"You put it in your mouth and point it up. Do it quick and hard. Do you understand? Stop crying. Do you understand."
No child should be forced to learn to survive, let alone know how to take their own life. Nor should they question whether life is worth living. I believe this to be the greatest adversity of the book- being born into a world in which the only guarantee is that tomorrow isn't guaranteed.
I agree with you Kingsley that seems to be the biggest adversity is being hungry and being born and raised into a world were he has no mother and has to fend for himself at a tender age.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you Kingsly. Perhaps this is why the boy's mother decided to end her life because she was not able surpass this adversity. But I'm just still shocked at the boy's reactions to situations because he's been taught to avoid the bad guys and such at such a young age (I'm assuming). He really had no childhood and was thrown into full survival mode. No child should have to go through that.
ReplyDeleteOne connection I can make between your post and the book I am reading, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is how you bring up the point that the boy was born into a world like that. This got me thinking about my books narrator, and how she was born into a world that viewed "whitefolk" as just that, whitefolk. Not individuals, not even people, not even just folks. "Whitefolk" to the narrator was practically just a word with no human in its meaning. The adversity in your book deals with the crisis that the world is in, and similarly, there can be adversity found in my book in how the world the narrator of the book was born into is one of obstacles for black people.
ReplyDeleteYoaly, I agree that this situation in which the young boy and man live in, that being a cannibalistic world, may be the reason why the mother decided to end her life. This young boy was born into a world where survival was his main purpose and I don't think anyone should ever have to go through this
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