The Wrenched Of The Earth By Franz Fanon

“All happy families are happy in the same way, but all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way” (Tolstoy). Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer tells a story about a young man called Christopher McCandless who comes from a well-off family who then out of the blue deserts everything to journey on an “Alaskan Odyssey”. There isn’t a sane man who donates all his money, leaves everything and everyone he loves, and changes his identity to “Alexander Supertramp” to venture on a journey that makes him face starvation, poverty, and death. Krakauer describes Chris’s family as the dysfunctional family in which spares Chris’s parents and focuses more on what he did rather than why he did what he sought out to do by leaving. However, the answer lies in his relationship with his family. His negative relationship with his family members, mostly his parents, is what drove him to produce unexplainable behaviors that lead him to run away from society and in the end cost him his life.

“Where Worlds Collide” is an essay by Pico Iyer who talks about the expectations and reality of Los Angeles through the perspectives of travelers from different backgrounds. In “Where Worlds Collide,” Pico Iyer argues that even though Los Angeles is depicted as a vicinity to receive wealth, happiness, and many opportunities- it is actually the antithesis, and instead, many harsh prejudice and unending craziness will occur instead; Iyer argues this by using allusions, anaphoras, and juxtapositions to help convey what he is saying.

All the light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, chronicles the lives and relationship between Marie and Werner, two children who grew up in France and Germany. The society around them forces discriminatory ideals that cloud their perception of the world, but they find its meaning through their own self-definition. In this, they are both guided by a single radio and the message and legacy that it contains. Throughout the book, the author isolated the two characters, but also created subtle connections between the two. The most important of which would be the radio. It created a bond between the two where they learned from each other’s experiences and struggles. All the Light We Cannot See recreates a new picture of the world by contrasting the two separate journeys taken by Marie- Laure LeBlanc and Werner Pfennig to gain that image, which is guided by the power of a radio and the message it contains, ultimately leading to the meeting of the two characters that officially forms an image of the world where one’s actions are valued more than one’s physical features.

“Happiness is only real, when shared.” - Jon Krakauer Into the wild. Jon Krakauer, the author of Into the Wild told the story of Chris McCandless. Chris escaped reality and went to go live off the land in Alaska, hoping to live a simpler life. In the novel, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, Chris McCandless shared a similar philosophy with Jack London, as they both have a strong passion for Alaska, they both appreciated they beauty of nature, and both wanted to be reborn.

What is it that we find crazy about those who have the courage to do what we won’t? In the compelling novel “Into The Wild” by Jon Krakauer the character and intelligence of the youth in men is questioned. Through the pieced together 200 page novel we are introduced to Christopher Johnson McCandless also known as “Alex Supertramp”. A ripe 24 years of age he chose to question our reality and his meaning of life that is given to us by hitchhiking across America to the Alaskan wilderness, where after four months in the last frontier he is found dead. Krakauer throughout the novel shows that although some admire what McCandless did, others found his final journey “reckless” and “crazy”. Krakauer goes to explain this claim through interviews of those who have encountered McCandless on his adventure and through those who got to know his story.

The book I read for my Political Science class was In God's Underground, by Richard Wurmbrand.

In Larry Lankton’s text, “Beyond the Boundaries” we gradually enter an unknown world that is frightening yet filled with immense beauty for miles. Due to the copper mining industry, a gradual increase of working class men and their families start to migrate to the unknown world with unsteady emotion, yet hope for a prosperous new life. In “Beyond the Boundaries”, Lankton takes us on a journey on how the “world below” transformed the upper peninsula into a functional and accepted new part of the world.

Women have often played an important role in advocating social justice. However, they have rarely been credited for their efforts and actions. Indeed, the research or narratives on social movements too often focus on male experiences. Yet, a gendered approach to social movements is crucial, because women’s experiences differ from men’s, as do their reasons for becoming involved with any type of activism, be it political or social. The movie Salt of the Earth by Michael Wilson (1954) illustrates those differences and emphasizes the importance of understanding the role played by individual and collective identity in political action. How does one’s social identity shape one’s involvement in political action? In this movie, women get involved in a strike; they become visible activists and no longer just the shadows of their husbands. Yet, their depiction in the movie presents them as essentially mothers and wives, inscribing their actions in the realm of domesticity. Thus, their actual agency remains in question.

