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Literature of Global Experience - Coggle Diagram

- - - - The narrator comes to understand her own privilege in society, as well as her own lack of privilege. She has privilege, to some degree, yes. But there are still those who hold more privilege than she does.
        
        Ultimately, the narrator is able to take her own power back from the more privileged. She takes back her power, and gives herself all the time in the world.
      - In Swing Time, ignorance is a privilege. It is a privilege to be so oblivious to the struggles of others, to think that everyone else is, for lack of a better term, an extra in a movie, and to believe yourself the main character. To genuinely, wholeheartedly, believe that the "less fortunate" are completely helpless without you and your money. That everyone else is nothing. This is the privilege Aimee holds.
  - - - Kafka's father and his Oedipan prophecy hold power over Kafka for the entire novel. It's Kafka's driving force throughout the entire story. Even after his father's death, he still holds all this power over Kafka's mind because he still hasn't fulfilled that prophecy. Not entirely, at least. Only when the prophecy is, in a really weird, confusing way, fulfilled does Kafka find himself free from the power it held over him.
- - - - Kafka on the Shore also speaks of "Hollow People." Again, people who think without acting. They are nothing, they have no choice, no thoughts, no nothing. It is only when you start to make your own choices, not the choice you are expected or told to take, that you are even real.
  - - - Yeong Hye stops eating meat. Entirely. Completely, utterly cuts it out of her life. It makes her sick. It disgusts her. South Korea's culture around food is very heavily meat based. It is expected that people eat meat. Because everyone does, that's how it is. Why? Don't know, don't care, it just is. Nobody thinks about it.
        
        Yeong Hye cuts all her ties to society. To humanity. She does not want to be human, because it disgusts her. To be human is to inherently be a violent creature. To hurt, to take and not give back, to kill and to maul and to eat. She hates it, she doesn't want it, so she makes the choice to get rid of that part of her. She wants to be a tree. She becomes a tree, harmless, lifeless. That way she cannot hurt anyone. She can no longer choose to hurt anyone the way other have chosen to hurt her.
  - - - Richard finds himself lacking a sense of purpose after his retirement. He seems bored, going about each day mindlessly as if it doesn't mean anything anymore.
        
        It's only when he learns about the refugees, when he goes to meet them, to talk to and learn about them, does he find some meaning. Something to do, in a way. He decides his purpose is to help them and to understand the best he can. He chooses to be the one to help when no one else, especially not the government, will.
- - - - Because of the things Yeong Hye has bore witness to, the things she's been made to endure at the hands of other human beings, she finds humanity to be an inherently violent thing. She cannot exist as a human without hurting something. She hates her teeth, they are meant to bite and tear away at the flesh of other creatures. She hates her nails, they are meant to scratch and hurt and draw blood. She continues to lose weight as she refuses to eat meat. Her edges are all sharpening, she says. She doesn't understand why, if she is trying so hard not to hurt things, to make herself entirely harmless and soft, why do her edges only sharpen? Because she is human, and sharp edges and harm are what she is meant for. So she simply will not be human.
  - - - Janina is angry, not at the world, but at all the people in it. The state of humanity disgusts her, it is something that should've never been. It is something that we, as people, were never meant to be. We were never supposed to be the dominant species, thinking ourselves above every other creature and granting ourselves the right to take the lives of those creatures. It is something so deeply, fundamentally, horribly wrong.
        
        People are greedy, selfish creatures. To be human is to want. To want power, to want money, to want love. To be human is also to take. To see what we want and to take it without asking, and without giving anything back. To be human is to hunt and kill and hurt things that we should treat as our equals, not our inferiors.
        
        As silly as it is, an interaction from the animated series Castlevania comes to mind. An interaction between the human forgemaster, Hector, and Dracula.
        
        "They killed my wife. The stupid, vicious, spiteful evil humans. The humans you renounced, the humans you live apart from. They killed my wife. No more, Hector. They must be stopped, culled."
        
        "My fellow humans have never treated me with love, and I've punished them for it. But... I wouldn't have them suffer. And...like any animal, I think the world would be poorer with their extinction."
        
        This interaction reminded me intensely of Janina's own feelings towards her fellow humans. The humans, the ones with the power, are stupid, vicious, spiteful, evil. They take. They never give. They take from each other and they take from everything else.
        
        The character from the show, Hector, also shares Janina's sentiment that humans are animals just like any other creature on the planet. No better, no worse, just the same. They are meant to lead lives equal to everything else around them. We aren't meant to be driving cars and hunting and killing things for sport and building large scale capitalistic society and establishing upper, middle, and lower classes. It's wrong.
  - - - What isn't human is going through the motions mindlessly, always doing what we're told and never thinking about what it is we're being told to do, or what affect it will have on the world around us.
- - - - What Aimee fails to realize is that not everyone wants or needs her help specifically. In establishing a girls' school in a non-specific and unnamed African country somewhere in the Gambia, she actually ends up doing way more harm than good. They already had a school, they didn't need it. She's making up problems to solve for these people instead of doing anything to solve their real problems. Her activism is performative, more meant to help herself feel good than to actually help other people.