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Learner Portfolio - Broken April Chapter 2 - Coggle Diagram
Learner Portfolio - Broken April Chapter 2
Environment
Light
Chapter 1 opens as "daylight was fading," effectively foreshadowing and setting up the death to come. "Night had not fallen yet" after the first death, using setting to show that there is more death to come.
Temperature
In both Gjorg and Diana, the cold results in a numbness of feeling and emotion. They become colder as Gjorg has to kill and follow the custom, and Diana learns about her husband and how she does not love him anymore.
Chapters 1 & 3: "coldness" in the environment reflects the cold and numbness within the characters, specifically Gjorg and Diana (pathetic fallacy). The end of chapter 3 especially emphasizes the coldness and darkenss several times for Diana, representing her inner turmoil and conflict.
In chapter 2, it is revealed that Gjorg's blood feud had started on a "cold" October night, showing the clear connection.
Physical Environment
In chapter 2, as Gjorg is on his way to Orosh, he encounters the desolate villiages in ruin. This creates a setting of loneliness, isolation, and destruciton. The mountains constatnly looming and the occasional rain for both Gjorg and Diana show the oppressive and trapped feeling with the sadness.
Pathetic fallacy is utilized throught to add to the mood and setting. The cold mirrors the numbness, the dark mirrors the hopelessness, etc.
Chapter 1: pomegranates are personified to become "scattered witnesses", symbolizing the external pressure that Gjorg is facing originating from his society
Social / Cultural
The professional mourners in Chapter 1 create a dehumanizing effect with their masks and their purpose. Through their imagery and Gjorg's reflections, a mood of inevitability and a cycle of violence becomes present. By comparing the mourners' scratched faces to "masks", it shows that the society that Gjorg lives in is highly numb and oblivious to empathetic emotions
Chapter 1: after Gjorg was granted the 30-day truce, he felt that although the truce has just started, he "was almost used to the idea that his life had been cleft in two", as if it "has always been split like that", indicating that even those who disagree with / question the rituals are brainwashed by the ruthless rituals into subconsciously believing that everything they experience is actually normal
Chapter 1: the blood shirts that were hung "on the upper story of the kulla" is a physical representation of the endless cycle of violence and a public signal of shame
"The Rrafsh is the only region of Europe which—while being an integral part of a modern state...—has rejected the laws, the legal institutions, the police, the courts, in short, all the structures of the state..."
The murderer's gallery in chapter 3 is used to create the illusion that the culture and the kanun is strong, when in reality, it might not be as such. The people are made to wait to pay the blood tax to have several people there at a time.
Overall Mood / Theme
"The book explores one of Kadare's recurring themes: how the past affects the present." (directly from Google)
Chapter 1: Gjorg feels as if his life is "broken branches glittering with frost", with the branch as a simile for Gjorg's life that's been "cleft in two", while the "frost" indicates the preciousness of life before his destined death
Time Period
The book was published in 1978
Anachronism is used. The archaic practices in the book are contrasted by a plane flying overhead, showing the time period is much more recent than anticipated.