Beasts Of No Nation Analysis

In Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, the Ibo society has a strict system of behavioral customs that are assigned by gender. These customs restrict the freedom of Ibo woman and help to reinforce generation after generation the notion that Ibo men are superior to women. In Achebe's essay An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, he claims that Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, despite it's insights, ought to be eradicated from literature as an appropriate piece of work on the argument that it is racist. Achebe focuses on gender roles and avoiding stereotypes to dismiss the racist attitude towards Africans in his novel by bringing the reader down to the level of his unbiased narration of a historical fiction novel.

In 1949, many African nations began their surge for independence, and the native people did not accept the social modifications forced upon them. The revelation of the setting comes through the name “Ndume Central School” which is a school located within the African nation of Nigeria (595). Later, the setting reveals the deep divisions that take place in Africa at the time and allows the reader to understand why the villagers resists change. The separation between the school and village symbolizes the division, and this separation captures a modern school fighting a traditional village. Obi enforces the separation with the moving of the path and states that this new path should “[skirt] our premises” (597). The setting enhances the conflict between the villagers and Obi because the Africans at the time resisted the change that Obi enforced within the school. The setting of the school and village enhances the conflict because the school represents the transformation of society, while the village captures the stubborn, old way of living.

Beah shows how poor leadership could have been the cause of war. Africa suffers from human rights violations which characterize the era of the civil war (Correa - Velez, Nardone, Knoetze 143). The civil war in Sierra Leone brought abrupt changes to children's lives due to the power of the Sierra Leone government. Beah goes on to say that “sometimes we were asked to leave for the war in the middle of the movie. We would come back hours later after killing many people and continue the movie as if we had just returned from intermission. We were always either at the front lines, watching a war movie, or doing drugs. There was no time to be alone or to think” (Beah 124). Beah explains that soldiers freedoms were taken away as they were asked to “leave” for combat often. This shows the abuse of power of the government of Sierra Leone as they revoked the freedoms of its citizens for war. Many believe that due to corrupt governance, child soldiers were not given the choice or option to become a soldier (Spencer 222). Beah finds that it’s “…not easy being a soldier, but we just had to do it” (Beah 199). Beah discusses how he did not have any decision in “being a soldier” and is instead forced to. He further explains how he has to force himself to survive. Throughout the novel, Beah

“young men who would attach themselves to local warlords for material benefit and training program.” (Shepler, Youthscapes, p. 125) For those “excluded and educationally-disadvantaged youth underclass,” joining the army and war was a hope to escape the current social status. (Richard 1996, p. 174) The social status of the class of youth in Sierra Leone is ‘neither citizen nor subject,’ said Fanthorpe. (Shepler, Youthscapes, p. 126) “The youth of Sierra Leone are required to ‘negotiate’ their identities. (Shepler, Youthscapes, p. 126) Secondly, the commercialized culture of war was a strong influence on youth in Sierra Leone. “The young males combatants and even commanders modeled themselves on well-known rebel leaders, in style of dress and speech.” (Shepler, Youthscapes, p. 127) Students in school even symbolized pencils as weapons. The “globalized youth culture” made rebel became the figure that youth would like to be. (Shepler, Youthscapes, p.

Genocides are commonly known for their eight stages. The stages include classification, symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, extermination, and denial. Massacres usually do not start until stage seven, or late stage six. The time between stage one and six can give the public and foreign nation plenty of time to address and combat the situations. For example, Armenians are always differently classified than the Turks. a few warning signs for the Armenians Genocide include the arrest of Armenian intellect in 1915. Other signs people can look for include a group of people being treated less than human, the group being considered second-class citizen who has fewer rights than their counterpart in the country. “I have heard something about a Turkish massacre of Armenian several years before, in Adana, but I was sure it was something else –a war of some kind, and not a murder, uniformed Turks battling uniformed Armenian.”(P10) Before the genocide, a mass murder took place in Adana and other Armenian villages, which resulted in 80,000 death. In the book, the main character, Vahan, are not aware of the actual event that took place. Not only does this show his ignorance, it also accurately reflects the reality of the genocide. People ignore the earlier stages, and when they did decide to take action, it's often too

When the novel begins, Amari is a happy teenager, engaged to the most handsome and well known man in her African village, and admired by her parents. When the white men enter her village for the first time, the people of Africa welcome them with open arms, but little did they know that the men came only for violence. The white o men kill most of Amari's village before setting it to flames. They shackle the healthy youth and pack them tightly into a slave ship

It was easier for people to look at Africans as creatures with “Iron Collars” and “Grotesque mask” which is why Chinua Achebe wrote “Things Fall Apart” which was set during the late 1800s to early 1900s when British were expanding their influence in Africa in order to display the true idyllic beauty of the African people. In “Things Fall Apart”, Achebe uses irony to reflect the importance of customs and traditions through Obierika. Achebe uses an esprit tone to explain the “Flaws” others misinterpreted about the Igbo community. Achebe disliked how Europeans depicted Africans as “passionate instinctive savages”, so he refutes those depictions to give a viewpoint from the inside, the colonized and not the colonizer.

