Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani girl, was shot and wounded by the Taliban. At eleven years old, Malala, and all other Pakistani women were told they could no longer receive any sort of education. Malala would not remain quiet, she wanted to be taught, and she made sure everyone knew the cruelty of the situation. On October 8, as Malala and many other children were riding a bus home, the bus was stopped by a masked Taliban gunman who shot Malala in the head and neck. Malala survived the shot and even wrote a book later on. This situation is much like what some of the characters in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, and Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, go through. Lee and Skloot demonstrate that restriction from society and others leads to injustice.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, injustice is seen in many aspects of the book. Scout is a victim of its wrath throughout some of the novel. When Jem, Atticus and Scout all go to Finch’s Landing for Christmas, Scout hits Francis after he calls Atticus a Negro-lover. Uncle Jack punishes Scout after hearing only Francis’s side. “I took a deep breath. ‘Well, in the first place you never stopped to gimme a chance to tell you my side of it - you just lit right into me.’” (Lee 113). Uncle Jack’s ignorance to the conflict he created makes Scout mad because he did not ask her side of the story. Just because at first look, Scout seemed like the antagonist, Uncle Jack jumped the gun and punished her without full knowledge, causing an unfair situation. Another time that, again, Scout was introduced to injustice is when she is first starting school. Miss Caroline, her teacher, discovers that Scout can read and informs her to have her dad stop teaching her. The ...
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...l over the world, they came from a live woman.’” (Skloot 91). Henrietta did not receive the thanks she deserved from all the doctors or scientists because they just thought of HeLa cells, as nothing but cells. They did not even blink an eye at the thought of the cells coming from a real person. All in all, through disconcern from society, Skloot shows that injustice haunts many people.
Both Harper Lee and Rebecca Skloot reveal that innocent people suffer from the injustice society inflicts upon them. Injustice is seen in many forms and affects people in their own ways, each way just as bad. Malala Yousafzai knows this first hand, as she experienced it with a shot to the head. To conclude, the discrimination around people is what makes these injustices possible.
Works Cited
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
Throughout other parts of the world, there are diverse cultures and customs that is foreign to what one is used to. However, some are beginning to yearn for change toward their culture for the good of their future. Such as a young Pakistani girl named, Malala Yousafzai who lived in Swat Valley. She chose to step up against her traditions of many not getting education equality by doing the contrary and persuaded others to join her in the revolt by, writing a novel known as, I Am Malala. She influences her wide variety of audiences by her serious and thankful tone and diction, vivid imagery, and the use of the theme, Struggle for one’s rights.
Award-winning science writer Rebecca Skloot tells Henrietta’s story in her book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and investigates the impact that this had on her family after her death. Skloot compares the difference between the medical view of HeLa cells and her family’s view of Henrietta’s body. George Gey detached all humanity from Henrietta’s tissues, but when her family found out about this years later, they believed that her soul could not rest. Skloot argues that the scientists had no right taking Henrietta’s cells and reveals...
Yousafzai, Malala, and Christina Lamb. I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. New York: Little, Brown and, 2013. Print.
In the book, I am Malala, by Christina Lamb and Malala Yousafzai, most people cowered when the Taliban made a name for themselves, however; Malala was not one to give into the odds. Malala stood up for her beliefs with tremendous courage and honor. Although the memoir, I am Malala, is primarily a story of the importance of education, it is also a story that teaches us to triumph in the face of adversity. When Malala says, “I am a patriot and I love my country”, she shows her deep love for her country Pakistan. Next, she says, “And for that I would gladly sacrifice all.” This means that she will do anything in her power to protect her country. As a whole, anywhere in the memoir Malala goes the extra mile to get women their education. She sacrifices
The movie “ He Named Me Malala”, based off of the memoir written by Malala Yousafzai, leaves viewers an inspiring and alleviating message about how a young girl can make a huge difference. Malala is shot in her forehead for speaking up against girls who lack education, who are treated unequally, and who are degraded because of their gender. This heartening young adult endures traumatic abuse from the taliban because of her beliefs and devotions to help women all over the world. The movie is brimming with people, places, events and facts that relate to the theme of exclusion to inclusion furthering my knowledge and interest throughout the movie.