From two different perspectives of the war, the author of this book showed that, depending on location and timing, everyone can be affected differently by warfare. It followed the story of two children who grew up on opposite sides of World War II. When their paths crossed, they developed feelings for one another, disregarding the fact that their historical circumstances placed them on opposing sides of the war. In the book All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr depicted how internal principles were able to overpower external pressures.

Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, narrates the life of adventurer and free spirit Christopher McCandless, who died August 1992 in the Alaskan wilderness; however, his journey still remains relevant in today’s pop culture due to the unresolved controversy of whether he is a saintly role model or hubristic fool. Krakauer openly states that he “won’t claim to be an impartial biographer” (Author’s Note) due to the parallels he struck with McCandless, and provides a more idealistic approach to the biography. By having this biased point of view, Krakauer readily attracts many critics such as Craig Medred, who wrote the article The Beatification of Chris McCandless: From Thieving Poacher into Saint, which discredits Krakauer’s legitimacy and emphasizes McCandless’s narcissistic personality and naïve nature. He has also sparked many questions including why McCandless’s story is so significant, which writer Laura Moss tries to answer in Why Are We Still Talking about Chris McCandless?. While it is clear that McCandless’s story has affected every reader due to its many interpretations, two distinct sides form: the avid romantics and their counterpart, the pessimistic realists, which provokes the question of which argument is more valid.

Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon explores the roles of violence, class, and political organization in the process of decolonization. Within a Marxist framework, Fanon theorizes and prophesizes the successes and failures of independence movements within colonized nations. He exalts the proletariat as a revolutionary class that is first to realize the necessity of violence in the removal of colonial regimes. Yet the accomplishment and disappointments of the proletariat are at the hand of men. Fanon neglects women in terms of the proletariat’s wishes and efforts. In spite of this exclusion, Fanon nonetheless develops a theory that could apply to the proletariat as a whole, women included. For although Fanon failed to acknowledge women’s

In April 1992, a twenty-four-year-old man walked into the Alaskan wilderness alone, only for his decomposed body to be found in August of that same year. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. Some people thought he was crazy but others who looked deeper into his past, such as Jon Krakauer and I, found that there were elements of emotional trauma and adolescent defiance that led to his sense of narcissism and avoidance behavior. Through a better understanding of Chris’s family dynamic, we can start to understand Chris’s behavior, and perhaps our own. In the novel, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, we see the authoritarian parent personified in Walt McCandless and the long term effects that such a parenting style has on his son, Christopher Johnson McCandless.

...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him is not a story of one character, but rather of a people. Rivera, much like in the Actos of El Teatro Campesino, basically uses a stock character. Although each story seemingly gives more detail and specificity to the character, it can also be interpreted as doing the exact opposite. In telling of the life of one, Rivera in turn reveals the lives of many. Even though specific details of each of their lives were obviously different, the core issues still remained; Chicanos needed change and they needed it immediately. One of the most noticeable techniques Rivera uses within his novel is the constant changing of the point-of-view. The novel is centered on an unnamed male protagonist, however, throughout the story the point-of-view ranges from that of a mother praying for her son unwillingly fighting in Vietnam to that of an omniscient narrator, capable of entering anyone’s heads. This often times seemed to be very random and even abrupt. However, it was through the sporadic sprinklings of changes in point-of-views that Rivera was able to not only showcase cultural struggles of the time, but also call for social change as well as reveal the confusion and uncertainty of the people themselves.

In Frantz Fanon’s text “Concerning Violence” he establishes his response to colonization and decolonization to be the simple act of violence against the oppressor. I find that Fanon’s reasoning’s for using the sole practice of violence to directly reflect his past experiences. Fanon was affected directly and indirectly by experiencing the Fascist and Colonial violence as an African man and also witnessing the atrocities of his peers while growing up in Martinique. He also witnessed the atrocities of WWII when he fought against Nazi Germany and during the Algerian War as Algerians tried to gain independence from France. His only answer to the dehumanizing violent atrocities was to fight back with extreme violence to regain freedom from the world’s

Frantz Fanon argues the decolonization must always be a violent phenomenon because resisting a colonizing power using only politics will not work. Europeans justified colonization by treating it as gods work. They believed that god wanted then to occupy all lands and spread the word of god to savages of darker skin color. Fanon joined the Algerian Nationalist Movement when the Algeria was being colonized be the French. Many examples of violence written of in The Wretched of the Earth were taken from the struggle for independence in Algeria. Also the writing is sympathetic towards colonized natives. Fanon claims decolonization causes violent actions from both settlers and natives and creates intolerant