Poverty In The Novel 'The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind'

Draft
Poverty is this never ending hole; once inside, it seems impossible to escape. Located in southern Africa, Malawi is a country with a great amount of poverty. Throughout the memoir, a young boy called William Kamkwamba will keep on running away from death. William will narrate his struggle to overcome adversity and defeat all odds in his attempt of providing electricity to his village. In the memoir The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer, William is used to help emphasize the famine, the cholera outbreak, and the poor education in Malawi.

Throughout the memoir, the famine William has to face in his childhood affects his character development and reflects the situation in Malawi. The famine was devastating, it did not discriminate

William was pressured to act as a man and sacrifice his dog, in order to end his suffering. Sacrificing Khamba affected William since, it made him realize how cruel life can be, and the famine had just started. His encounter with the death of his pet made him more prepared for what was yet to come. The death of William’s dog reflects the situation many Malawians are going through. Malawians were struggling most did not have food, and had to steal in order to eat, others died from starvation, and some immigrated to other countries. Meanwhile, some died from hunger, others were shrinking and every day that passed they became thinner. Trywell was an example of this as William said, “ My father started weighing, himself… his mighty frame had shrank like a piece of fruit in the sun” (151). Many people in Malawi where going through the same as Trywell. Their impressive body had started to shrink since the start of the famine. What before where pounds and pounds of muscle transformed into a pile of bones. Feeding only in one plate a day has caused all of William’s family to keep getting thinner and thinner. Illnesses like cholera do not discriminate between males and