Monday, November 26, 2012

The War Prayer by Mark Twain

The theme of this reading is double entendre. The church congregation prays one thing, but they don't realize what they are actually praying to happen. This piece of writing wasn't published until after Twain's death, mostly due to pressure from his family to refrain from doing so because it could be sacrilegious. According to "Mark Twain: A Biography" by Albert Bigelow Paine, when Twain's publisher asked him if he wanted to publish it anyway he said, "No. I have told the whole truth in that, and only dead men can tell the truth in this world. It can be published after I am dead."

Twain wrote this before both World Wars and it was published in 1923, five years after the first World War ended. The Schlieffen Plan, written by Germany, had just been devised in 1905. This plan was created around the idea that war would be quick and "painless", in a manner of speaking. There seems to be a same way of thinking between the Germans and the congregation members of this story. They both see the good side of war - war is romanticized, in a sense.

Something I find interesting about this reading is that Twain brings in a messenger from God to speak truth to the congregation. And after all that, after everything he says, people think that he was a lunatic. I understand that this is a work of fiction, but honestly, how could they not see that there are two sides to every victory? Does that go back to what we were talking about in class today - that their enemies were de-humanized and so they deserved all the pain and suffering? I guess it was a different time, but surely people understood death by then.

Today I see this de-humanizing in the retail industry. Human trafficking is not just about sex...it's also about people being forced to work for almost free (if not absolutely free!) in poor facilities, while being treated like less than human. All this so that we can get a "good deal" at Walmart. I'm sure that's not the only business that allows for their goods to be manufactured by people who have been trafficked. So for every good deal that we find or "pray for" like the congregation in this reading did, there is another side of people who are being mistreated for us to get that deal.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Rudyard Kipling, The White Man's Burden (1899)

The theme of this reading is facetiousness. As I interpret it, Kipling's poetry appears to be mocking the "white man." I couldn't find anything in Chapter 22 of the text pertaining to this reading.
I am surprised to read something like this. I didn't know that there were people writing this sort of sarcastic material. I assumed that people were serious, and they were either for or against slavery.
A good modern example is the 1984 movie This Is Spinal Tap. This movie makes fun of the rock music industry, something that was taken very seriously during the '80s.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Report on Committee on Children in Manufactories

The theme of this reading is cruelty. Children during this time period were treated poorly in the work environment. They were forced to work long hours in textile mills and mines, and on top of that they were exploited and treated as less-than-human, according to the text on page 436.
Social reform began during the Industrial Revolution because people saw what was happening to the children and wanted it to stop. One such man, Michael Sadler, saw it as his Christian duty to help them. He was a Tory member of the British Parliament, and he saw to it that a bill was passed that limited the number of hours a child could work per day. Even though most employers did not follow this law, it still aided in getting the ball rolling for others.
I was surprised to read, in Sir Robert Peel's statement, that the growth of the children appeared to have been stinted. I didn't actually know that was a concern, and I'm not sure how that would work. Perhaps it has something to do with getting little to no sleep because they were working so much.
This is still happening today! There are children being put to work in other countries so that we can have cheaper goods here in America. It sickens me to know every time I shop in Walmart that a child in a third-world country had to be put to work. My friend once quoted S. Ford, saying, "Every time you see the Walmart smiley bouncing around and slashing prices, somewhere there's a worker being kicked in the stomach."
I don't know what we can do about this. Walmart is such a big corporation, and it would take everyone in America to step back and stop purchasing items from them in order for Walmart to take another look at themselves. The best we can do is double check everything we buy and look at the retailers that we are purchasing from so that we know that a child or exploited worker hadn't been put to work to make what we have.

Monday, November 5, 2012

Thoughts Upon Slavery John Wesley Published in the year 1774

The theme of this reading is "appealing." Not in the "attractive" sense of the word, but instead to make a serious or urgent request.
Slavery has been in our world for a long time. Although it has gone through phases, it is still the same concept: people are owned by people. John Wesley is writing this in a time where slavery is the biggest and most commercial trade that it has ever been.
I think it's incredibly interesting that Wesley writes about where the slaves are brought from - especially their country. He asks of their home, "Is it so remarkably horrid, dreary, and barren, that it is a kindness to deliver them out of it? I believe many have apprehended so; but it is an entire mistake, if we may give credit to those who have lived many years therein, and could have no motive to misrepresent it."
I didn't know that there were people who thought that bringing Africans to Europe was "saving" them from horrible living conditions. I thought that everyone just knew exactly what they were doing. I can see now though that in that time they didn't have a lot of access to information about Africa, so "bad guys" could feed them lies about how they were helping them out.
Slavery has been abolished, but that doesn't mean it has gone away. While there isn't a commercial slave trade, there are still people being used in other countries. There is sex slavery, which is prevalent not only in other countries but also the United States.