The Rwandan Girl Who Refused to Die

The article that I read was The Rwandan Girl Who Refused to Die. It was a sad story about a 13 yr old girl, and what she had to go through during this terrible time. She tells a story to a reporter about how people were murdering others, even children and pregnant women, and how she recognized one of the murderers to be her neighbour. For this article, it relates to the essential question, Does evil or fear lead one of the following; experience of violence, infliction of violence and/or observation of violence? I think that after reading the part of the article where they were interviewing a grandfather who was murdering children is a good example to answering the EQ. He said, "You see all those people in the church had children. Many were carrying them on their backs but none survived. Everyone was killed. We couldn't spare the children's lives. Our orders were to kill everyone." Linking back to the essential question, does evil or fear lead to the infliction of violence. I would say fear is what makes them do it, not evil. The grandfather said that some of his crimes and has implicated some of his friends and neighbours, hoping to save himself from the firing squad. He was scared of death coming upon himself, so he gave it to others so that he could survive.

The part I found really sad was not only just the deaths, but the way people were killing them. Smashing in their heads, throwing grenades, and decapitating them, all in front of everybody, even their own children. Valentina, the 13 yr old girl, got her fingers cut off and had 2 big gashes in the back of her head. It's amazing how she managed to survive through it all.

The author conveyed imagery into the article, because they used very descriptive language and you can see it all as if you were there. The pictures on the sides also helped me get a sense of how bad the wounds actually were. Some words that made the article more powerful were, for example, dramatically, massacre, brutally, etc. Just by looking at those 3 words, it pretty much sums up the whole article.

The Cask of Amontillado

The Cask of Amontillado was a story, about how two men, went looking for Amontillado's crypt. A dead man. The author made it seem like you were in the underground with them. He used very descriptive words and explained what was happening very well. The mood of the story was kind of spooky and exciting. It was spooky because of all of the dead bodies that were surrounding the two characters as they were walking, and it was exciting because they were looking for a crypt that no one else has ever found. Some good techniques the author used was using good punctuation. For example, "You? Impossible! A mason?" The exclamation points in this dialogue helped me read it how it was meant to be said. If there was none, than the effect of the sentence wouldn't be that effective. The setting is developed around the underground and how all the dead bodies were surrounding them for about the whole time they were under there. The author conveyed evil into this story very well, because he used death. Death isn't evil, but it was the way he exclaimed it and made it sound very eerie that some people might automatically assume it is evil. It wasn't the two main characters that represented evil. I think it was Amontillado at the end that did, when he woke up from his crypt when he was supposed to be dead. Some factors that might of contributed to the characters behavior was the alcohol. Because when Fortunado threw the bottle upwards toward the roof of the bodies. The patterns in society that could've contributed to the behaviors of the characters, were the story and longing of finding Amontillado's crypt. Which no one has ever done before. The evil, darkness was conveyed in the story by mostly the setting. The setting impacted me the most, because of all of the dead bodies that were buried in the middle of a carnival. You'd think they'd be in a cemetery. It was also the setting because the whole time they were underground, there was dead peoples bones hanging out of the walls, and the roof.