Chapters 25-28–Ford
1. I do believe that Mark’s thoughts of suicide are justifiable. In those conditions and the horrendous events that occur where he lives, suicide seems like something everybody would consider. When he saw that man die right in front of him, he was so scared and shocked when he got home that he had passed out twice! The cruel things that the tsotsis did to the man- for nothing more than the pennies in his pockets and the food (or whatever it was) in the bags-would definitely make me consider suicide seriously. Mark definitely went through an overwhelming experience that his 10 year old body could not handle
Also, his real life practically just beginning, he knows that there is also a very long and trecherous journey ahead of him. He has only seen a few of the struggles that he will have to live with and overcome as he gets older and has a family. Digging in the trash for food when there is not enough money to pay for groceries, neck deep in debt when jobless, and 18 hour work days to make sure that your family won’t get kicked out of the house for not paying the bills. Every single one of these details he is going to have to live with, along with the common raids of the police. Watching his dad go crazy and his mom overwork herself, he knows that that is what he is going to have to do for himself to stay alive and that is something that he definitely does not want to do.
Not only is he having to work extremely hard just to keep alive, but he has some major stress with school and his junkyard friend. After being beaten at school for missing out and being bedridden for a week afterwards, school doesn’t seem like the kind of place where you can work out your problems. If anything, it’s a place that creates problems. He doesn’t want to be beaten for not having books he can’t afford. Stress definitely added to the suicidal thoughts. His thinking process was definitely justifiable with the circumstances he has encountered.
2. Page 166 – One thing I do know was that I could not understand the morbid cruelty and satanic impulses that drove people to kill others. For what? I asked myself. What is to be gained from killing a fellow-sufferer? Why, instead of reaching out and helping each other, were some black people bent on hurting one another? Why, in the place of llove and compassion, were there implacable hate and anger and jealousy? I could not see myself living the rest of my life under such conditions – to me life meant love, understanding, compassion. Yet, I asked myself, “What other world was there to run to?”
The question derew a blank. I began pitying myself for living in those times. I became a loner; I could not eat; I could not sleep; my schoolwork suffered; and I seldom went out to play as I used to. I would instead spend days brooding over my helplessness and the senslessnes of the unbroken cycle of pain and suffering searing my mind and sapping my strength day after day. Why was life so hard, so without hope and promise?
I could not answer. Would life ever change for me? My sensitivity to the world around me made e soak all its suffering like a sponge soaking brackish water. Soon my mind was saturated, my being enervated, yet my soul continued to live and hope for better days. At ten years old I thought myself young’ that maybe things would get better as I got older and was able to take responsibility fr my own life. I filled myself with such hope and continued to cling to a silver lining, which seemed to disappear as rapidly as my desperation to cling to it increased. I had never felt more alone and helpless in the world.
I think this scene where the aftermath of the death of the man was the most life-altering scene so far. He has seen deaths before, and they haven’t effected him nearly as much. But this death that he witnessed firsthand was something that he was always going to carry with him. An ominous reminder of the apartheid that he lived with for so long. This scene shows how much the segregation can change people; not just blacks and whites, but blacks within themselves. Segregation and the prosperity that these people had to live with caused them to become destitute, uneducated, and sometimes killers. I think now, Mark is finally understanding how deep this apartheid and destitution really effects him and everyone else; how this is going to effect him for the rest of his life.
3. How will Mark live with this situation? How will segregation effect him beyond the thoughts of suicide? Will he keep living with it or will he go and try to stop it like he has thought of before?