Kassidy Hause
CWL 320-06, Fall 2013
Dr. Talar Chahinian
Final Paper
12-10-13
Ways of Dying, Violence, Fantasy & Comedy
Zakes Mda was born in 1948 in Herschel, South Africa and is known for being a novelist, poet, activist, playwright and cultural theorist. Ways of Dying by Zakes Mda is a novel from western form. Literature that was written by Black South African writers between the 1948 and 1994 really captures the oppression and tragic violence that characterized the lives of Blacks under the apartheid. The apartheid or “apartness” as some Afrikaans call it, describes a system of laws and policies of complete and total racial segregation in South Africa that began in 1948 when the national party came to power. The apartheid did not end until 1994 when Nelson Mandela was elected president in the first democratic elections. The horrific deaths that are portrayed throughout Zake Mda’s novel Ways of Dying, were all true ways of dying that Zakes Mda, saw himself, read about in the newspaper or read when he was doing research. The very true deaths that he portrays in the novel really paint a picture of the structural and political violence that was going on in South Africa during the apartheid. This violence and oppression really creates a tragic background for the novel however, Zakes Mda challenges the norm of violence and finds a way to portray it as something somewhat idiotic, which in turn makes Ways of Dying quite comical. He also combines fantasy and magic to the novel, which emulates all the spectacular and wonderful parts of South African beliefs and traditions. Zakes unique way of combining the depiction of how ridiculous it is that death has become so normalized in South Africa and magic and fantasy makes Ways of Dying an ...
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... Magic and fantasy is also a central theme for this book because magic gives a sense of hope and belief in people and a strength that people never knew they had. The biggest example is the garden, a magic garden of beauty that still stands among all the horrible things that Toloki and Noria are living in. The garden gives them hope that magic and beauty still exist in the world. In this part of the novel the readers are laughing and smiling because they feel hope and happiness and sense of magic that they are going to get through their issues and be okay.
Ways of Dying is a spectacular novel by Zakes Mda, written during the apartheid era, which was a horrific time for South Africans who were abused and murdered by their corrupt government. Zakes Mda was able to provide a sense of history, comedy and hope all into one novel and that any reader would enjoy to read.
The theme of the novel is finding light in the darkness. This was demonstrated when the character experienced hope. When Misha hears about a cow, he has hope. As do many
Racism in the United States is without a doubt one of the most gruesome forms of inhumanity. This disease generated the dehumanization of slavery which has taken the lives of innumerable innocent African Americans. It has also robbed a whole race of their identities, heritages and cultures. Throughout the myriad of novels, excerpts, poems, videos and other forms of literature that we encountered in this course, it is unmistakable that the African American literary tradition demonstrates that the past (the unbelievable sufferings of African Americans) can never be arrested and forgotten. The many that have perished at the feet of racism are the history of African Americans themselves, and the African American literary tradition makes it a priority to be true to that history. So why is death a theme in the African American literary tradition? Death, in itself, is a universal phenomenon, with no exception; it touches the lives of all persons regardless of their social status or ethnic heritage. Likewise, death is a universal theme in literature, but its relevance in the African American literature is particularly poignant because of the loyalty that African American writers have to their history. With the help of works of Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave , Negro spirituals (“I feel like my time ain’t long” and “Many Thousands Gone”) and Abel Meeropol’s “Strange Fruits,” modern African American literature like late sermons from Martine Luther King Jr. and Elizabeth Alexander’s “ Praise Song for the Day” has utilize the universal theme of death to symbolize the racial injustice that African Americans experience in the own country and they also utilize such a strong theme to declare ...
Atul Gawande, the writer of Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, is a surgeon and a professor at Harvard Medical School. This is an inspiring book that unwraps people’s mind to scrutinize and question our current practice of medicine and care.
The Racist atmosphere in the South back in the 1920s was exceptionally oppressive. Due to that racist atmosphere many problems arose. In Ernest J. Gaines's “A Lesson Before Dying”, the two protagonist’s self-perceptions are affected by the racist atmosphere.
