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Global Experience - Coggle Diagram
Global Experience
Self-Worth/Acceptance.
In the novel Kafka on the Shore, Kafka had a hard time accepting himself because he hates his father, and he has his father's blood in his veins. He refers to his body as a container and he is just the vessel because he truly doesn't believe that it's his body.
In The Vegetarian Yeong-Hye was living in an environment where her life was very controlled. She was very submissive and did everything her family and husband wanted her to do. She decides to make a personal change for herself and her body that doesn't fit into societal norms. Because of this she struggles with accepting herself and faced a lot of challenges.
In Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Janina manages to see the individual worth or self-worth in every living thing. This is why she eventually takes the steps that she takes to preserve all living things because to her everything has value and purpose.
In This Mournable Body Tambu wears the scars of her county's past. Because of her Western education that she received at a young age she naturally reflects and mimics the ideals of colonialism. When the Zimbabwean women are forced to do the traditional dance for the tourists at first Tambu sees nothing wrong. Or maybe she does but is too scared to speak up. Because of her education she started to see her people as a profit rather than their own individual self-worth. Tambu struggled to see these people as people.
In the novel NW, Kiesha Blake believed her fate was to be a "guest" forever in the lower class with no type of power in the power structure. She wants to be somebody and have a seat at the table. She comes to the conclusion that this can't be achieved by being Keisha Blake and decides to become an entirely different person and delete the person she used to be. She literally can't accept herself and believes she'd be better off being anyone else
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Hospitality
In Go Went Gone Richard starts to believe that the refugee problem is really a problem of hospitality. After a conversation Richard has with the lawyer on page 251, he starts to believe it’s a problem with hospitality. Hospitality requires negotiation, someone must give up something but also receive something in return. Richard realizes this isn’t how the world operates, at least not anymore. He decides the only way to move forward world be to remove the systems and laws in place that don’t work. But because that won’t happen, he decides he’s just going to have to help these refugees his own way.
The novel Exit West is similar to Go Went Gone in the sense that in both stories the refugees take a chance to go somewhere else not knowing where they will end up and if they will or won't receive hospitality when they get there. This was talked about on page 94 and 131.
Arbitrary Laws
In Go Went Gone Arbitrary laws are very present in this novel especially on pages 182-183 when they are discussing the iron law. Arbitrary laws are laws designed to be biased towards a specific group of people rather than fair for everyone. On page 183 Rashid says “But we don’t want that decision for us alone, we want a decision that will count for all the refugees in Europe… The law can’t say the way it is.” This was an example of how the laws became roadblocks for the refugees and this was when Richard started to realize there is also a problem with the system itself. Also, he realizes these laws are that they're constructed rather than natural.
In Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of The Dead, Janina believes that society's laws are a danger to everything because they are not in line with what's good for the earth and everyone else just blindly follows them. This is talked about a little bit on pages 56-57.
Dreams
In Kafka on the Shore every dream is important and has a significant sometimes metaphorical meaning that encourages the reader to think and try to decipher what it could possibly mean.
In The Vegetarian Yeong-Hye has vivid dreams of blood and animal brutality that torture her and drive her to ultimately renounce eating any type of meat. And this sets up the entire novel which shows how significant her dream was.
Fate
Throughout Kafka on the Shore, Kafka was trying to run away from what he believed to be his fate. He hates his father and himself for having his father's blood. He decides to run away because he thinks it will change his fate and maybe he would end up becoming his father. I believe the novel also suggested that one's fate isn't one's destiny in the sense that you can change your fate.
In regard to the NW Keisha believed that her fate was to be a "guest" at the table forever in the lower-class with no type of power in the power structure. She believed the only way to change her fate was to become an entirely different person and to delete Keisha Blake.
In Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Jania talks about its everyone's fate to die. She said, “The same fate awaits me too, and Oddball, and the deer outside, one day we should all be nothing more than corpses.” This idea that everyone and everything dies someday and how it is fate for this to happen is a big part of her thought process. In her mind the hunters and others are disrupting the proper flow of life and are making animals suffer for no reason when they are already going to die eventually anyway. These people that she hates get to live their lives while the animals suffer. Janina hated that and felt something needed to be done to preserve the natural order of life.
The Need For Change
Richard in Go Went Gone believes that the laws shouldn't stay the way it is and that there needs to be a change. Ultimately there's nothing that he can do to change them so he also takes matters into his own hands and decides I will do anything in my power to help the refugees.
In Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Janina believes that something needs to change for the animals to stop them from suffering and that something needs to change to protect the environment which is why she decides to be that change and take matters into her own hands.
One of the main take-aways from Exit West that Hamid leaves us with is that change is inevitable and sometimes necessary for growth in our society and it's important to recognize that and accept it.
In Kafka on the Shorethey discuss how change and thinking about other ways of doing things is important and the importance of not being content with the way things are.
Hollowness
In The Vegetarian the man in Yeong Hye's life affected her mind and body severely. Before she broke out of what was her normal controlled life she pretty much and no voice and was a puppet. Her husband would abuse emotionally and have no remorse. Her husband was a hollow man who lacked empathy and wanted to stay in control of her life.
Murakami believes that "hollow men" (or people) are dangerous/evil because an important factor in being hollow is lacking empathy or compassion for an individual. It's like a void in someone that doesn't have room for those characteristics.
Connectedness
Janina inDrive your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead wants to live in a world like the one described on page 178 in Exit West. She believes everyone is important and that we all have value, working together to preserve life would be all she wants.
On Page 178 in Exit West they start to describe a shared network of community with everyone working together and doing their individual part. They talk about remodeling earth and have a change on a much larger scale.