Richard's Repartee: A blind eye

Richard's Repartee: A blind eye: "While the western world entertains itself with apocalyptic tales of mutant zombie outbreaks on the big screen, 'Pandemic' by Stephen Lewis r..."

The Road that leads to Pompeii

Stephen Lewis’  Pandemic:  My Country is on its Knees addresses  the effects AIDS has on Africa.  In the 1960’s, when Lewis first began visiting Africa he described it as a  “continent of vitality, growth, and boundless expectations …. There was something intoxicating about an environment of such hope, anticipation, affection, energy indomitability” (p. 378).  However, 45 years later the situation has changed and he says that is it “like comparing Rome with Pompeii” (p. 378).  It is a country crumbling under the weight of a virus. 

The essay is a powerful. The purpose is to inform those who live in countries beyond the crisis zone, countries of wealth and resources, what’s happening in Africa and encouraging them to get involved.  It also suggests that without changes, without outside resources, Africa will die because AIDS will continue killing out millions more people.  Lewis appeals to the audiences emotions with strong examples.  Over and over he tells stories of the despair that he has witnessed.  He speaks of a grandmother who has had to bury all five of her adult children and her four grandchildren are HIV-positive.  But, he said there’s even worse things then this.  Orphaned children are having to run the household and care for their brothers and sisters.  This means that without a mother or father or grandparent the head-of-the-house might be as young as eight years old.  It is creating a nation where the “… transfer of love and knowledge and values and experience from one generation to the next is gone … (p. 382).  I think the worst situation he describes is of young children watching their parents dying, especially when death is long, painful and full of embarrassing events. 
Although Lewis’ essay addresses the desperate situation Africa faces he does says that there’s good changes.  Organizations are helping Africans help themselves.  For example the UN’s World Food Programme, had gathered together a large contingent of truck drivers … who had undergone a training course on HIV prevention” (p. 386).  This group were likely to encounter sex workers on their delivery routes.  Condoms are distributed freely to help stop the spread.  Of AIDS. Girls are being educated in trades so that they will be able to stay and work in their own communities, and expectant mothers who were HIV-positive are being given drugs to prevent the virus spreading to their babies.  The most positive change is where Doctors Without Borders had set up a treatment program and were helping over 1000 people and had plans to help thousands more. 
Lewis wants the world to care about Africa’s situation and if the world does care he thinks Africa will gather strength and become what it once was:  a national vitality.
Do you think the Catholic Church’s view against condom use will encourage men and women to have sex without using one, even with the threat of AIDS hanging over them? 

What a powerful letter.  With all its metaphors it points to the degradation
of the American way of life and possible outcomes if people in power and
people in general are not held accountable for their actions.
 
Atwood¹s letter makes many references to good vs evil.  She was born in
1939, a year which also saw the start of WWII. United States and Canada were
neutral until after the attack of Pearl Harbour in 1941. Together, these
neighboring countries fought as allies to defend citizens against the evils
of Hitler and his form of government. In the eyes of a child it was a war of
good vs. evil and good won out.  Margaret would have been six at the
conclusion of the war and at an age where she would believe that when evil
is destroyed, only the good remains ­ so when Hitler¹s regime was destroyed,
United States was her Œhero¹ ­ they were the good country.
 
To further support her theme of good vs evil Atwood references popular
movies of the late 1940¹s early 1950¹s.  For example; Marlon Brando in On
the Waterfront is a story of an x-fighter turned longshoreman who has to
stand up to corrupt union bosses;  Humphrey Bogart  in Key Largo is about an
ex-major who manages to kill  a group of gangsters and their leader  and
finally Lillian Gish in Night of the Hunter Lillian protects children from a
man who thinks they know the whereabouts of stolen money and eventually has
him arrested, all of which have a central theme of someone good winning over
evil.  All these movies were produced when Atwood was in her teens. These
movies reflect her naive understanding of the world at this age.  She still
believes there is a simple division between good and evil and good will
prevail.  
 
 
 
However, A Letter to America, written when she was in her sixties suggests
that age has brought with it a greater understanding of things good and evil
and that good does not necessarily remain good. Corruption, greed, power can
change it.  She draws the American public¹s attention to these changes in
her letter, calling it a slide ³down the slippery slopeŠ².  She finds these
changes distasteful and says  ³Špeople around the world will stop admiring
the good things about you.² It¹s uncontrolled spending to fight wars while
neglecting its own people, it¹s destroying its own country while taking from
others; it has ³fouled [its] own nest.²
 
 
 
Although Atwood is concerned about the American shift to evil ways she
offers an optimistic outlook by suggesting that they turn away from this new
path and return to a path previously followed.