Sunday, April 22, 2012

Chapters 9-10

Amongst all the deaths on this novel, Houdia M'Baye's was the one that stroke me the most. After we see all the effort that Ramatoulaye puts into finding food for Houdia and her baby so that they don't die of hunger, I find it sad that she ends up dying but also to an extent ironic. After Ramatoulaye devoted part of her time to keep them alive, they still end up dying.

"She is dead, and I am living. And everything I did was done so that she and her baby would not die of hunger” (p126). In this quote Ramatoulaye is basically ratifying what I just explained. She is vexed because she feels like all of her efforts were in vain and she even says that she would have preferred to be in Houdia’s place. Unlike in other countries, especially nowadays, where people die all the time and only a couple of people seem to care about it, since this was such a close community, everyone cared about each other and there is this feeling of familiarity that makes Ramatoulaye feel even worse than if it had been elsewhere. 

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