The Tension Between The Pages And Real Life

“Wake up,” that’s what I heard after passing out from all the blows to the face. My vision is blurred I’m trying to stay awake but I lost consciousness; all of a sudden I felt a splash of coldness on my face, and I woke up gasping for air. The man with the deep ominous voice said, “Wakey wakey little man” I replied, “where the h*ll is Mako!” when I was fully aware of where I was, that’s when I started to panic.

Adichie’s characters are subject to cultural suppression in several of the short stories. This is most pronounced in ‘The Arrangers of Marriage’ where Chinaza is forced by her husband to assimilate to her new surroundings by ridding herself of all signs of being Nigerian,

The idea of witchcraft seems preposterous now, but it pulled me into its issues with its bony hands. The renowned play and film The Crucible, by eminent author Arthur Miller, is a great tale of deceit, religious persecution, justice/injustice and paranoia, which shows the ignorance and the perplexing nature of the 17th Century Puritan society. The mysterious world of witchcraft and witch hunts is the centrepiece of this story, which parallels to the Senator Joseph McCarthy communist ‘witch hunts’ in the 1950s. Similarly, I can create a link to contemporary issues in society, whether it takes place in the school playground or politics. As we can all recall, abusive power was a severe problem in the villages of Salem. It afflicted on a person’s ideologies and how they were represented and symbolised by others. My curiosity is conveyed through Abigail. This protagonist is seen as inhumanly diabolical, as she does not express any remorse, via the motif of manipulation and accusations. This is all refracted through the lenses of my own attitudes, values and beliefs of an egalitarian society. So today I am here to explain and engage with you why I entirely believe this story, from many years ago, can reproduce the same apprehensions of abusive power in society today.

People often fear things they do not understand. In Nigeria, churches are accusing defenseless children of witchcraft; a boy’s “family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism ” (The Boston Globe para. 2); permanently impairing the boy. The boy’s father did not understand why or how what his son was and tried to kill him out of fear of the consequences. Pastors were accusing either orphaned or children from poor families as witches because they could not fight back, as way to establish their credentials. Hysteria made the townspeople actually believe and fear witchcraft in both Nigeria and Salem. In the case of “The Dying Girl that No One Helped” one person did not get involved because the police” might have picked [him] up as suspect” he feared the outcome and did not understand the importance of the situation.

My room-mate had a single story of Africa; a single story of catastrophe”. Adichie also tells how growing up in Nigeria reading only American and English children’s books made her deaf to her authentic voice. As a child, she wrote about such things as blue-eyed white children easting apples, thinking brown skin and mangos had no place in Literature. That changed as she discovered African writers.

In the aftermath of the Salem witch trials, the American colonies were shaken to their core. The events were captivating, horrifying and fascinating. In the aftermath, the country looked towards a brighter future, one free of demons and hysteria. America was on the path to modernization, keen on putting aside such old world ideas as witches. In his wide spanning book, America Bewitched, Owen Davies follows America’s life after Salem, recounting the country’s fascination with witchcraft. Through thematic chapters, Davies offers reports of witch-trials, magical beliefs, and the changing attitudes of a modernizing society. While thorough and gripping, the book steers clear of arguing for a specific meaning behind the United States’ continuing enthrallment with the subject. However, a common thread can be found in the evolving attitudes towards beliefs in witchcraft and the European concept of the ‘other.’ By highlighting Davies tales of interracial confrontations in the Spanish colonies of the southwest, the tension between slaves and owners in the Deep South, and the outer reaches of the Alaskan territory, a clear connection ties the United States continuing enthrallment with witchcraft and colonialism.

A review of A Fever in Salem: A New Interpretation of the New England Witch Trials, by Laurie Winn Carlson, Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2000; 224 pp. $14.95 Paperback. ISBN: 1-566633095

The stories will come to a point that they are the same but are in different time periods, There will be two topics that this essay introduces that will have similarities and differences they are both based on witchcraft and black magic. One background comes from a village in the late 1600’s there was catastrophic things going on with people being blamed using witchcraft, and being hanged without being proved by using witchcraft. The next story comes from Wisconsin in the 1950’s of a senate who produced a lot of investigation and hearings to try and expose infiltration of the US government. the stories will have their own way of exposing the events that have happened and why it occurred.