A heroine is an individual with courage, one who who has notable achievements, and improves a society, region, country, or the world. These traits resemble those of an archetypal hero, but an archetypal hero also includes the individual having gone through a traumatic experience. Malala Yousafzai exceeds the criteria for an archetypal hero and a heroine. As a young woman of only 18 years, Yousafzai has accomplished feats beyond what most people her age, or even grown adults could imagine. Malala grew up in the “Swat district of north-west Pakistan.” Being that Pakistan contains the second to most children out of school, Malala, by the age of 11, became an advocate for girls obtaining an education. This however, made her an opponent and target of the Taliban; a group of
Malala is a children’s rights activist, and woman’s rights activist for education. She began speaking out at the young age of eleven when the Taliban took over in Mingora, Pakistan. The Taliban is an Islamic fundamentalist political movement that is trying to control Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Malala lives. The Taliban placed an edict that no girls will be allowed to attend school after January 15, 2009. This is around the time Malala began writing a blog for BBC Urdu under the pseudonym ‘Gul Makai’. Malala documented her thoughts and feelings while under the control of the Taliban during the First Battle of Swat. She writes about the military operations that occur, how fewer and fewer girls show up to school, and eventually about how
Young people can change the world just like adults can. Malala Yousafzai, a teen activist for girls education, changed her own country when she was just a young child. Malala showed bravery before her activism, when she started teen activism, and with her activism now.
Malala Yousafzai, was once another ordinary girl struggling in her hometown Swat in Pakistan. Now she is a renowned author for her book I Am Malala, where she speaks about all the imbalances and injustices that occur in Pakistan. Her life was threatened by the Taliban when she fought for her cause: gaining the right for women's education in her country. The Taliban had banned education for women, yet Malala risked her life to accomplish her goal. Throughout her book she uses an inspirational tone, empowering diction, and vivid imagery to truly expose the Taliban for the corrupt educational system they have set for women in Pakistan.
In the speech “Nobel Lecture” by Malala Yousafzai, she claims that no child-especially girls-should be deprived of an education. When she was ten, her home town of Swat was invaded by the Taliban. Girls were prohibited from going to school, although Yousafzai and her friends still managed to get the education they desired. She knew that no matter what she did if she would speak up or not, she would get killed so she decided to speak up.“I had two options. One was to remain silent and wait to be killed. And the second was to speak up and then be killed. I chose the second one. I decided to speak up.” The Taliban attacked her and her friends on a school bus in 2012, she states,“ but neither their ideas nor their bullets could win. We survived.”
Malala has made an impact in many people's lives by sharing her thoughts on the importance of education internationally. There are many daily struggles in the Taliban, they have banned girls’ education which is something Malala believes it is indispensable. Not only does Malala want to continue going to school, she wants all the other girls to acquire the same education and throughout history, she stood up in opposition to the Taliban’s to develop what she was speaking up for. As Malala’s voice was heard through books and interviews, many perspectives changed about the definition of education and the profit a person can get out of it. Education can only get a person so far, it is they key to success due to the opportunities it brings to an individual, Yousafzai represents the importance of having an education for the better in someone’s future. All of those “fights” have put a target on her head, her one and only dream was to go to school and she obtained that.
Malala is a brave woman. Shortly after Malala's first diary entry was posted a man followed her home from school. ”It was if I [Malala] had become immune to fear. Until one day, on my way home from school, I heard a man behind me say, I will kill you”(Yousafzai and McCormick 79). Here the authors demonstrate that no matter how many times Malala was threatened she never gave
Malala Yousafzai is a fifteen-year-old girl from Swat Valley in Pakistan. She was named after a Pashtun heroine, Malalai of Maiwand, who was fired down in battle after using her words and bravery to inspire her people to fight against the British in the Second Anglo-Afghan War. She and her family lived in Mingora, the largest and only city in Swat. When Malala was born, her family was poor, living off the small amount of money made from the school her father had started. Malala always liked learning, which wasn’t something everyone agreed on. The Taliban forbade girls from education, but Malala advocated for girls’ education rights. On October 9, 2012, she was on the way to school when two men stood in the middle of the road, stopping her school bus. One asked for Malala yet no one answered, only looking to her gave the man an answer. The man lifted the pistol and shot three times, one going through the left side of her head, and the other two going through two other girls. She survived major injuries and a coma, but her experience paved the way to realizing her duty
To begin, many teens become activists through their own personal experience. For instance, Malala Yousafzai, a twenty year old Pakistani girl who stands up for girl’s education. When she was just fifteen years old, Malala experienced a life-changing event on her way to school. She was shot at point blank by a Taliban, for standing up for girls education and what she believed in. According to doctors, the bullet hit her skull, went through her cheek and to her shoulder. It took a miracle and five hours of surgery to keep her alive and breathing. “My weakness, my fear, and my hopelessness died on that day,” Malala declared during her interview with Ellen DeGeneres on the Ellen Show. She continues to spread the hope that one day, every girl in
The intended audience for the book I Am Malala was mainly meant for people who want to know more about the life and politics in Swat, Pakistan. From a young age Malala Yousafzai was told she would be a great politician,“Even as a toddler you talked like a politician” her father would tease her (142). Yousafzai talks a lot about how her life changed in Swat when the Taliban took over, and she explains “When I was in the street it felt as though every man I passed might be a Talib” ( Yousafzai 135). She says that the Taliban would blow up girls schools, because they felt that it was “haram and un-islamic” (Yousafzai 94). For a long period of the time the Taliban ruled over Swat and places all over Pakistan,