All around the world, people are suffering and being killed everyday. At this point of time, several wars and several kinds of wars are being fought. Everyday, in horrifying bloodsheds, men, women and children’s lives will be lost due to human harm but when you live thousands of miles away from the suffering it is easy to simply just look the other way. In Be Here Now by author, Miguel Syjuco from 2010 theses are just some of the problems that are being present-ed. Through a story, where pictures are the binding element, the first person narrator and the depressed and poor main character is used to send a message. A message, that wars, killing and violence should not be tolerated and that we have to take action.
Be Here Now is written in …show more content…
The horrifying experiences and scenery, the main character had to witness and go through as a photographer in a war zone has influenced his ordinary life. He can no longer feel or handle happiness neither allow other people’s happiness, “What I see is implied incompleteness, tacit neediness.”(l. 105-106) but instead he sees it other peo-ple’s happiness as a cry for attention. The major impact of what he witnessed causes him to question his whole life and living, “I don’t remember what goal I’d set out to pursue.”(180-181) and what he earlier was so proud of now gives him the feeling that he has “grown into a vulture”(l.59) though his colleagues disagree. This suggests that his experience has caused him to reflect on his job and doings. Also, he states that he is the exact opposite of soldiers and aid workers (l.39-40) and as these are often considered to be good, it suggests that he has a guilty conscience. This point is underlined by the sentence, “… they impatient to change things while I rushed to capture things before they could change.”(l.40-41) in which his own percep-tion of his jobs is mirrored, as he feels as if his kind are the reasons why things are not chang-ing. This, due to the fact that photographers benefit from war situations, hunger, massacres …show more content…
Through the text, the readers are made aware of the fact that the narrator has troubles combining the two worlds that he lives in but with sentences like, “The photos Jenna has emailed of the houses we could choose as ours, their bathrooms brightened by flash and a tantalising fragment of Jenna chanced in the mir-ror, served to both highlight the bloodshed and make it more unreal and therefore more bear-able.”(l41-44) the readers get an idea of what is going on in the narrator’s mind and hereby, it becomes easier to sympathise with him. Also, the photos show how the narrator sees and un-derstands his ordinary life, as it, in comparison to the bloodshed, seems trivial and insignifi-cant. Moreover, the narrator uses a picture of himself as a boy to state that pictures always will fill in the gaps of lost memory, “…though the picture and my parents’ stories have con-vinced me that I remembered it well. (l. 81-21). Hereby, it works a symbol of how he will nev-er be able to forget what he saw during his time in a war zone, as the pictures will always bring all the memories back. Hereby, the pictures are not only used to keep a main thread that combines all of the narrator’s different worlds, they are also symbols of him never being able to forget and thereby, the cause of his
Be Here Now is written in …show more content…
The horrifying experiences and scenery, the main character had to witness and go through as a photographer in a war zone has influenced his ordinary life. He can no longer feel or handle happiness neither allow other people’s happiness, “What I see is implied incompleteness, tacit neediness.”(l. 105-106) but instead he sees it other peo-ple’s happiness as a cry for attention. The major impact of what he witnessed causes him to question his whole life and living, “I don’t remember what goal I’d set out to pursue.”(180-181) and what he earlier was so proud of now gives him the feeling that he has “grown into a vulture”(l.59) though his colleagues disagree. This suggests that his experience has caused him to reflect on his job and doings. Also, he states that he is the exact opposite of soldiers and aid workers (l.39-40) and as these are often considered to be good, it suggests that he has a guilty conscience. This point is underlined by the sentence, “… they impatient to change things while I rushed to capture things before they could change.”(l.40-41) in which his own percep-tion of his jobs is mirrored, as he feels as if his kind are the reasons why things are not chang-ing. This, due to the fact that photographers benefit from war situations, hunger, massacres …show more content…
Through the text, the readers are made aware of the fact that the narrator has troubles combining the two worlds that he lives in but with sentences like, “The photos Jenna has emailed of the houses we could choose as ours, their bathrooms brightened by flash and a tantalising fragment of Jenna chanced in the mir-ror, served to both highlight the bloodshed and make it more unreal and therefore more bear-able.”(l41-44) the readers get an idea of what is going on in the narrator’s mind and hereby, it becomes easier to sympathise with him. Also, the photos show how the narrator sees and un-derstands his ordinary life, as it, in comparison to the bloodshed, seems trivial and insignifi-cant. Moreover, the narrator uses a picture of himself as a boy to state that pictures always will fill in the gaps of lost memory, “…though the picture and my parents’ stories have con-vinced me that I remembered it well. (l. 81-21). Hereby, it works a symbol of how he will nev-er be able to forget what he saw during his time in a war zone, as the pictures will always bring all the memories back. Hereby, the pictures are not only used to keep a main thread that combines all of the narrator’s different worlds, they are also symbols of him never being able to forget and thereby, the cause of his