The Wreck of Time by Annie Dillard is an article made to make you think about life, death and why.
Dillard writes of tragedy, she writes: “Two million children die a year from diarrhea, and 800,000 from measles. Do we blink? Stalin starved 7 million Ukrainians in one year, Pol Pot killed 1 million Cambodians, the flu epidemic of 1918 killed 21 or 22 million people... shall this go on?” According to Dillard, the dead outnumber the living by a ratio of 20 to 1. It’s hard to imagine seeing 20 million faces, all with lives of their own, all with their own stories to tell, and all now dead. When I visited times square in New York 2 years ago, I didn't know 1.5 million people walked through with me. If I had stayed for a week, and people watched all day and night, I would have seen the same amount of faces that were killed by Stalin in a year. I wouldn’t know any of their names, or any of their stories, they would be nothing more than a deathly statistic, moving before my eyes.
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When the value of life is brought up she writes: “Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one and in some the other." So either life is sacred, or worthless. I personally disagree with this statement. In my opinion, my family’s life, my lover’s life, my friend’s lives, are much more sacred than other peoples lives. I’d like to be important to other people, especially people in power, but I suspect even to them, a police officer has more worth more than me in society, but I have worth more than a sick old man in society. It’s not
With time, tragedies become statistics. The lives lost culminate to numbers, percentages, and paragraphs in textbooks,and though a recognition of its occurrence becomes universal, an understanding of its severity dies with those who lived it. “Leningrad Cemetery, Winter of 1941” is a literary medium by which the nature of tragedy is transmitted. Set in the post-battle Leningrad, the poem encapsulates the desolation not of war and its aftermath. Paramount in this translation is figurative language. Olds’ use of simile and metaphor in “Leningrad Cemetery, Winter of 1941” allows the reader to understand the incomprehensible horrors of war and, through contrast, the value of life.
A Wrinkle in Time is a fantasy novel written by Madeleine L´ engle . The story takes place in a stormy night at Meg Murry´s house, the main character. The settings are held not only on planet Earth, but in other planets like Camazotz and Orion´s Belt. I have never been to another planet, but I think it would be really amazing.
According to the text “ there were relatively few stories or images focusing on aging, poverty, isolation, crime and fear, and the ethno racial, or gender distribution of mortality, morbidity, and access to care.” They went to the extreme by looking for more information and pictures with people in body bags to put on their front page. People use the media as their information source to guide them on what is going on in their countries and around the world. What is portrayed in the media is often taken as true even if it actually is not completely accurate. Throughout the text it was clear to see that there is pressure when it comes to the media. News reporter often think about what they are going to present to the public because it has to be brain washing and appealing, but they also want to keep their connections to sources such as public officials. This means what they end up reporting is effected by what public officials will approve of, to make them look
In total forty million people died in this massacre. The first people rounded up were the Trotskyites. This massacre matters because forty innocent million people died. Just like what Hitler but Stalin didn’t like Hitler but he did the same thing as hitler but the only difference was that Stalin killed his own people. The people that Stalin they could’ve done some good for the world and they could’ve changed how we thought as humans. But we will never know now because these innocent people are killed. At least one person out of those forty million people killed could’ve done some good. Forty million people that’s a lot of grandchildren that will never see
A list of statistics can be printed on a sheet of pure gold and still have no impact on how it can affect an individual’s day to day; however, hearing or in this case, reading of the experiences in the Concentration Camps is more than enough to make you rethink everything that you thought you knew about human nature and enable you to open your eyes and see the deep dark secrets of the past. Sometimes all it really takes is one voice, that one voice can make a much larger impact than any set of statistics, in this case its Elie Wiesel’s
Life is a valued concept, as are the people and experiences associated with it. However, when one is pushed to the limit of human capacity, they can lose familiarity with the value of their own life. Genocide-- the mass slaughter of a group of people based on their identity-- can have severe effects on the victimized people in a plethora of ways. One can not possibly quantify the grotesque, inhumane treatment witnessed in many genocides. Simultaneously, many victims are vulnerable to their identities being left behind and only their will to survive being left intact. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, recounts his experiences being at the hands of a brutal, systematic killing regime in his award-winning memoir, Night. Wiesel
“The Perils of Indifference” In April, 1945, Elie Wiesel was liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp after struggling with hunger, beatings, losing his entire family, and narrowly escaping death himself. He at first remained silent about his experiences, because it was too hard to relive them. However, eventually he spoke up, knowing it was his duty not to let the world forget the tragedies resulting from their silence. He wrote Night, a memoir of his and his family’s experience, and began using his freedom to spread the word about what had happened and hopefully prevent it from happening again.
