“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools”. In the quote by Martin Luther King Jr., he expresses how trying to stay divided was a foolish idea compared to learning to coexist with one another. The quote shares similar aspects to the overall theme of collection one, which is ‘finding common ground’. With the stories Once Upon a Time by Nadine Gordimer, The Vietnam Wall by Alberto Rios, and Rituals of Memories by Kimberly M. Blaeser, they all shared a common theme. In a more detailed sense, the overall theme of these three texts was that people must learn to coexist with one another, to live as one. With the aid of symbolism and imagery, each author conveyed their theme with the rhetoric differently in how they were
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Nadine tells of a life lesson through the use of a morbid fairy tale structure. How a ‘happily ever after family’ went to great lengths to protect themselves from the fear of others. Constantly upgrading their security to the point they were considered considered to be ‘concentration-camp style’ walls, cited from line one hundred and seventy-one, on page sixteen. The first sign of upgrade found in lines seventy-eight, on page thirteen, “-he had electronically controlled gates fitted” before turning it into a constant action throughout the story. In Once Upon a Time, Gordimer used quite a few symbols to support the theme of fear: the wall around the family’s complex, the little boy, and the grandmother. The wall represented division apartheid, the little boy was the innocence caught in the crossfire, and the grandmother was the one who stimulated the parents decision for being separated from others. Ultimately, in the end though, the little boy dies ironically from the security meant to protect them. Overall, Gordimer’s morbid lesson conveys how the conflict in society and inability to coexist can contribute into a more dire outcome than originally intended. So learning to adapt and coexist with one another can prevent more negative outcomes and events from
Nadine tells of a life lesson through the use of a morbid fairy tale structure. How a ‘happily ever after family’ went to great lengths to protect themselves from the fear of others. Constantly upgrading their security to the point they were considered considered to be ‘concentration-camp style’ walls, cited from line one hundred and seventy-one, on page sixteen. The first sign of upgrade found in lines seventy-eight, on page thirteen, “-he had electronically controlled gates fitted” before turning it into a constant action throughout the story. In Once Upon a Time, Gordimer used quite a few symbols to support the theme of fear: the wall around the family’s complex, the little boy, and the grandmother. The wall represented division apartheid, the little boy was the innocence caught in the crossfire, and the grandmother was the one who stimulated the parents decision for being separated from others. Ultimately, in the end though, the little boy dies ironically from the security meant to protect them. Overall, Gordimer’s morbid lesson conveys how the conflict in society and inability to coexist can contribute into a more dire outcome than originally intended. So learning to adapt and coexist with one another can prevent more negative outcomes and events from