The Struggle
While reading these books this semester I found one common theme throughout everything, that would be struggles. It felt like we were reading a lot about how we can try and survive with struggle present and how do we survive. I'm going to give some examples on some pieces of literature that we read the semester and talk about how the struggle was real in each one.
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Inside each of us, there is the seed of both good and evil. It's a constant struggle as to which one will win. And one cannot exist without the other. |
The Road
This book has really had a bunch of struggle in this book. Mainly because it takes place a post-apocalyptic world where everyone doesn't trust each other. The man and boy seem like the only characters that haven't turned to cannibalism to survive in this world. Many moments when the man and boy are present in the book. An example is, "They'd had no food and little sleep in five days..." (McCarthy, 105) It shows that they are in desperate need for food and haven't been able to sleep for about five days. Mainly because they are maybe afraid to sleep since the world is out of whack.
Many times some of their struggles are solved, like when the man and boy found the underground shelter that hasn't been raided. The found many things in there, food, clothes, water, things that could let them survive for a little longer. These items are basically items to help them survive. But the sad thing is the man has the struggle of being sick, so that causes him to die later on in the book. Otherwise the boy kinda has no more struggles when a family finds and takes him under their wing. |
Hotel Rwanda
Hotel Rwanda is another piece that I watched that had a lot of struggle in it. Mainly because a mass population is all coming with weapons to kill doesn't seem nice to a certain ethnicity. Hotel Rwanda is about the true story of Paul Ruseabagina, a hotel manager, housing a bunch Tutsi refugees in his hotel. And while doing this, he faces the many struggles of trying to keep the hotel functioning with the refugees in the hotel. He faced the struggles of trying to save his family from getting killed by the Hutu, and facing the problem of defending his hotel from the Hutu rebels. The struggles are sometimes relieved when the UN helps but sometimes things don't go the way they liked and sometimes end horribly. Like an ambush scene where the UN are transporting Tutsi's to a airport when the Hutu's encounter them and attack the UN. But everything is solved at the end of the movie when the Tutsi rebels help the Tutsi refugees cross the border into another country to escape the horrible genocide.
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Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas is a poem I think is about the struggle of dying from old age. Mainly because it talks about how people grieve that death is on it's way. "Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, Rage against the dying of the light." Now this stanza says that some men are glad that death comes but I don't see how many people will be happy that death is on it's way. Why be glad, should the struggle of dying make you happy? It should make you sad, but why did Dylan Thomas say that? Maybe because he thought that his father, the poem was based off his father's death, was happy about his death. But I still have the idea in my mind that people should always fear about the struggle of dying.