Cri De Coeur Romeo Dallaire

"Cri de coeur", also known as "A cry from the heart", a tragic, eye-opening and heartfelt true story

told from Romeo Dallaire's point of view. From reading his essay, one appeal stood out above all, pathos.

Dallaire wanted to share something with the world that the majority has not experienced or hopefully will

never have to. He tells a truthful story of what he has witnessed and how much he wanted to help the

people in Rwanda, but failed to do so. He told his story by unleashing a handful of emotions, giving us as

outsiders looking in a heart-to-heart feel of the numerous, horrendous events in Rwanda. Dallaire has

portrayed pathos in his story by using many types of poetic devices including tone, imagery, and

connotation.

And due to the fact that Dallaire has experienced all the pain, sorrow and tragedy

first hand, he tries to evoke the readers feelings by incorporating a lot of serious and negative tone into

his writing. He has portrayed a serious tone when he writes, “ It is time that I tell the story from where I

stood - literally in the middle of the slaughter for weeks on end” (484). He implies it in a serious tone to

ensure his readers will clearly understand his point of view on the Rwanda genocide situation. Dallaire

also implicit another melancholic tone when he says, “the inflexible UN Security Council mandate, the

penny-pinching financial management of the mission, the UN red tape, the political manipulations and

my own personal limitations” (484). He mentions how helpless and weak he feels toward the Rwanda

genocide, and how he was limited to the amount of resource and help that he could obtain. Another

negative tone that Dallaire implied was when he says, “through an inept UN mandate and what can only

be described as indifference, self-interest and racism, aided and abetted these crimes against humanity” (484). Dallaire states how the U.N. were unwilling to act upon the genocide situation and

It was so dark inside that at first I smelled

rather than saw the horror that lay before me. The hut was a two-room affair, one room serving as a

kitchen and living room and the other as a communal bedroom; two rough windows has been cut into the

mud-and-stick wall. Very little light penetrated the gloom, but as my eyes became accustomed to the dark,

I saw strewn around the living room in a rough circle the decayed bodies of a man, a woman and two

children, stark white bone poking through the desiccated, leather-like covering that had once been

skin” (483). He describes the cold and darkness of the small hut that lies a few deaths of the people in

Rwanda and the death of the child’s mother that he found. Dallaire says, “It’s as if someone has sliced into

my brain and grafted this horror called Rwanda frame by blood-soaked frame directly on my

cortex” (483). In this quote, he states that even though he has left Rwanda, every cruel and horrifying

experience he encountered, is all still too vivid and will never leave his mind no matter how hard he tries

to get away from it. His genocide experience has taken over his life. Another poetic device Dallaire