Analysis Of When Rain Clouds Gather

This book report discusses the plot, significant characters, setting (e.g., time of the story took place, historical background), problems and resolutions, themes or messages of the story. A reflection of the author’s writing style will be presented followed by a conclusion.

The story I'm choosing is The Man to Send Rain Clouds by Leslie Marmon Silko. The theme of the story is about the strength of Native American customs and traditions and bridging the gap between Native American customs and Christian customs. The author uses the setting and the mood to surface the theme throughout the story. The Man to Send Rain Clouds helps to set up a recurring theme that Silko will use in many of her other stories.

In chapter two of Leymah Gbowee’s memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War, turmoil is happening all around her. The chapter starts with Gbowee graduating from High School and enrolling into the University of Liberia. Shortly after she enrolls it is announced that rebel forces have invaded Liberia. Gbowee’s parents move to a newer house in Monrovia. Then Gbowee experienced her first encounter with guns when there was shooting near her house, along with her grandmother, Ma Korto, pushing one of the children outside. After that, she and her family were taken to St. Peter’s church to stay in the residential compound. Shortly after she arrived at St. Peter’s, Gbowee saw a young man shot in the street. The streets seemed like battlegrounds and people prayed their houses would become fortresses. When Gbowee describes the way the beginning of the war affects her personally, she overlooks the deeper problem of how fear and courage alter the ways in which the people around her fight the daily battle of surviving. In neglecting to see the suffering of others, she shows that she has not yet, “come of age” and still has a lot of maturing to do.

The author moves to her actual realization that she has been misunderstood her entire lifetime along with the Western world by extending her vocabulary and appealing to emotional diction. These are seen clearly through “’aina” meaning culture and “the great bloodiness of memory: genealogy” (Trask 118). These few examples show how her language is connecting with the audience on an emotional level by using native terms and powerful language such as “bloodiness.” She appeals to the ideals of pathos by employing meaningful words when describing the traits of her people. She

The short story “The Man to Send Rain Clouds” by Leslie Marmon Silko is a deceptively simple narrative about the death and funeral of an old man of the Laguna Pueblo tribe of Native Americans. Set in the desert southwest of the United States, the story is narrated from an omniscient point of view, and describes the discovery of the old man’s body, the preparation of the body for burial, and the interaction between the family of the dead man and the Catholic priest who lives on the reservation. The author uses very simple language and unsophisticated descriptions to describe an intricate and complex relationship between the Christian culture of the priest and the religious culture of the Pueblo culture. Descriptions of the bleak landscape

In this excerpt you are introduced to a young African boy, Olaudau Equiano, who begins to describe his everyday life before being captured. Olaudau, who is the youngest of six sons but not the youngest child, who in which is his sister. As a child, he was raised and trained in both agriculture and war, receiving a great deal of emblems in javelin throwing and shooting. However, at the age of eleven, Olaudau’s life changed forever. One day while the elders went to the fields, two men and a women invaded their camp and swiftly kidnapped Olaudau and his younger sister; thus beginning his life as a slave. “The first object which saluted my eyes when I

In the work of African descended writers’, water is used as a common symbol. In Edwidge Danticat's Krik? Krak!, Jacques Roumain’s Masters of the Dew, and Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow, tears, rivers, the sea and other forms of water are used to symbolize change. More specifically, it symbolizes the change between life and death; freedom and confinement. The three writers use water as an ironic symbol, representing life, liberty, and their contradictions.

-When Okonkwo and the other detainees return from the prison, the narrator describes the scene: "they walked silently...the village was astir in a silent, suppressed way" (199). Achebe delineates the discontent of the Africans through their silent, and to a point, negative emotions. Although the prisoners returned from the prison, Achebe tries to show that a transition between cultures caused high tensions too precarious to be expressed.

When in the presence of the woman Romana trying to attack him, Condé writes, “He was about to throw himself on her, knock her down, kill her perhaps, when a voice reminded him of his difficulties in the Ashanti kingdom after the rape of Ayaovi. What would happen if he now committed murder? (Condé 265).” In two ways here, Malobali has grown up. First he realizes that all his actions have consequences and that he must realize them before making unwise decisions. In realizing this, Malobali represents Africans evolving as a whole to recognize that they must work together as a people. Secondly, Malobali realizes that Women are people too who can be reasoned with and respected rather than literally beat into submission. On a grand scale, Malobali’s second revelation represents a change in attitude toward women by African people. Still, more important is Malobali’s evolution in the context of the African Slave Trade.

