Child of the Dark
Child of the Dark
Recently Zain has become a hit. Almost everyone’s talking about him and this movie. People posted this picture of the poor boy on social media and say “Zain finally smiled!”
Child of the Dark
The background of this book is quite the same as that movie and both the author and Zain and kind of the child of the dark. Carolina Maria De Jesus lived in a favela in Brazil and kept her interest in reading and writing although her schooling lasted for only two years. She kept writing diaries and this book is exactly consisted of her diaries which were started written from 1955. She wrote her daily routine of her life and drew a lively picture of the life of poor people in Brazil at that time.
Child of the Dark
Robert M. Levine gave a very detailed introduction about this book in the afterward part of this book, so I’ll just put them here: Caralina’s harsh childhood, burdened by poverty and discrimination, marked her for life, but it also gave her the motivation to struggle for self-improvement. When her mother died, Carolina a young woman, migrated to the city of St. Paulo in search of work. Finding positions as maid in houses of the wealthy, she scandalized her employers by sitting in the kitchen reading day-old newspapers; no one expected a maid to be interested in world affairs. But when she used her free hours to become sexually active with men—most of whom were white—she became pregnant, and was summarily fired. She was forced to find a place to live in a favela, a shantytown in which she constructed with her own hands a shack made of scavenged planks and metal. In this shack, with some discarded furniture, she raised her three children, taking them with her every day while she combed the streets around the favela for paper, bottles, cans, and other materials she could sell for pennies.
Child of the Dark
This is like a vicious circle. She has to go out looking for papers every day, otherwise they are going to suffer from hunger. Parenting is for sure the greatest job in this whole wide world, but what I can’t understand is why people keep giving birth to kids when they cannot feed them and cannot be responsible for them. Take Carolina for example, if she encounters a rainy day, it’s not just her, but her children will suffer from starving with her. And I think this is not necessary for the kids.
Child of the Dark
In Carolina’s diary we can see how those poor people are leading their life in the favela and what is going on in their life in favela. She wrote in her diary that there are actually a lot of fights and argument happening in the favela and at the same time, there are countless of death sweeping the favela.
Child of the Dark
Some were dead from disease because of the lack of the money. Some were dead from hunger because of the shortage of food. Some were dead from violence. Because of the shortage of the houses those people are living in a very narrow space, in other words, every one of them is living an extreme “public life.” Every one of them keeps updated on what others are doing every minute and every second. This is literally unhealthy for the kids. After they witnessed a love scene they would discuss about this for a while and this discussion includes kids from any different ages. What’s worse, those monsters that are called father would do evil things to their daughter as well. The life in favela could be as worse as you imagined.
Child of the Dark
Sometimes I would think that what can I do to help those people who really need help? But ironically, there is nothing I can do to help a person who doesn’t want to help himself out. Or we cannot tell or cannot believe who really needs help anymore. We can see hundreds of thousands of beggars here in China in different cities, but who can tell if they are really beggars or not? Maybe they are even richer than us. Maybe they are the least people who need helping hand.
Child of the Dark
Let’s get back to the movie we were talking about a bit, for they are sharing quite the same situation there. Carolina was brave enough to weigh her life on her shoulders without men and Zain was brave enough to be heard and walk away to live life. It’s really great to see Zain’s life path can be changed from slum to the Oscar’s red carpet. However, I was thinking that does anyone of us ever think about those people who are standing behind Zain? Zain did smile at last, but does anyone of us ever think about whether those people that Zain represented are smiling or crying? It’s obviously remarkable that the movie changed at least one family’s life. However, those poor people behind the screen still have a long way to go to bring hope to their life. And one more question I was thinking about, “If Zain grows up into an ungrateful young man after going through all of this, will you still feel sorry for him?”
Child of the Dark
