Thursday, October 23, 2014

Exploration 5- Fathia Mohamed.

1. besides Ishmae, Alhaji has meant the most to me so far. He has been there throughout the entire story. I think that in a way he and Ishmael have become brothers. He went through something awful just like Ishmael, and has been on the same ride.

2. I don’t think the rehabilitation is possible. I think it works for some people because they want it, but I don’t think it does much. These boys have had too much happen too fast for them. I personally wouldn’t want him to live in my neighborhood because anything can trigger a memory that might make him violent.  It’s a scary idea to know that your neighbor could be a ticking time bomb.

3. I think that the most interesting convention that he uses is his sensory details. On page 157, he says “I felt as if I had had nails hammered into the bones of my foot and my veins were being chiseled. I felt so much pain that I was unable to cry out loud; tears just fell from my eyes”.  I like this passage because he describes the amount of pains he’s feeling in a way that you can feel it. Even if you have never been in that much pain.

4.   On page 160, he says “That night, as I sat on the verandah listening to some of the boys discusses the volleyball game I had missed, I tried to think about my childhood days, but it was impossible, as I began getting flashbacks of the first time I slit a man’s throat. The scene kept surfacing in my memory like lightning on a dark rainy night, and each time it happened, I heard a sharp cry in my head that made my spine hurt”. This really impacted me because it shows that even though he’s done this before and many times over, thinking about the first time still makes him feel sick.

1 comment:

  1. So I believe differently than what you believe with rehabilitation. I think that with love, time, and patience you can break through to a lot of people, no matter what the circumstance. I do believe that the person has to want it to, that they need to believe in themselves and in hope to get better. So, in that respect I completely agree with you. It's hard to change yourself when your heart and mind aren't in it and there's so much that other people can do to help.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.