Huge messages in A Long Way Gone

I've been reading A Long Way Gone, which is about child soldiers during the civil war in Sierra Leone. The main character, who is the narrator, is telling the story from his memory, it is all completely true. It's a really disturbing and depressing but it's also a strong and necessary wake up call to what we don't see of the world through watching TV and the rest of the media.

There are a lot of strong messages that I've noticed throughout the book. One of them is that war can change a person. The child soldiers become desensitized to the fighting and become unthinking killing machines. They lose everything human about them because of the horrible situations that they are put into. Another message is that family is important. Throughout the entire book, Ishmael is always searching for family. His real family, his friends that he meets along his travels, and even his squad in the army. It's a really powerful book and I think the messages in it should be heard by the entire world so that we can try and make a difference.

Review of themes in East is East

I recently finished reading the book East is East, and I noticed that there are a lot of themes that stay constant throughout the book. One of these themes is trust and betrayal. There are a lot of different trust interactions throughout the book. Another theme is ignorance and racism. The Americans know nothing about Hiro, so they resort to calling him racist names, and visa verse.

The theme of trust and betrayal is strongest in the book between Saxby, Ruth, and Hiro. Ruth hides Hiro and protects him without telling anyone, even her boyfriend Saxby. She ends up hooking up with Hiro because it's just something she wanted to do. Saxby eventually finds out about both of these things, and feels really betrayed. He has to decide between betraying them and telling the police, which he does because he didn't know Hiro was a good person, but he still had the police keep Ruth out of it.

Another big theme in East is East is ignorance and Racism. I did my last post about this and I'm writing more about it now because it is such a huge theme. The Americans are horribly racist towards Hiro, but they have absolutely no way of judging him outside of stereotypes that all come out of other people's ignorance. Hiro has stereotypes about Americans that aren't true of everybody, but his experiences prove them true. I think the author did that to make a point. He is saying that we have horrible and untrue views of other societies, but we live up to the stereotypes about ourselves.

East is East: Stereotypes and Ignorance

In East is East, Hiro, a Japenese man, has jumped ship and swam to a remote town in georgia in the mid 1900's (I think). This post is about how his interactions with people show how little each culture knew about the other. The southerners of small town Georgia had no idea what life was like in Japan, or even how to distinguish Japanese from Chinese, while Hiro had not-so-untrue stereotypes of Americans being fat and lazy.

When Hiro first encounters the Americans, he thinks they are all trying to kill him when really they are just wondering what he's doing, and the Americans end up thinking he's up to no good and decide to search for him just because he can't communicate well and doesn't look like them. I think that this is a really good depiction of how ignorant we can be sometimes, we just as humans in general. Our different cultures can develop on such different paths that when they intersect just by chance, they don't mix very well. However, tourism is in a completely category than this because when people visit new places, they are expected and expecting to be confused, and there are plenty of accommodations. This is different because the natives aren't used to people who don't fit in and because the one who's out of place has no idea what he's doing.

Self forgiveness in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

In Extremely loud and incredibly close, which I just finished reading this week, Oskar has brought his quest to some sort of a resolution. He found the owner of the key, and was able to forgive himself for not picking up the phone the last time his dad called. He realized that there was nothing wrong with being scared. Mr. Black forgave him in the place of his father and they had a really strong connection even though they were complete strangers. I think that it took a lot of courage for Oskar to forgive himself. Oskar was very courageous in forgiving himself because in order to do it he had to face what he feared most, which was that he had let his father down.

Ever since his dad died, Oskar has been conflicted because he felt like he should have picked up the phone, and that he was letting his dad down by not doing so. I think that he was so scared that he was in denial of the danger his dad was in, he just couldn't face it. It took Mr. Black forgiving him to get him to realize that it was ok that he was afraid.