Different Cultures And Traditions

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Different culture and traditions

Are we free or not in this world?

Using texts from different cultures and traditions discuss how free will or determinism in form of development or outcome of the stories. (1500 – 2500 words)

        I believe that we are not so free in this world even though most people would like to think we are. Our lives are controlled by many factors which we do not seem to notice. Some people accept what their future is and live with it, with out even attempting to change it. Fortunately thought there are also the same amounts of people who can see their own future but strive to do what ever they can to change it for the better. Now through out this essay I will compare two stories which are “Veronica” and “Country Lovers”.  There are many instances in these stories of how if the main character in the story made a different decision than the outcome of the story would have been completely different. So we will see what might have happened if the character made a different choice later on in this piece but first I will talk about the different points of view brought out in these stories.

        We shall start of with the story of Veronica. This story is of a girl and a boy who are best friend and they live in quite a poor village in Africa and the boy Okeke gets a chance to go to the city and study at university due to a scholarship which he had won and Okeke asks Veronica to come but she decides to stay. When Okeke, after finishing his course at university as a doctor comes back to the village he sees Veronica in her dying moments. When Okeke asks to save her she refuses because her husband had died and her son had died also so she had nothing else to live for.   Now Okeke thinks Veronica should have left with him and become his secretary and should have attended night classes where as Veronica thinks she should stay because she hates to leave her family behind even though her father was a brute and beat her.  

        If we were to compare the points of view established in the story ‘Veronica’ with the raised in the story of ‘Country Lovers’. (This is the story of Thebedi and Paulus.) This story introduces Paulus Eysendyck, a white farmer’s son, and Thebedi, the black daughter of one of the farm workers. As children, Paulus and Thebedi played together, but when they are teenagers they begin a sexual relationship. They have tender feelings for each other, even though their relationship is ultimately doomed in the end. Thebedi marries Njabulo, a kind young black man who has loved her for years. Two months later, Thebedi gives birth to a light-skinned child.€€ That Thebedi is pregnant when she marries is not considered scandalous because men in this culture often insist on finding out before marriage if their women are barren. The child’s light skin, however, reveals who the father really is. Still, Njabulo treats the baby as if the child were his own. Paulus learns that Thebedi has married and has a light-skinned child. He panics about the child and visits Thebedi in her hut. He asks her to give the baby to someone else to raise, but she does not. Two days later, he asks to see the child alone. Waiting outside the hut, Thebedi hears soft groaning sounds, and the baby soon dies. Officials discover that the baby was poisoned, and Paulus is arrested. Initially, Thebedi says that she knows he poisoned the baby, but when the trial comes, she claims that she does not know what he did in the hut. Paulus is set free. There are clearly two separate points of view which you can clearly see. The point of view of Paulus and Njabulo. Now Paulus is very judgemental and slightly racist. I say this because he wanted to and did kill the baby just because it was light skinned. I can also say this because of the following quote “you must give it to someone” this proves he is quite racist because he is calling the baby an ‘it’ who is quite disrespectful. Also there is also a quote which suggests that he could have been the one to kill the baby “I feel like killing it myself” this also adds some extra evidence against him for killing the baby. And then there is the point of view of Njabulo which is he loves the baby so much he uses the small wages which he gets from his farm work to buy the baby what ever it needs and could ever want. He is such a devoted father. But then again though I suspect that Njabulo might not believe that the baby is not his, I say this because of what he says “for Thebedi’s birthday” notice he says Thebedi’s baby and not their or his birthday which makes me say that he does believe within himself that the baby is his own. I suspect he may think that because the baby has got light coloured skin and because they are both black he would have thought that the baby would have had the same coloured skin as the parent and because the baby’s skin is light coloured he might suspect that Thebedi might have had an affair with a white man and got pregnant and had a baby.

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        Now we can move on to analyse the language which is used in these texts.  Now the language which is used in these two stories are very expressive, they allow us to feel what the character are feelings. I will start to analyse the language used in the story of Veronica. And then I will move to analyse the story of Country Lovers. This in my opinion is a very heart felt and emotional story and I feel it is quite sad that the baby died in the end and that no body was convicted for the death of the ...

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