Light at The End

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/world/africa/darfur-refugees-returning-home.html?_r=1&r=1&ref=world

            


               The Audience of this article by the New York Times, is the world wide audience that it informs. The Purpose for this article, is to inform us of the returning refugees to Darfur. It's Claim is that while things aren't good in Darfur by any stretch of the imagination, things are certainly getting better, and that people are starting to actually return to their homeland. In fact the first sentence of the article is, "More than 100,000 people in Darfur have left the sprawling camps where they had taken refuge for nearly a decade and headed home to their villages over the past year..." Evidnece to further support this claim, is that a former ghost town Nyuru, has recently had thousands of returning people. Of course though things aren't great as further on in the article it says "More than two million people remain stuck in internal displacement or refugee camps, and some rebel groups fight on." All in all though Abdallah Mohamed Abubakir, a skinny farmer, who had just brought his family back to Nyuru. says it best “Things aren’t great,” he said, “but they’re getting better.”

           How this article connects with a moment in the story: The best moment that I could think of, would actually be the entire period in the story of when Gerda is in rehabilitation in the School-turned-hospital after she had been rescued by Kurt and the other American soldiers. Things are a lot better for Gerda she is able to say that she is out of danger, like many former refugees were showing that things are most definately better. But the war itself continues to clamber on, as does the Darfur conflict, meaning things obviously aren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Also, Gerda is like the refugees coming back home as well; begining to re-introduce herself to the world and in her case quite litteraly taking those first steps on the road to recovery, as the Darfurians are taking their first steps back into normalcy. Both of these stories or at least these parts of the stories are optimistic in showing although there is still much work to be done, things are definately getting better.

English work 2 2-26-12

7100 Dial Drive

Huber Heights, OH 45424

In The Wormhole for time travel, roughly 2021

Dear Gerda,

                Hello Gerda this is your good time traveling friend Tanner. Although I can’t physically change the past, you just did something that makes me wish I could. I am of course talking about your decision to not go and live with Abek’s family. I have to ask you a question. Why?

                I understand that you don’t want to marry Abek, really I understand. What I don’t understand is why you would deny him this. He just had his family slave for your chance at freedom. It doesn’t matter whether or not you want to marry him, this is about you not insulting and disrespecting him and his family. You could have just as easily chosen to live with Abek’s family, and actually talk with them so they realize that you just aren’t ready. They obviously care for you or they wouldn’t have done so much for you to stay out of one of those wretched camps.

                You need to understand that you had the opportunity that any other person would beg and plead for. You had the chance to guarantee that the Nazi’s would take one less person; that their sick and twisted plan wouldn’t work. I’m not blaming or bad mouthing you, I just think that you might have made a decision that you will regret. I hope you are able to keep going and will soon find freedom some other way.

                Sincerely,

                Tanner

                In the book All But My Life the main character Gerda talks about the Holocaust from her perspective. There are several examples of “Polarization” a stage of genocide throughout the early stages of the book. At one point Gerda describes how the “Jews” weren’t allowed to have their own gardens and could only freely move about in the local cemetery. This is a text book example, in how the Nazi’s try to keep the “Jews” and the “Aryans” away from each other in their psychopathic march towards “racial purity”. That of course is what polarization is; keeping the two groups away from each other. 

                Also later in the book Gerda describes how when on a trip with her father’s friend to the factory he used to own. “Trembling, he pointed to a large red sign with bold white letters:

                                                Dogs and Jews Not Allowed to Enter...” ( Klein, 1957, p.26).

This the fact that they are keeping Jews from working or even being near the area were many used to work or even owned is polarization.