Umuofia think, leading to an irreversible division among the people.
In Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, the Ibo culture revolves around structured gender roles, from the crops that the men and women grow, to the characterization of crimes,which creates tension between the sexes and will ultimately lead to detrimental consequences. Things Fall Apart represents the hardships and struggles between females and males. For example, Ekwefi, the wife of Okonkwo, she is often beat for the things she has genuinely forgotten about . Also, we have Enzima, Okonkwo's favorite daughter, but since she is a female, she must be treated like a women. Although females are considered the weaker gender, they possess many qualities that make them worthy, such as bearing children. Achebe explained the importance of both genders and how they contribute to the society.
On Being Young-A Woman-and Colored an essay by Marita Bonner addresses what it means to be black women in a world of white privilege. Bonner reflects about a time when she was younger, how simple her life was, but as she grows older she is forced to work hard to live a life better than those around her. Ultimately, she is a woman living with the roles that women of all colors have been constrained to. Critics, within the last 20 years, believe that Marita Bonners’ essay primarily focuses on the double consciousness ; while others believe that she is focusing on gender , class , “economic hardships, and discrimination” . I argue that Bonner is writing her essay about the historical context of oppression forcing women into intersectional oppression by explaining the naturality of racial discrimination between black and white, how time and money equate to the American Dream, and lastly how gender discrimination silences women, specifically black women.
In the novel, the Black narrator Claudia talks about how the ideal beauty of their society is White women, stating, “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs – all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured. ‘Here,’ they said, ‘this is beautiful, and if you are on this day “worthy” you may have it’ (Morrison 20). This quote is significant because it proves that the culture promotes the appearance of White women over Black women. Due to the large amounts of racism, many African Americans believed they lived in poverty because they were black. The narrator explained, “The Breedloves did not live in a storefront because they were having temporary difficulty adjusting to the cutbacks at the plant. They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they were ugly” (Morrison 38). The discrimination was so extreme in the novel that the African American characters started to idealize the white race. One example of this is when Pecola, a black girl, yearned for blue eyes because she believes all of the cruelty in her life will then go away. This strong desire ultimately leads to insanity (Morrison 174). The psychological suffering that many of the young female characters went through is result of discrimination towards a racial
In the novel, the author proposes that the African American female slave’s need to overcome three obstacles was what unavoidably separated her from the rest of society; she was black, female, and a slave, in a white male dominating society. The novel “locates black women at the intersection of racial and sexual ideologies and politics (12).” White begins by illustrating the Europeans’ two major stereotypes o...
“How Musical is Man?” was published in 1974. This book was written by John Blacking, a musician turned social anthropologist. His goal in writing this ethnography, and several other papers during this same time period, was to compare the experience of music-making that takes place within different cultures and societies throughout the world. In this book, he discusses and describes the musicology of the Venda people in South Africa. Though he does go to Africa to research and learn about the Venda people and their music, he specifically states that his book is “not a scholarly study of human musicality” (ix), but rather it is a summary (written from his point of view), which is both expressive and entertaining, of several different issues and ideas that he has seemingly been contemplating for some time.
In this text Mohanty argues that contemporary western feminist writing on Third World women contributes to the reproduction of colonial discourses where women in the South are represented as an undifferentiated “other”. Mohanty examines how liberal and socialist feminist scholarship use analytics strategies that creates an essentialist construction of the category woman, universalist assumptions of sexist oppression and how this contributes to the perpetuation of colonialist relations between the north and south(Mohanty 1991:55). She criticises Western feminist discourse for constructing “the third world woman” as a homogeneous “powerless” and vulnerable group, while women in the North still represent the modern and liberated woman (Mohanty 1991:56).
Similarly, all the three authors exploit a true and vivid understanding of war during different time periods but the most successful was Akpan. In his story, the connection that was made from a child perspective catches the reader’s attention because readers feel a tendency to have a better emotional connection towards the narrator. The author achieves the symbolic figure of the crucifix to represent the idea of being faithful and having hope through tragic times.