When you surf the internet to look for the new about Central African Republic you hear stories about terror, civil war, rebels, murder, bloodshed etc. But what are the other aspects of life in the region that no news reporter wants to cover? A trip to the Center of the African rain forests reveals what happens and has been happening for very many years to the region’s residents. In Listen Here is a Story, Bonnie L Hewlett deals with different aspects of women’s lives of the Aka (Foragers) and Ngandu (Farmers) in this part of Central African Republic mainly, and reveals the political, social, cultural, Ideology in life of these people. There are some studies where people are travelling to explore the subjective experience of women’s in small societies, and this book is one of them.

In the memoir, “A Long Way Gone”, Ishmael Beah’s personification and imagery is used to embody the connection between the state of Sierra Leone and how Baeh feels after having to migrate. For instance, When Beah and Kaloko are forced to flee Kamator because of a rebel evasion they decide to return to Kamator the next day only to find the imam being eaten by a pack of wild dogs. As they examine the village from afar, Baeh is paralyzed with memories as he mutters; “I became frustrated with living in fear. I felt as if I was always waiting for death to come to me, so I decided to go somewhere where at least there was some peace”(46). This is the sad truth for not only Baeh but for the entire state of Sierra Leone. Beah’s personification

During the 1950’s, oppression of black south africans was a prominent issue ongoing in South Africa. Alan Paton, writer of Cry, The Beloved Country, illustrates the loss of humanity because of apartheid throughout the novel. However, one topic left unaddressed in Cry, The Beloved Country is the underlying issue of gender inequality in apartheid South Africa. Women’s inferiority to men is illustrated through the service-oriented roles that characters such as Ms. Lithebe and Mrs. Kumalo portray throughout the novel, as opposed to the authoritative positions that most men in the novel hold. Women like Absalom’s wife (the pregnant girl) and Gertrude also fall to the superiority of men but on a different level, forced into sexualized-roles for survival after their husbands/boyfriends leave them. Portrayed through the morally-depraved gender stereotypes, the voiceless and nameless women of South Africa, and the homebound women of Johannesburg, Alan Paton’s lack of development of women’s roles in society mirrors the

The narrator begins the passage with a tone of despair through the words ‘mourning’ (73) and ‘wretched’ (73) by portraying the sorrowful state of Yamba. She experiences unforgettable harrowing situations in her life. The slave traders kidnap her with children and sell to cruel masters, where she experiences dehumanising atrocities. Her child perishes. She tries to end her sufferings by

The time of the 1940’s in South Africa was defined by racial oppression of the native inhabitants of the country by the Dutch Boers, also known as the Afrikaners. These people were the demographic minority yet also the political majority. They executed almost complete control over the lives of the natives through asinine rules and harsh punishments. The highly esteemed novel Cry, the Beloved Country tells a story of Stephen Kumalo, a black priest dealing with the struggles of living in the South Africa during this time. His son killed a white man and on the day his son is to be hanged for this crime, Kumalo climbs a mountain in order to reflect on the current situation both in his family and in his country. In chapter 36 of Cry, the

Corruption and abuse of power create many victims, but also creates heroes as it produces an inner strength to speak up against the odds for themselves and for others. Adichie uses Nnamabia in ‘Cell One’ to demonstrate him as both victim and hero where “I shouted at the Policemen. I said that old Man was innocent and ill and if they kept him here they would never find his son because he did not even know where his son was” clearly depicts him as both victim and hero for speaking against corrupted police and their wrong use of power. Adichie demonstrates through Nnamabia that unfair situations can bring out heroic qualities and also result in a personal change to speak up for others and to stand against the people who’s making wrong use of their power and superiority. ‘The Headstrong historian’ follows the same idea of Nwamgba being both victim and hero for facing abuse of power by the cousins. “She thought often of the woman who after her tenth successive child had died, had gone to the backyard and hanged herself. But she would not do it because of Anikwenwa” clearly demonstrates the heroic decision of her staying in the action for her son. Adichie tries to demonstrate through this that victims who lack in power and agency turns out to be a hero who continues on their quest to deserve the rights that they should have. Adichie also tries to illustrate that