This was an excellent movie. Beasts of the Southern Wild spoke to me in many ways. The first thing that stuck out to me happened within the first 10 minutes of this film. I was amazed because people could live in this area. The river in which they were floating on had trash floating in it yet to Wink it was beautiful. “We live in the prettiest place on earth, (Beasts of the Southern Wild). What would have been unlivable area to most, was livable and beautiful to this community. Another scene that spoke to me was the in which the teacher is talking to the children about global warming. She spoke to them as if they were adults. She warned them about society and the impacts society was having on the earth. “Cause any day now, the fabric

The film Beasts of the Southern Wild, directed by Behn Zeitlin, is set in Montegut, Louisiana, known by the residents as the bathtub, and follows a young girl named Hushpuppy as her home is flooded. She lives with her father, Wink, and her many, many animals. The bathtub is separated from the rest of the world by a levee built to restrain water from entering the mainland. Both Wink and Hushpuppy are incredibly happy with their lives, though Wink is slowly deteriorating from an unknown illness. However, when a storm falls upon their home, its destruction changes everything. Many of the residents of the bathtub evacuated before the storm; only Wink, Hushpuppy, and a few other families decided to stay and tough out the storm. Soon after it ends, Wink’s health begins to decline rapidly. Even though Hushpuppy is scared for her father, she continues working hard, striving to save her home from destruction. In her head, Hushpuppy animates aurochs, mythical creatures, as a way to deal with her father's upcoming death, suggesting that people’s natural instinct is to resist change through illusion. Throughout the movie Hushpuppy's emotions are represented through the aurochs’ journey toward her home. As the aurochs travel closer and closer, she becomes closer to accepting her father's death. The images shown of where the aurochs are, how they move, and where they are traveling to, all help to show Hushpuppy’s different methods of coping with Wink’s death.

The play being discussed in the Review is “Disney’s The Lion King, Jr” by children's play house. The play is based on the original Disney film produced in 1994, however Irene Mecchi and Roger Allers released their play version in 1997 and has been continuously perfumed since then till today. The author of this review piece is Pamela Steinik, and was written on March 06, 2017 for the MD Theatre Guide.

In his novel, Heart of Darkness, using diction and stylistic elements such as imagery and detail, the Polish-British writer, Joseph Conrad depicts Africa as a dark, unforgiving land full of primitive people. In the novel, Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe works to refute this depiction of Africa, painting a more peaceful picture and bringing more humanity to the typical image of Africa that comes to mind as a result of literature from writers such as Conrad. Despite Conrad’s depiction of Africa through stylistic elements like detail as an uncivilized place, Adichie directly combats and challenges this view with the use of diction. In his novel, Conrad describes people within Africa, giving them no names, but referring to one person as a “prehistoric man” or to groups of people as “a whirl of black limbs.”

Agu looks at his prepotent Commandant (Idris Elba) as a sort of a father. On the one hand, he really wants to follow him, but on the other, he feels something’s wrong since a father shouldn’t act like a mad man, initiating him into drugs, sex, and often ordering him to kill innocent people. Despite the astonishing cinematography, Mr. Fukunaga, whose camera moves adroitly in accordance to the more or less boisterous situations, should have let the images talk more by themselves. Too many explanations are given - in the form of Agu’s thoughts - and that frequency interrupts a handful of interesting visual sequences. In truth, there’s nothing really new in this tale that we haven’t seen before - for instance, in the more absorbing “War Witch” or the chaotic “Johnny Mad Dog”. Struggling to put every little piece together in a calibrated way, “Beasts of No Nation” is a so-so war drama that happens to be fascinating for its imagery rather than for the additional ways found to express its brutal

Throughout reading this book and completing this project I have learned so much about the Sierra Leone civil war and child soldiers. By reading Ishmael’s story and realizing what he had to go throw have given me much more respect for those who have been part of a war before. By doing this project I was able to get even more out of the story than I was from just the book. While doing the project I put a lot of the pieces into Ishmael’s point of view which further deepened my understanding. I hope that those who read my project are able to also get a lot out of it and are able to sympathize with those who had to go through this. The theme that I decided to portray in this project was, “loss of innocence”.

During Ugwu’s time in the war he falls victim to a group think mentality. Fearing being treated as an outsider Ugwu does whatever the other men tell him is okay to do, and is easily pressured. The extent to which he is influenced is exposed when Ugwu only experiences a moment of hesitation before raping a young woman with his fellow soldiers. During and after this heinous act, he fails to grasp the horror of his actions. It is not until he is told that five men have raped his sister that he is able to empathize and understand the tragedy of his decisions.

Agu is a cheerful pre-teen boy playing barefoot with his friends in an African village. He lives in a Christian home, a modest but clean family dwelling with a father, mother, teenage brother, senile grandfather and infant sister. There is talk of war, sounds of gunfire in the distance and UN troops but the family has high spirits and laugh and joke around. As the civil war gets closer the villagers decide to send the women and children to the Capital for safety. In a melee, there is no room for Agu as the packed cars and taxis depart.