Mother to Mother by Sindiwe Magona Analysis free essay sample

Mother to Mother The purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss, and analyze the book Mother to Mother by Sindiwe Magona. Specifically, it will critically analyze the book. The book Mother to Mother is a touching and elegant story of race relations and misunderstanding in South Africa. The author bases her book on a true incident, but looks at it from the eyes of a mother who loves her son but recognizes his inadequacies. It is a devastating look at apartheid, violence, and anger in a society long split between black and white. Well-written with emotion and pathos, it is a book that discovers the difficulties of reconciliation and continuing with life after the death of a loved one. This emotional book looks at both sides of a young white womans murder in a black township in South Africa. The book begins with the haunting line My son killed your daughter (Magona 1), and that line grabs the reader from the beginning, and makes them want to learn more about the two families and their responsibilities to themselves, and the their community. We will write a custom essay sample on Mother to Mother by Sindiwe Magona Analysis or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The book covers only two days chronologically, but the author skillfully uses flashbacks to look back on her life and the life of her son, to illustrate the hatred and violence at work in South African society that created such a monster as her son and the other killers. The mother is not unaware that her child has turned into something she cannot control, but she is also aware that the lifestyle of poor blacks in a dominant white society has been the spark that created the fire under the murderers. Coming from a life without hope, how can they see anything else for themselves? The fictional mother understands the white familys grief, but she is also strong enough to stand up and place part of the blame on their daughter, who walked straight into a deadly situation. She chides the couple, Yes, the more I think about this the more convinced I am that your daughter must have been the type of person who has absolutely no sense of danger when she believes in what she is doing (Magona 2). This is a difficult position for any mother to take, but in recognizing the truth of the matter, she is not only healing herself, she is standing up to the white family and saying that their daughter was a responsible adult. Clearly, she should have known the dangers of what she was doing, rather than looking at her situation only idealistically. Mandisa, the mother in the story, does not make excuses for her son, she knows his act was reprehensible, but she does understand his young life has been filled with despair, betrayal, and difficulty. She notes, Understand the people among whom he has lived all his life. Nothing my son does surprises me any more. Not after that first unbelievable shock, his implanting himself inside me; unreasonably and totally destroying the me I was. The me I would have become (Magona). Mandisa gave birth to her son when she was only fifteen, and it changed her life, just as it would change the young white girls life eventually. In an interview about the book, author Magona elaborates: It is a well-known fact that children of children are at high risk of not finishing school. Mandisa is a perfect example of the success of apartheidshe is the perfect product of that systemher talent is stillborn; so is that of her children. Society will never benefit from the gifts they brought to the world. I firmly believe no child is born without potential. Thus, by neglecting the young, we deny ourselves great blessings and rewards (Gray). Her son is fighting out against a system that kept his people oppressed for decades, and it is no surprise that he fights back with violence, which is really the only weapon he has. His mother wryly notes, We live here, fight and kill each other (Magona 3). This is an exceptional point in the novel, for the reader understands that the blacks can kill each other all they like, but when they step into the white world, they have crossed a line, and they will pay. Here is another reason the young black men rebel, they know there is a double standard, and the white do not care if they kill each other. It is a depressing and hopeless thought, and it is no wonder the young men lash out with violence and hatred. Magona herself asks the perplexing question, What was the world of this young womans killers, the world of those, young as she was young, whose environment failed to nurture them in the higher ideals of humanity and who, instead, became lost creatures of malice and destruction? Magona, Preface). She answers this throughout the book when she portrays the children on their own over a long weekend when Mandisas employer kept her instead of sending her home, or when the leave the political meeting chanting one settler, one bullet. Throughout the book, the differences between blacks and white are continually apparent, and the illustration of the ease of the idealistic young whites girls life, compared to the hardships the blacks face is someti mes difficult to read. The young white girl really has no idea of the conditions in the townships, and if she did, she would never have placed herself there in harms way. Resented by blacks, she was not doing good, she was an idealistic fool. Despite the best of intentions, this book shows there were simply too many differences separating blacks and whites in South Africa for a young white girl and her friends to make any progress in stalling apartheid.

