The End Result

Originally I was considering changing my book halfway through, because I was seriously disturbed by a few scenes. However, I am the kind of person who cannot put a book down when they start and in the end was grateful for it. A Thousand Splendid Suns was a beautifully written story that informed me of not only the history of Afghanistan within the last thirty years but also their culture and religion. Reading the book made me so much more appreciative of my country and freedoms as an individual and more specifically as a woman.

Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns is the story of two women living in Afghanistan. Throughout the story, there is a background history of the last thirty years and the devastation that the war has brought to their city and country. After reading the book, it was really interesting to read the author’s biography and learn that Khaled Hosseini was actually born in Afghanistan. As well, the city that most of the setting took place in, Kabul was the city that he grew up in. Khaled and his family were granted political asylum in America when the war broke out in Kabul. After 27 years, Khaled returned to Afghanistan and was shocked by the devastation that the war had brought to his hometown. He spoke with many people on the street and found that there was still a traditional spirit of hospitality and generosity with their tragic stories. This trip not only sparked the beginning of his work to provide humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan through The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, but also his next book, A Thousand Splendid Suns. The story wasn’t necessarily based on a specific life story he heard on the streets, but rather on the collective impact the war had on specifically women and children.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

I really like Khaled Hosseini's style of writing. In terms of vocabulary it's very simplistic; however I found this book hard to read because of the actual events. I found that I had to read this story in intervals because of the powerful emotional response to the characters’ struggles. I would say one of his greatest qualities as a writer is his ability to paint a vivid image in your mind; although sometimes I wished he didn’t have this ability because at times they were graphic and horrifying. It’s a reality that you don’t want to face or believe could be real.

Sarah's Key

Some of the major theme's uncovered in the novel Sarah's Key are knowledge vs. ignorance and secracy. Knowledge vs. Ignorance is a crucial theme throughout the book in not only Sarah's case but Julia's as well. For example, on page 40 Sarah comes to a realization that maybe things would have been easier to cope with if she just knew about the problems associated with Jews:

"As she looked at Eva and her mother, the girl wondered if her parents had been right to protect her from everything, if they had been right to keep disturbing, bad news away from her. If they had been right not to explain why so many things had changed for them since the beginning of the war. Like when Eva's husband never came back last year. He had disappeared. Where? Nobody would tell her. Nobody would explain. She hated being treated like a baby. She hated the voices being lowered when she entered the room. If they had told her, if they had told her everything they knew, wouldn't that have made today easier?"

This quotation also, connects with secracy. The parents chose to hide the information about the war and what was going on to protect Sarah's innoncence, and not get her involved with grown-up troubles. This is just the beginning to a book filled with "key" secrets and "key" events.

Sarah's Key

While reading Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay I paid close attention to not only the tone of her writing but the varying degree of seperation between the two protagonists. Sarah's Key is composed of two interweaving storylines: Sarah, in the past and Julia's quest in the present day. The structure of the novel in the first chapter of Sarah's Key Sarah, an eleven year old Jewish girl, describes the tragic day when her family was taken to the Velodrome d'Hiver on July 16th, 1942 and further sent to a concentration camp in France. In the second chapter, however, there is a total shift in character and mood, instead of hearing more about Sarah and her troubles the reader is introduced to a new character altogether, Julia Jaramond an American reporter living in Paris. This reporter has just been told by her director to write an article on the events that took place at the Velodrome d'Hiver, in the midst of her research Julia comes across Sarah's story and how they are connected through their Parisian apartment. After a constant back and fourth between setting and characters Sarah's perspective is completely removed from the chapters starting on page 167, and taken over by Julia alone. At this point, Julia takes on Sarah's story on her own and searches for the ending herself. This twist adds connectedness to the novel along with the additional mystery.

Sarah's Key

The New York Times best seller, Sarah's Key, is a story filled with sorrow and mystery. Written by Tatiana De Rosnay this profound novel was published in 2007 and has brought light to a Parisian tradedy of the past, the Jewish round-up that took place at the Velodrome d'Hiver on July 16th, 1942. This historical event is the only non-fiction element portrayed in De Rosnay's novel and it is important to understand what exactly happened in Paris at that time in order to be fully empowered by this epic novel.

