Theme of Oppression: Waiting for Snow in Havana compared to Kaffir Boy

A paradigmatic moral witness is one who experiences the acheone who is not just an observer merely also a sufferer. Carlos Eire, Professor of Hi report and Religious Studies at Yale University and author of Waiting for black eye in Havana, is a moral witness. His book is a memoir of puerility and exile, the recollections of a privileged boy who, at the age of 11, was one of 14,000 children airlifted from Cuba, stranded from his p atomic number 18nts and, with only a small suitcase in hand, dropped off in a land in which he did not know a soul.The book is, however, more than is a record of suffering endured at the men of evil-mindeddoers. As its subtitle indicates, Eire spargons in the style of confession. Unlike Elie Wiesel, for instance, he does not mainly register evil and suffering to honor the sufferers and warn prox generations or to accomplish an inner catharsis. He probes deeply into the warping that evil produces in the souls of victims and struggles with frightenin g honesty, born of faith, on a journey of salvation from its sinister power.So moving, so wildly fancyous and yet so grievous in its moral judgment, so concentrated on the self alone so concerned with others and their salvation, a story so rooted in a specific time and place and yet so global in import. Evil keeps appearing in the configuration of a lounge lizard, and the lizard of lizards is Fidel, who destroyed everything Eire knew as boy, wrecked it in the name of fairness, progress, the oppressed, and of love for the gods Marx and Lenin. distant to what one might expect, the redemption toward which Eire is groping bears the face not of a political figure or a social program simply of messiah, who wept with joy upon seeing all the worlds sins embedded in those mean, raw pieces of woods that meant death for Him at the age of thirty-three. A Cuban nun taught him the core of redemption. She was wise enough to talk to the orphaned and exiled children not closely their g ift situation, utterly dire as it was, but in universal ground close to their faults and about redemption from them. In his search for redemption, Eire wrestles with two issues. First, what to do with desire bereft of a precious object, a boys desire that yearns for what it could sustain had as much as for what it lost. In the past thirty-eight age Ive seen eight thousand nine hundred and s withalteen clouds in the shape of the island Cuba, writes Eire, an exiled man in his early fifties. Second, how does one make peace with enemies, hitherto more, how does one love them? My dream of dreams, writes Eire toward the end of the book, is to kiss the lizard fondly, and let go forever.The original title of the book, rejected by the publisher as withal offensive, was Kiss the Lizard, Jesus (Jesus Rubio was the main character in that first stochastic variable of the book, conceived as a novel rather than a memoir). Much of what Eire is later as he sifts through recollections and the emotions stirred by the recollected events can be described as the redemption of memories imagine the sound of memories that have naught to do with Batista or Fidel. So how does Eires journey toward redemption look?You essential read the book yourself. One thing that will strike you promptly is the style. Here is its unforgettable first sentence The world changed while I slept, and much to my surprise, no one had consulted me. Then there is the perspective. Eire combines a sort of seeing the world often associated with magical realism (except that it is all true, or at least 98. 6% of it, as he told me) with a humor the likes of which Ive never seen beforea humor that is not garnish but a way of demeanor and itself a vehicle of redemption.An even more important element of redemption than humoran element which lets humor do the redemptive work and not just relieve Eire temporarily of lifes burdensis his spicy faith in God. His avow peculiar proofs of Gods existence (proof n o. 5, the last-ditch proof desire) structure the whole text, and he repeatedly reads his own story within the framework of salvation history (e. g. , the exiled children of Cuba argon the slaughtered children of Bethlehem as a fatherless boy he sees himself in the image of Gods Son disposed by the Father).The aftereffects of that nuns talk, which left him in a stupor, wondering what had hit him, are felt throughout the book. Can one get no redemption before the dawn of the world to come? One can. Eire writes as a man who has tasted the sweet savor of a new life even as he is drinking from the bitter cup of evils memories. He has kissed legion(predicate) lizards, he says. That is why when he condemns Emesto, a lizard slightly tracking Fidel in ugliness and wickedness, the worst punishment he can come back of is for him to be embraced by Jesus eternally.So writes a man who has admittedly not yet been freed from anger but has tenderiseed it up to God and is letting Jesus take ca re of it. Eires questions are spiritual How do we live with memories of irretrievable loss and violation, given that for victims, memories are not so much a solution as a problem? How do we relate to the perpetrators? How do we find healing of losses and redemption from evil? Eires answers are apparitional we find redemption by having our stories inserted into Gods story and in everlasting life with God, the source of our life and salvation and the telos of all our desires.Secular and religious are alternatives, but the moral philosophy of memory and the redemption of memories need not be. The utility of Eires religious struggle for the redemption of memories is that, if pressed, he can integrate the ethics of memory into his perspective. Eire offers redemption of memoriesand redemption of people who remember. The story Kaffir boy deals with the agony of racism. In Mark Mathabanes Kaffir Boy, Mark has grown up in poverty. Though Mark is told that he will never get along to any thing because he is black, Mark strives for success since he has nothing to lose.Through a relation of different reactions to prejudices revealed in the stories, we learn that our choices should be determined by which options offer the greatest rewards and/or the fewest penalties. In Kaffir Boy, Mark Mathabane joins his nan at her workplace in the big city. Mark is astonished that vacuous people live such extravagant lives while his family can precisely afford food. When Mark and his grandmother reach the Smith residence, Mark meets a white boy named Clyde who has been providing Mark with hand-me-downs.He tells Mark what the white children learn about in their school. Mark is shocked to hear the stereotypes that the white children have about black people. Mark is greatly insulted when Clyde tells him, My teacher says Kaffirs cant read, speak or write English like white people because they have smaller brains, which are already full of tribal things (Mathabane 237). Both writings have characters that are faced with racist discrimination. However, though they go through similar scenarios of racism, their own situations and reactions to racism are different.Mark is a child who lives in poverty, but when he is told he will fail because he is black, Mark becomes motivated to designate himself to the world. What motivates people depends on the results they are trying to accomplish. If someone has more to dispatch than lose from a situation, they will try that much harder to succeed. Mark realised this and since he had nothing, it was all gain and no loss. The opposite is true as well if you strive for something that will get you nowhere or sacrifice you in a worse position, the best thing to do is not to try.