The last important theme in the novel is the positive impact of living close to nature. Nature is the only way to get rid off from bad emotions in Ojibway culture. For instance, keeper tells for Garnet how he feels about nature “ Kinda tapping into the great mystery feeling the spirit of the land that’s the spirit of the people and the spirit of yourself.” [Page
In Ernest Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying, readers truly get the impression that the south is defined by one thing: race. Although modern southerners know that the South is made up of and worth far more than its racial past, race does define many aspects of southern society, including memory, sense of place, the taste of the South, the voices of the South, and expressions of power.
...cultivating the garden lets the group of characters keep away from the unfair world in which pessimism is present, while cause and effect are easily measurable in the garden.
The garden is the vehicle in which the narrator reveals her reluctance to leave behind the imaginary world of childhood and see the realities of the adult world. The evidence supporting this interpretation is the imagery of hiding. The narrator uses the garden to hide from reality and the changes of growing up. When she no longer can hide from reality, she tries to hide from herself, which leaves her feeling disillusioned and unsure of who she is.
Euthanasia is killing someone out of pure concern for that patient, Euthanasia can either be passive euthanasia or active euthanasia. Passive Euthanasia is merely when the patient dies because the medical professionals either don’t do something in order to keep the patient alive, or either they stop doing something that is keeping the patient alive. In other words, in the case of passive euthanasia is simply allowing the patient to die, and not deliberately killing them. For example, if the doctor doesn’t give the patient a surgery or medication in order to keep the patient alive, or if the doctor unplugs the patient from a machine that was keeping the patient alive. Active Euthanasia is when a person or medical professional directly and purposely
Death is a natural part of life that we all have to face one day. The way in which friends and love ones cope during this time is based on their culture or religious belief and their support system. Different religion or culture has different mourning customs which are unique to their own believes. For this project, three religious practices: Christianity, Muslim and Catholic were examined along with their own unique customs and believes. Despite the wide array of differences between each culture, they all believe in life after death and that there is a heaven and a hell.
In Wislawa Szymborska’s poem, “On Death, without Exaggeration”, the idea of Death is assigned characteristics of Deaths waged war against numerous quantities of emerging life that, itself, destroys life. Szymborska grew up in Poland during the Second World War, she was surrounded by Death, in addition, the experiences she had helped her to cope with Death and remain hopeful. The poem seems to make the reader think Death is an inevitable part of life and in order to appreciate life one must accept Death. However, if you read closely in the last line of the second stanza, “which is always beside the point” (7), Death is revealed to be indifferent, not accepting. Szymborska uses persona, irony, and personification to create rich
The concept of human mortality and how it is dealt with is dependent upon one’s society or culture. For it is the society that has great impact on the individual’s beliefs. Hence, it is also possible for other cultures to influence the people of a different culture on such comprehensions. The primary and traditional way men and women have made dying a less depressing and disturbing idea is though religion. Various religions offer the comforting conception of death as a begining for another life or perhaps a continuation for the former.
These two thought provoking stories take widely separate approaches on the idea of death. One being
Life then death, life after death, or life and death, and so on. These phrases represent the varying understandings throughout the world’s cultures of the relationship between life and death and its relationship to living creatures. Throughout, it is understood that all organisms spend time on earth in a specific form and after some time that form will wear away and the physical form of that being will die--the body will no longer function and can return to the earth and nutrients from which it came. However, the disagreement lies in whether or not there is a literal end to that organism’s existence, or its being, its spirit. Both a culture’s understanding of this relationship and historic influences, cause variations of cultural attitudes toward life and death.
... their parent, or guardian, or the person they look up to. The influence of religion is significant because it gives people a single minded approach towards death, dying, other religions, and the world. Having a single minded approach towards religion can stop a person from living life and experiencing things other would tend to. The influence of religion can be very dangerous, such as religious persecution. But things like religious persecution usually happen when, again, religion is single minded, or one only practices in one religion. In Morrie’s case, religion was helpful