Sample Essay in MLA Format

Sample Essay in MLA FormatIf you are looking for an opportunity to showcase your academic excellence and personality, a sample essay in MLA format is available for your convenience. This is a format that students of all levels can utilize as a format for submitting their papers. This format is very common in business applications such as the negotiation process.This particular sample essay in MLA format is quite different from other types of essays that you may find. It is used as a template to allow students to better express their thoughts and ideas regarding various topics that they want to include in their papers. It is also used to help students prepare for these types of situations. This format allows students to express themselves better and use more complex terminology that would otherwise be reserved for formal writing.The sample essay in MLA format should always be drafted with precision and this is due to the fact that MLA is not a formal writing style. You will need to ad d to your own ideas in order to achieve the goal of your essay. There is a tendency for students to just copy the ideas that they have read, but this is not recommended as it will make it hard for them to modify their work. By using your own ideas you will be able to be more creative and come up with better ideas that will not be easily found on a printed paper.When writing your sample essay in MLA format, you will need to place certain questions and thoughts within the essay. These questions and thoughts are using to facilitate you in formulating your own ideas as well as to give you enough information to guide you in making your own statements. This is what allows you to be more honest and truthful about your ideas. As you are writing the essay, you will be given opportunities to write a paragraph or a single sentence pertaining to the idea that you wish to emphasize. In this way you will have the opportunity to express your own thoughts and opinions regarding the idea.This format of essay in MLA format can be used in situations that you have been very specific about, such as in relation to a specific topic that you have chosen. If you have a specific topic, or if you were given a specific deadline, then this particular format is perfect for you.Another advantage of this particular format is that it is easy to revise your work with MLA format as it can be revised easily. You will not have to get your essay corrected due to grammar errors. This means that you will not need to spend a lot of time correcting your essay as you can simply go back to the start line and write a new one from there.If you do not like MLA format, then you can use a different style of writing such as MLA. It is up to you as to whether you want to use it or not, but whatever style you choose to use you will find it easier to express yourself in.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky essays

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky essays Crime and Punishment is a book written by Fyodor Dostoevsky who spent four years at a labour camp in Siberia, followed by four years of military service. Raskolnikov's time in a Siberian prison, described in the Epilogue of Crime and Punishment, is based on Dostoevsky's own experiences at a similar prison. Crime and Punishment is the story of a poor man in Russia who can only purge himself of his guilt through suffering. The book deals with the mental and physical tribulation brought upon him by his crime. His troubles are compounded by the conflicting personalities, which he possesses. The reader is inclined to characterize him by his cold, intellectual side. Yet, without the contrasting humane side of his nature, Raskolnikov never realizes the errors in his theory and actions. Raskolnikov is defined by the dualistic nature of his personality, with each facet being just as vital as the other. During his time in prison Fyodor Dostoevsky underwent something of a political conversion, rejecting the radical socialist positions that had led to his arrest in favour of a conservative concern for traditional values. His dismissal of leftist political thought is evident in Crime and Punishment. For instance, Raskolnikov's crime is motivated, in part, by his theories about society. Lebezyatnikov, whose name is derived from the Russian word for "fawning," is obsessed with the so-called new philosophies that raged through St. Petersburg during the time that Dostoevsky was writing the novel. Luzhin, a mid-level government official, is continually afraid of being "exposed" by "nihilists." Raskolnikov, the protagonist is a complicated man who commit a crime. Raskolnikov murders a woman who was a plague to mankind, especially the poor of Russia: Alyona Ivanovna. In the chilling process however, he also murders her younger sister, Lisaveta Ivanovna. The crime of Raskolnikov reverberates on a much deeper, moral level inside his own head. He igno...

