Nicole Esposito- Chapters 28-30
1. When Mark contemplates suicide, a lot is running through his mind. He wonders if anybody will miss him and if he is doing the right thing. I’m not sure if I feel Mark’s decisions are justrifyable because he has lived through more than many people experience in their lifetime at just the age of 10. The reason I feel that this is possible not justifiable is because he is a little boy who should not ever be considering suicide howver his life isn’t going to get much better than what it already is.
When Mark witnesses the murder, his life changes forever. I think he realizes that this could happen to him if he isn’t careful with his life. When he is thinking about suicide, as stated before, he wonders if anybody will miss him. I think those thoughts are justifiable but the actual act of his suicide isn’t. If his mother wasn’t there to save him, I think that Mark would have actually, and unfortunately, gone through with the suicide. After this event, Mark starts to appreciate his family more. As terrible as this event was, I think that it really taught him a lesson.
2. Chapter 27; page 162:
“Alexandra continued to be the decaying shantytown it was before I was born, the police continued with their raids; children continued dying of malnutrition; the gutters continued to overflow with filth, an hovels continued mushrooming all over the place; families continued being deported to the tribal reserves; I continued going to school and to the movies and playing soccer; waves of immigrant workers continued arriving in Alexandra-this time however, they were being housed in newly built hostels (constructed where houses has been demolished) instead of compounds, there was talk that eventually, the whole of Alexandra would be nothing but hostels; our neighbours continued accusing one another of witchcraft ; my father continued drinking and gambling, and quarrelling with my mother, often beating her up. In short, the suffering of black people continued on the increase, and I continued getting the feeling that we, black of Alexandra, were like animals, quarantined inside a cage-by the white man-fomenting ignorance and death-and that there was nothing we could do about it but await, each, our violent end.”
I chose this paragraph in particular not because it was a life changing moment for ME to say, but I think it clearly changed Mark’s life. Mark’s life sometimes comes across as monotonous and dreary. We can see from this paragraph that he is starting to realize how this same routine everyday of his life, between the violence and prejudice, can affect his will to live. He knows things in Alexandra are never going to change for the better as long as he is still living there. As much as he doesn’t want to believe that he is going to suffer through a lot of his life, Mark has accepted the fact that he will be facing many bitter times.
3. 1. When his mother comes out to see Mark with a knife in his hand, ready to kill, she stops and comforts him saying that she would “miss him more than anything else. I would want to die too if you were to die.” Why does Mark’s mother favor him more than any of the other children?
- 2. It’s ironic that Mark names Part Two “Passport to Knowledge.” Why would he want to include something that causes so much trouble in his family (passbooks) in such a pivotal moment in his life?