Velodrome d'Hiver a.k.a La Grande Rafle

Early on the morning of July 16th, 1942, the French police, acting under orders from the German Gestapo, took over 13,000 Jewish men, women, and children from their beds. Most of the adults were sent directly to the concentration camp at Drancy, while parents with children remained at the Velodrome d'Hiver, an indoor stadium used for bicycle races and other various events, for days without food. While the Jewish families waited inside the hot stadium with no washrooms or places to sleep the French police scanned the city of Paris for the remainder of the Jews that were to be brought to the stadium. For six days straight the horrified prisoners of the Velodrome d'Hiver endured physical indignity while French police stood by doing nothing to prevent the future genocide. After a week at the stadium all Jews were shipped to different concentration camps across France and Germany where they were seperated from their families and murdered.

This was a shameful time in history for France that is rarely talked about today, and will always be remembered through De Rosnay's story, Sarah's Key.

HEART OF DARKNESS: THE CRITICS

Criticism of Joseph Conrad’s famous work is extensive. Many critics accuse Conrad as being an imperialist, a sexist, and a racist; I would like to focus on the latter. Conrad, a racist – many feel he is simply a product of his era. Most Europeans during this time denied any possibility that Africans could have their own culture. Europeans dominated and dehumanized the Africans. Chinua Achebe, an African, criticizes Conrad as an “extreme” racist. Achebe blames Conrad for playing into the Western world’s stereotyping of Africa. He believes that Conrad is prejudice of both his country and his people. He claims that Conrad held views that dehumanize Africans, their “savage” behaviour, and accuses him of encouraging Africans to be “in their place” which included performing activities such as singing, shouting etc. Also, Achebe states that Conrad attempted to create a barrier between himself and the characters by using a framed narrative, a story within a story, to resist exposure. Achebe’s accusations of Conrad being unquestionably racist are met by Wilson Harris, who comes to Conrad’s defence by saying, “he missed the point”. Harris believes the novella can be read as racist but it was made this way on purpose. He believes that Heart of Darkness is a parody; everything that the character says and thinks from the European’s colonial attitude, to his protagonist’s condescending sympathies, is intentional. Harris states that Conrad does his job so well that as a result he appears racist. Harris believes that Achebe is unable to comprehend the depth of what Conrad has written. Harris accuses Achebe of being biased and critical of any literature that is not written by an African. Achebe does not acknowledge Conrad’s message. The novella is not about a journey into the heart of the Congo, but rather a journey into the soul of man. This human experience is what Conrad is talking about. Harris believes the characters needed a place to go and where better than the unexplored part of the world to discover one’s soul.

“THE HORROR” of King Leopold II

In 1884, the Berlin Conference assembled to finalize the “carving of the magnificent African cake” as quoted by Belgian’s King Leopold II. In attendance were the late 19^th century imperialist states given that during this time, all the major European powers were colonizing. King Leopold II had a particular interest in the Congo which notably was not owned by the Kingdom of Belgium but rather, it was the king’s very own personal property, a private colony in the heart of the Central African rainforest. The Congo, rich with natural resources and cheap labour, was a success formula for wealth which King Leopold II undoubtedly recognized. His domination and power over this colony became his legacy, a legacy of greed and horrid violence. The terror caused by King Leopold’s enforcers if trade quotas were not met was described as unsurpassed barbarism. As quoted by genocide scholar, Adam Jones, “Male rubber tappers and porters were mercilessly exploited and driven to death. Leopold’s agents held the wives and children of these men hostage until they returned with their rubber quota. Those who refused or failed to supply enough rubber had their villages burned down, children murdered, and hands cut off.” There are stories of soldiers and officials that returned from expeditions with strings of ears or collections of amputated hands. In addition, the chicotte, a hippo-hide whip, was widely used as a means of punishing and quickly became the feared symbol of Leopold’s administration. Joseph Conrad’s famous novella, Heart of Darkness, perhaps best captured the dehumanizing of the Africans as quoted, “the horror, the horror”! King Leopold II is often compared to a subsequent European tyrant, Adolf Hitler. To his legacy, King Leopold II turned his Congo, his “heart of darkness”, into a massive labour camp, reaped a fortune from its natural resources, and contributed to the death of over ten million innocent Africans. To this day, this African holocaust has clearly - never recovered.