Definition and Examples of Verbal Placeholders

Definition and Examples of Verbal Placeholders A placeholder is a word (such as whatchamacallit) used by speakers to signal that they dont know or cant remember a more precise word for something. Also known as a  kadigan, tongue-tipper, and dummy noun. Examples and Observations You need something to sell. Now this could be anything. It could be a thingamajig. Or a whosi-whatsi. Or [pulls out a Watchamacallit candy bar from his pocket] a Whatchamacallit.(Steve Carell as Michael Scott in Business Office, The Office)Work, the whats-its-name of the thingummy and the thing-um-a-bob of the what dyou-call-it.(P.G. Wodehouse, Psmith, Journalist, 1915)I have unspiked the sliding doors at the far end of the barn, so that the greatly increased flow of visitors can move past the whatchamacallit without eddies and backwash. In one end they go, and out the other.   (Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard. Delacorte Press, 1987)It will do magic,Believe it or not,Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.Now Salagadoola meansA-Menchika-boola-roo,But the thingamabobThat does the jobIs Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.(Al Hoffman, Mack David, and Jerry Livingston, Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo. Cinderella, 1950) Doodad doodad n (Variations: do-dad or do-funny or doofunny or do-hickey or doohickey or do-hinky or doohinky or do-jigger or doojigger or doowhangam or do-whistle or doowhistle or do-willie or doowillie) Any unspecified or unspecifiable thing: something one does not know the name of or does not wish to name.  (Barbara Ann Kipfer and Robert L. Chapman, American Slang, 4th ed. Collins Reference, 2008) Placeholders Placeholders . . . have little or no semantic meaning and should rather be interpreted pragmatically. The placeholder words that Channell discusses... are thing, thingummy (with the variants thingummyjig and thingummybob), whatsisname, whatnot, whosit, and whatsit... Incidentally, they are all defined as slang in Cassells Dictionary of Slang (2000)... The situation where the next dialogue occurs reveals that Fanny does not know the name of the boy who was laughing with Achil and uses thingie as a placeholder: Fanny: And I walked off and like I just walked away and Achil and thingy were laughing at, you know, just not at me at how how crap [name]Kate: [Yeah.]Fanny: had been and how I had to go away.(142304: 13-215) Thingamajig occurs four times with reference to an object and twice with reference to a person. In (107) we meet 14-year-old Carola and Semantha . . . from Hackney: Carola: Can I borrow your thingamajig?Semantha: I dont know what thingamajig it is.(14078-34) Semanthas reaction shows that there is no doubt that thingamajig belongs to the category of vague words. It obviously refers to an object that Carola would like to borrow, but Semantha apparently has no idea of what she is referring to.  (Anna-Brita Stenstrà ¶m et al., Trends in Teenage Talk: Corpus Compilation, Analysis, and Findings. John Benjamins, 2002) Douglas Adams on the Placeholder in Do-Re-Mi One particularly niggling piece of Unfinished Business, it occurred to me the other day in the middle of a singing session with my five-year-old daughter, is the lyrics to ‘Do-Re-Mi,’ from The Sound of Music... Each line of the lyric takes the names of a note from the sol-fa scale, and gives it meaning: ‘Do (doe), a deer, a female deer; Re (ray), a drop of golden sun,’ etc. All well and good so far. ‘Mi (me), a name I call myself; Fa (far), a long, long way to run.’ Fine. I’m not saying this is Keats, exactly, but it’s a perfectly good conceit and it’s working consistently. And here we go into the home stretch. ‘So (sew), a needle pulling thread.’ Yes, good. ‘La, a note to follow so . . . What? Excuse me? ‘La, a note to follow so . . . What kind of lame excuse for a line is that?â€Å"Well, it’s obvious what kind of line it is. It’s a placeholder. A placeholder is what a writer puts in when he can’t think of the right line or idea just at the moment, but he’d better put in something and come back and fix it later. So, I imagine that Oscar Hammerstein just bunged in a ‘a note to follow so’ and thought he’d have another look at it in the morning.Only when he came to have another look at it in the morning, he couldn’t come up with anything better. Or the next morning. Come on, he must have thought, this is simple. Isn’t it? La . . . a something, something ... what?’...â€Å"How difficult can it be? How about this for a suggestion? ‘La, a ... a ...well, I can’t think of one at the moment, but I think that if the whole world pulls together on this, we can crack it.(Douglas Adams, Unfinished Business of the Century. The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time. Macmillan, 2002)

