In the story the family started out living fine and happy. Then they were intimidated by the criminal activity in the neighborhood. They started by getting extra security gates. Then moved on to brick walls around the house. After figuring out that the criminal could easily climb over the fence and wall they raised the wall even higher. Out of even more fear they decided to put barbed wires up on top the wall and in a small tunnel. In their desire to protect themselves they ended up living inside a prison. Their small boy was imagining he was a prince and decided to go through the barb wire and cut himself up real bad. Being protective is one thing but taking it over the edge can lead to harm. Sometimes you have to trust that bad things wont happen and maybe they won't but if you always believe that they are then they will.
The author didn't speak of apartheid in the story because she felt that if she didn't mention it and got her message across, it would have more effect than if she was actually using apartheid as more of a weapon in her story. She didn't mention South Africa in her story either because the setting was supposed to be on the other side of things. On the white side of the story and not they black. She was trying to tell a story from a white persons perspective on the black people and how the white family was so scared of the black people when some may have not even been bad at all.
I believe that the deeper meaning in this story was to show how easily scared people are. People can be scared into doing things they wouldn't regularly do. Many people will take things too far and this story shows how doing so can cause harm to people you love.
No comments:
Post a Comment