When you hear witchcraft what comes to your mind? Do you think of witches flying around in brooms? Well back in 1962 a group of girls claimed that they were being possessed. In addition this was the start of The Salem witch trials. This event is Important to America's History Because it was a time Where people thought witchcraft was happening and innocent People were getting P, but in reality it was just mass hysteria. In this event 1962, Salem there were witch hunts leading to persecution, mass hysteria Because of religion, betrayal, and lies.The work presents several important issues, shows a reflection on a submerged society in fear and intolerance, hysteria, power of reflection the role of women, violence that implement, etc., are the

From the beginning the girls attempt their conjuring in the dark, immediately beginning an association of white being good and black being demonic. Any imagery of the night’s events is told with dark language, with the ‘black’ devil influencing the girls during a simple African-Caribbean ritual. Even John Proctor calls the town’s situation a “black mischief,” unknowingly contributing to the slight racial undertones. Witchcraft is associated with the color black, which regardless of the towns folks’ intentions, says something about race. The places where witchcraft is done are black, the adjectives used to describe its evils are all black, and the very practices originate from blacks, showing how the town of Salem had a deeply rooted racial issue. Later in the play, Abigail goes even further, describing Mary Warren’s attempted exposure of the girls’ false testimonies and attempted voodoo doll-plant as a “black art.” Again, although subtle, Abigail’s choice of words--and choice of deception with a Caribbean voodoo doll--signifies how Mary’s betrayal and perceived evil to her are associated once again with the color (and race) of black. In Miller’s play, the sin, witchcraft, and devil-worshipping all have roots with the color black, culturally and figuratively. This association within the setting all the way to the diction of characters addresses how race plays a role in how people and cultures are viewed, with black being seen as

Lynn Nottage’s play, “Ruined”, is an eye-opening story that takes place in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the Civil War. The play is centered around women who have been sexually abused, and are living and working in a brothel owned by the protagonist Mama Nadi. The play gives deep insight to the hardships women had to go through during that time. The play is a melodrama and a great example of a contemporary version of realism. This play also illustrates three important characteristics of storytelling we discussed in class: stories teach, stories allow us to personalize issues, and stories build compassion.

It rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic”. He further asserts that the fantasy rests on the assumption that “non-whites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades”. It lays on the supposition that lack of education is the way to dignity. According to him it makes a kind of two-edged cultural imperialism. Native people can either have their history formed by cruel imperialists or generous ones, but in both cases, they are going to be “supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration." (Davidson: 2010)

Do you fit into the standards of society? What do you see when you look in the mirror? Do you really know who you are? Margaret Atwood puts these questions at our feet in her short stories “Scarlet Ibis”, which is a work that shows a wealthy family on vacation and Christine, the mother and wife, thinks she is being looked at under a microscope by everyone around her and “Lusus Naturae”, which portrays a young girl that seemingly has a disease, Porphyria, but she could also be a vampire, she is kept at arms length with her family and others, only to be kept in seclusion, she is described as a “freak of nature”. What both of these stories have in common is societies expectations and views on what is “normal” and how the self- degrading reflections the characters see make them criticize and internalize who they are in catastrophic ways. Atwood masterfully uses characterization and symbolism to show the destructive standards that society has and those who stand on the outside attribute their lack of acceptance and identity on who they are and not to the outside world.

The author’s effort to display oral literature, including expressing Ghanaian English speaking and non-English speaking society, in her work reflects her own persona as a contemporary writer resembling the African oral traditions and art work. “Shall I go to Cape Coast, or to Elmina I don’t know, I can’t tell. I don’t know, I can’t tell,” (Aidoo) Language, mainly English, is promoted to throughly capture various backgrounds and events of the play. Aidoo tries to distinguish Eulalie’s American-English speech that instantly alienates her from the rest of the characters. The author also quite succeeds in reflecting Ato’s educated language with a hint of lecturing that proves he has been indeed abroad, as oppose to his Ghanaian family. It crucially exposes the impact of colonialism on communication between Africans with distinctive educational and social situations, as for instance, the married couple’s complexed struggle to not only fully accept their cultural differences but also keep and hold onto their own identities. Aidoo also catches the inflections and outcomes of oral literature by using simple songs, traditional proverbs and imagery, such as the interesting ones in the dialogue between the two old Ghanaian women. “1st W.:But you know, my sister, That my name is Lonesome. I

Elisabeth says then there will never be any solution to the problem of novel in Africa if the Africans wanted a ‘living voice’. The main problem faced by them was because the African writers unlike the French and the English were not acting as writers but were actually behaving like interpreters of their exotic cultures and that the root of their problem was ‘ Having to perform your Africanness at the same time as you write.’