The Process of Recruitment of the New Employees Essay - 1

The Process of Recruitment of the New Employees - Essay Example Conversely, the selection process starts when the applications from the interested candidates are received, when the organization now performs short-listing and determination of the best candidates for the job (Cooper and Robertson, 2000). In this process of recruitment and selection, the organization tries to identify those individuals with the right skill sets to work in the organization, and before they are inducted into the organization, they have to be interviewed and trained to attain the skills that they need to perform the tasks that they are being hired for. In the hiring process, the organization can decide to perform external or internal recruitment and selection, where the candidates are chosen from within or outside the organization. The selection process for the employees can involve many processes, but the most common one is the selection interview, where the potential candidate is put in front of a panel and interviewed to determine the ability to work for the organization (Cooper and Robertson, 2000). The selection interview process has been criticized by many experts, but many organizations still prefer to use it for the selection process. As part of the selection process, many organizations will usually conduct interviews to determine the competences of the different applicants and select the best applicant for the job. The selection interview process is used by the employer as an assessment or evaluation of the potential employee for the job at hand. The selection interview process can take many different formats, for example, the telephone interview used by the interview before any other interview. The telephone interview is usually used by the employer before any other interview process and is used as a way of reducing potential applicants for the job (Warr, 2003). After the pre-interview phase, the other formats include the panel interview, which is the most common format used by employers.

A streetcar name desire and death of a salesman Essay

A streetcar name desire and death of a salesman - Essay Example In the real sense Willy was a failure as a father as well as a salesman (Miller 62). In his funereal, his wife wondered aloud on the whereabouts of his friends as he seemed to a famous person. His past reshaped his present to be a famous person and an achiever, as these are the things that he hoped for the future. His past was a mere channel of protecting his failures that are vivid in his future life. As seen in the work of Miller, William has been described as a romantic person in an unromantic world, as Christopher Bigsby describes him (33). This relates to the fact that his lifestyle does not represent the real lifestyle he hoped to achieve. Willy’s life is indeed tragic in his own aspect, but one could actually define his life as a tragedy. His life can be compared to that of an ugly an unromantic person. Willy’s uncertainties actually affect his lifestyle. He represents some forms of uncertainty that led to his misery in the time of his death. Blanche is an ingenious re-creator of the self who was bewildered with the destructive ability of Stanley who did not need to strain much to conceal the aspects that shaped his past life. The force symbolized by Stanley is one that Blanche explains to be a destructive one (Miller 80-164). It is evident that the fantasy world that shapes an individual’s past indeed protects the reality of life as seen in Blanche

Love for an Underacheiving Team :: Personal Narrative Writing

Love for an Underacheiving Team Sitting in a green wooden seat marked number â€Å"3† in the second row of section 27, I saw Sammy Sosa practice swinging near the dugout. His forearms and shoulders bulged giving a muscular shape to the blue and red Cubs jersey. His thighs were as thick as baby cedar trees. Sammy stepped up to the plate calmly. As he tightened his blue batting gloves snug around his wrists, he also dug two spots for placing his feet. I heard chants from the rising crowd behind the Cubs dugout â€Å"M-V-P, M-V-P!†. In Wrigley Ville, a small residential region of northern Chicago, he’s often referred to as â€Å"Slammin† Sammy Sosa. The Cubs captain lead the National League with 63 home runs surpassing Babe Ruth’s 1927 and Roger Maris’ 1961 records for the second time in his career. Any baseball card will tell you that he stands six feet tall and weighs 220 pounds. However, a baseball card won’t admit that Sammy hit a ball nearly le ngth of two football fields. At 1:30 p.m. that Sunday, Waveland avenue residents knew that their homes were in danger of Sosa’s homeruns flying into their yards or worse – their windows. * * * * Trips to Chicago were not something I could do regularly. Six courses at MIT kept me busy enough that a weekend out of town would disrupt my study schedule. An inexpensive ticket and really good reason would allow me to travel home. During early October, flights were selling for half the normal prices since the devastating terrorist attacks of September 11th. I had no fears of flying unlike some of my paranoid colleagues so I bought a United Airlines ticket to go home. I wanted to see two things: my family and the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. * * * * The cheers for Sammy renewed an energy that I lacked for the three years of college. The boisterous voice of the crazed fan sunk deep into my eardrum, â€Å"Let’s go Sammy, hit one out for me, baby.† The Internet radio version of the Cubs games over the last three years never produced this type of quality.