The Negative Impacts Of Colonialism In Hell Or High Water

The author uses tone and images throughout to compare and contrast the concepts of “black wealth” and a “hard life”. The author combines the use of images with blunt word combinations to make her point; for example, “you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet”. This image evokes the warmth of remembering a special community with the negative, have to use outdoor facilities. Another example of this combination of tone and imagery is “how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in”. Again the author’s positive memory is of feeling fresh after her bath combined with a negative, the fact that it was a barbecue drum.

The discovery and colonization of America completely changed Europe's economy. Smith believed that colonization benefits outweighed the misfortunes. He believed that both Europe and the colonies benefited because they could relieve and help each other. However, it was clear that Europe benefited the most while the natives in the colonies faced the misfortunes.

In So Much Water So Close To Home, Raymond Carver explores the hardships that society brings upon us by using dialogue and character development to reveal that men and women alike have difficulty reconciling the differences in ethical and moral values. Carver is able to do this by relating to topics that demonstrate the character’s difference in morality. These include such things as death, gender stereotypes, and relationships. While discussing these topics, Carver reflects upon society’s social standard and compares that with the roles of the characters throughout the story.

Transitioning from normal life in California to arid desert, the family experiences an environment where civil liberty is as scarce as water. Though the sun’s intense beams project glimmers of water and freedom upon the desert’s farthest edges, these impressions convey a cruel false sense of reality just out of reach. Water in the desert represents an imagined freedom able to quench the family’s thirst. When the family returns home, they anticipate the sea as well as welcoming neighbors and friends, but are isolated and excluded evocative of the desert. While a recognizable sea breeze wafts through the house bringing with it the reminiscent smell of simplicity and freedom, the family has changed, the neighborhood has changed, and America has changed. Water after the desert represents a fabricated freedom, which falls short of expectation. By considering the absence of water, Otsuka exposes the emptiness and lack of American freedom given to Japanese-Americans during and after World War

In the poem “America,” by Tony Hoagland, the idea of Americans being consumed with their money is shown using symbolism and metaphors. The speaker in this poem is a teacher whose name is never mentioned. One thing revealed in the poem is that the speaker has a father who is presumably very wealthy and successful. One of the teacher’s students compares America to a maximum security prison. A recurring theme throughout “America” is Hoagland showing examples of America’s greedy society using a teacher, student, and a father’s experiences. Using metaphors of money and symbols of rivers filled with merchandise, Tony Hoagland captures how the teacher begins to think after he hears his student compare America to a maximum security prison.

Ignorance is worn like tattered battle armor—left threadbare by reality and its truths. Ignorance is a battle cry against an ever changing world; a cry declaring that they will not change with it. In The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver clads Rachel Price in this frayed ignorance, once fashioned by the age of colonialism. Rachel wears it proudly, hanging onto every thread of her ignorance until the very end. Through world interactions and inner monologues, Kingsolver establishes how Rachel’s overbearing ignorance dwarfs her evolution as a character in order to illustrate how colonialism and segregation wield a lasting destructive influence over the Western Mind.

Africa has had a long and tumultuous road of colonization and decolonization the rush to colonize Africa started in the 17th century with the discovery of the vast amounts of gold, diamonds, and rubber with colonization hitting a fever pitch during World War I. However, the repercussions of colonization have left deep wounds that still remain unhealed in the 21st century. Early on, European nations such as Britain, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany and Belgium scrambled for territories. Countries wanted land so they could harvest the resources, increase trade, and gain power. The European colonization of Africa brought racism, civil unrest, and insatiable greed; all of which have had lasting impacts on Africa.

At the beginning of Le Thi Diem Thuy’s novel, The Gangster We Are All Looking For, water provides a refuge to the narrator and her family by functioning as a pathway to a new and secured life. This water signifies a new beginning and becomes a dwelling place where the narrator retreats when searching for answers. As the narrator progresses in the story, her understanding of life also develops, and water in the story becomes a barrier; it never truly provides the answers or fixes the issues that engulf the narrator’s family like a surf on the beach. Instead, the water reflects the traumatic reality within the narrator’s life, whether she realizes it or not. Essentially, in The Gangster We Are All Looking For, water functions as a pathway and a barrier which illuminate the trauma that the narrator and her family experience in their lives after Vietnam’s colonization.

In Mary Oliver’s “Crossing the Swamp”, the speaker compares a swamp to the struggles and hardships in life that fight against her. The speaker repeatedly contrasts herself to the swamp to emphasize the vastness of the swamp, conveying how the speaker understands the hardships that come with life.