has never left me.” (Wiesel, 109). So many times, people are saying the things they’re gonna do but never follow through with it. Although Elie isn’t one of them, the people that fight injustice are. This isn’t the only Holocaust or massacre the world has seen. The Armenian Genocide took place in 1915, a time where the government was trying to get rid of it’s minority Armenian subjects from their historic homeland. It lasted up to the 1920s with 1.5 million deaths. The horrific events that took place were much similar to the Holocaust. People were burned to death, tested on, and drowned. It’s almost as if this was a stepping stone to saying that this was okay. Where were the leaders, the liberals, the spokesmen for mankind? These are the type of things that stick and are hard to forget, and it’s something that has left a negative mark on
Following the beginning of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union would start what would become two of the worst genocides in world history. These totalitarian governments would “welcome” people all across Europe into a new domain. A domain in which they would learn, in the utmost tragic manner, the astonishing capabilities that mankind possesses. Nazis and Soviets gradually acquired the ability to wipe millions of people from the face of the Earth. Throughout the war they would continue to kill millions of people, from both their home country and Europe. This was an effort to rid the Earth of people seen as unfit to live in their ideal society. These atrocities often went unacknowledged and forgotten by the rest of the world, leaving little hope for those who suffered. Yet optimism was not completely dead in the hearts of the few and the strong. Reading Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag by Janusz Bardach and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi help one capture this vivid sense of resistance toward the brutality of the German concentration and Soviet work camps. Both Bardach and Levi provide a commendable account of their long nightmarish experience including the impact it had on their lives and the lives of others. The willingness to survive was what drove these two men to achieve their goals and prevent their oppressors from achieving theirs. Even after surviving the camps, their mission continued on in hopes of spreading their story and preventing any future occurrence of such tragic events. “To have endurance to survive what left millions dead and millions more shattered in spirit is heroic enough. To gather the strength from that experience for a life devoted to caring for oth...
... stand. You give a sideways glance to the balding man in front of you. Jose Efrain Rios Montt. Oh, how you hate that man! After all, the things he has done to you, your brothers, and your sisters are unspeakable! You take a deep breath and begin to speak. You answer all the questions with a complete feeling of appreciation. Appreciation fueled by the fact that people want to hear your story. You tell them about the day the soldiers marched in to your village, murdered your people, and walked away as if nothing had happened. You tell them about the days of fear. People stare at you in amazement. You see their eyes gleaming with tears and—suddenly—you break down too. It’s all too much. The man that caused you pain is going to get punished! In the back of your mind, you are thinking that the Guatemalan genocide was a terrible tragedy that cost many people their lives.
The Holocaust was a very impressionable period of time. It not only got media attention during that time, but movies, books, websites, and other forms of media still remember the Holocaust. In Richard Brietman’s article, “Lasting Effects of the Holocaust,” he reviews two books and one movie that were created to reflect the Holocaust (BREITMAN 11). He notes that the two books are very realistic and give historical facts and references to display the evils that were happening in concentration camps during the Holocaust. This shows that the atrocities that were committed during the Holocaust have not been forgotten. Through historical writings and records, the harshness and evil that created the Holocaust will live through centuries, so that it may not be repeated again (BREITMAN 14).
She values Gods views and the way of life over materialist things and believes that is above all, with hopes of getting into heaven. Her religious views can be seen throughout her poems that I have read and ultimately tell a lesson that we can all learn from. In the poem, “Before the Birth of One of Her children” she describes death as inevitable and a act of God. Death because of birth was a common issue during that time period and she reassures that it is Gods plan and will protect of her children. She also makes references to God and heaven in her poem, “ To My Dear and Loving Husband”, as she writes to her husband that they must love so strong here on earth so that their love will last in heaven and for eternity. She says how God commands her to love her husband as she claims her love for her husband its stronger than anyone else 's. Through her poems she describes various tragedy that have happened in her life such as the death of her two grandchildren. Although their lives were “taken away from them” she believes that it was in Gods hands and that it must have been faith. So through terrible times she seems to look past them and move on because it is all apart of Gods
“Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.” (Wiesel 2006, p. 34) Elie Wiesel is a humanitarian but better known as a holocaust survivor and the author of the book Night. Elie recounts the horrors of his experience throughout the book and revisits times which he had not touched upon in years. His book initially only sold a few copies but later on through this renewed interest, Elie Wiesel’s book skyrocketed to fame and he started his journey in his humanitarian activities which in turn earned him a Nobel peace prize and resulted in his famous speech, Hope, Despair, and Memory. In Elie Wiesel’s speech, Hope Despair and Memory Elie Wiesel reminds us through his use of pathos and ethos as a speaker of the despair that humankind can create, but through our recollection and memories obtained from such despair we can summon the future with hope of change.
Many people wonder: what is the meaning of life? What is the human purpose on this earth? At least one time in our lifetime, we all look at ourselves and wonder if we are living our lives the way we were meant to live them. Sadly, there is not a definite answer to the principles of human life. Every human comes from different backgrounds and different experiences throughout their existence. Each person is different, each with different emotions and reactions to their surroundings. People strive to uncover the secrets to the meaning of life. In reality, humans are given the desire to live the way we want and have a critical thinking mind, unlike animals. In the essay Living like Weasels, Annie Dillard believes we should live more carefree and instinctual as weasels, but what we were given as humans is a gift that no other creature has – free will and choice to shape our own lives.
In fact, the story takes place on a single day in June and, by the use