Canada has been well regarded with its attitude towards multiculturalism, establishing an Act that protects the rights of people who have different beliefs and the encouragement for all cultures to work together. While being the only country to have a policy such as the Multiculturalism Act, racism has been a part of Canadian history, including but not limited to the colonialism of Indigenous Peoples and the internment of Japanese Canadians. The effects of colonialism on indigenous culture and the treatment of Japanese Canadians are reflected in the novels Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson and Obasan by Joy Kogawa. The main characters of the novels, Lisamarie in Monkey Beach and Naomi in Obasan, both come to terms with the effects of growing up in minority communities in British Columbia, as well as discovering their own identities, by reflecting on their pasts during a time of family tragedies. Lisamarie struggles with accepting and understanding her spirituality in a family that mostly ignores and denies their connections to the spirituality of their ancestors, due to the effects of colonialism and residential schools. Naomi reflects on her family being removed from their homes and the racism that the Japanese faced after the Pearl Harbour attack. Robinson and Kogawa use their protagonists to look back to the past and reflect on the events that have shaped their families. Lisamarie discovers how spirituality and relationships have been molded due to the colonialism and the

In April 1995 Pamela George, an Ojibway women, was brutally murdered in Saskatchewan. Her murderers Steven Kummerfield and Alex Ternowetsky, young middle-class white men, were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to merely six and a half years in prison. George’s story is one of the many Indigenous women who have been murdered or missing over the past years. There are over 580 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women, close to half are put aside and left unsolved. Only 53% of these cases have lead to charges of homicide (Klement 8). Drastically, statistics indicate that Aboriginals are faced with more hardships throughout their life compared to the average Canadian. Indigenous groups, particularly women, suffer from a lower rate of education, higher suicide rates and an array of health risks. This paper will examine the role settler colonization history has played in perpetuating conditions for violence to indigenous women, many of which are still experienced today. This will be accomplished by first assessing the history of settler colonization and its negative repercussions. Secondly, it will use Sherene Razak’s concept of “spatial segregation,” to illustrate how state institutions have facilitated violence through space, race and the law. Lastly, this paper will use evidence from the film “Finding Dawn” to further demonstrate how violence towards indigenous women is institutionally produced.

In order to convey the trait of poverty, Erdrich employs the use of imagery, even the setting reflects their impoverished state. In the beginning of the novel, the road leading towards the reservation is described as having “ruts” and “holes” (11). The surrounding land “was a dull tan – the dry ditches, the dying crops” (11). Erdrich’s visual imagery gives the reader a mental image of a desolate environment. In addition, Erdrich references dust twice on page eleven, giving the impression of the prairies during the dustbowl, which occurred during the 1930’s when the world was going through the Great Depression, allowing the reader to subconsciously connect the environment of the reservation as poor, neglected and bleak. The grim environment creates sympathy for the female characters, many of whom live on the reservation. In addition, there is the alliteration of the letter “d”. This emphasises the poverty in which these characters live in by bringing attention to the “dull”, “dry” and “dying” environment of the reservations. Despite the despondent surroundings, Erdrich’s poetic style pushes the reader to consider this environment as a home, rather than merely a disgusting

Colonialism occurs when one nation seeks to extend their authority other the territory of another. When such process occurs, the foreign ideologies conflicts with the existing ones. The spread of euro and phallocentric ideas brings intolerance such as othering and sexism. Those with power degrade and exclude the “others” to proven their status as superior. Such oppression not only have negative impact on the victim but also oppressors themselves. In Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M Coetzee and Women at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi, both Coetzee and Nawal reveals the negative impact of intolerance on both the intolerant and the victims.

A dominated culture learns not just to be like the culture that dominates it, but also tries to cover its own surroundings. In such cultural encounters, amnesia plays the most important role in defining the self-perception of cultures. G. N. Devy's After Amnesia, first published in 1992, offers an keen study of contemporary literary scholarship in Indian languages by indicating how modern Indian languages 'learnt to forget' that literary criticism had been discarded by them during the post-Sanskrit medieval centuries, and how they have posed before themselves a false choice of scholar practices fixed in culturally distant Western or Sanskrit traditions. After Amnesia proposes that what has come

Oliver Goldsmith is not the only author who argues against the loss of culture. The Dave Matthews Band also speaks out against this in their song “Don’t Drink the Water”. This song is aimed at the expatriation of Native Americans, but also touches on the loss of culture from wealth. “Don’t Drink the Water” is narrated through the eyes of a member of the encroaching populace, who says “Your father’s spirit lives in this place / I will silence you.” (Dave Matthews Band 21-22). These lines show the culture of the natives, or “father’s spirit”, is being destroyed by “greedy need”, or wealth (Dave Matthews Band 42, 21). The same message is voiced when Goldsmith laments that “...Trade’s unfeeling train”, which represents wealth, “Usurp the land and dispossess the swain.”, or strip culture from the youth, who carry the responsibility of continuing tradition (Goldsmith 64). While the song and poem