Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

The main point of this article is revealing the struggles of the genocide and guiding others in how to avoid making the same mistakes over again. This article also highlights the role the United States played in the genocide by not stepping in when Indonesia’s invasion. The United States actually “approved” the invasion because President Suharto (the leader of Indonesia) was firmly anti-communist.

One of the things in this article that really struck me was the following passage:

“One of the characteristics of genocides, Kiernan argues, is that powerful nations often deny, disbelieve, or show indifference to them. ‘When the Nazis embarked on the conquest of Poland and the extermination of millions of Jews, Poles, Roma, and other 'undesirables,' Adolf Hitler asked a revealing question: 'Who ever heard of the Armenians?' Kiernan says. The answer, of course, was no one. ‘Yet only a generation earlier, the Young Turks had killed two-thirds of the Armenian population. Hitler believed that the world would let him commit genocide with impunity.’ Likewise, Kiernan points out that in Rwanda in 1994, Hutu leaders watched the world's indifference to genocidal crimes in Bosnia and concluded that they too could get away with murdering their ethnic rivals, the Tutsi.”

This just stuck out at me, and really made me think about no matter how much we would like to think that we have learned







Antonia would not agree with Jim’s notion of happiness. To put it frankly, Jim sometimes appears to be a freeloader. He doesn’t really have to work; at first he is very young, and then it is decided that he will go to school instead. School probably was hard work at times as well, but it wasn’t as hard as what Antonia did, working the fields all day long. Antonia’s quote tells us that she feels like she has to work for her happiness, while Jim just lets his happiness come to him. Antonia says to him, “If I live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us.” (Cather 100) This turns out to be true. When Jim is thirteen, his grandparents decide they are getting tired of farm work, and that it is about time Jim started going to school. At the same time, Ambrosch hires Antonia out as a farmhand, and she moves from farm to farm, doing a man’s work all day every day. Jim is happy when he says that, “Our lives centered around warmth and food and the return of the men and nightfall.” (Cather 53) Even when he grows older, he is content to let good things come to him. On the other hand, Antonia grows more driven as she grows up, becoming stronger, and doing much more work.
Antonia would say that happiness in life is her family, because for almost her entire life, she has worked simply to support her family. Not just her biological family, but others as well. One could certainly say that she considers Jim to be part of her family, as the discussion she has with Jim shows.
“‘Lina Lingard lets me kiss her,” I retorted, “and I’m not half as fond of her as I am of you.’
‘Lina does?’ Tony gasped. ‘If she’s up to any of her nonsense with you, I’ll scratch her eyes out!’ She took my arm again and we walked out of the gate and down the sidewalk. ‘Now, don’t you go and be a fool like these town boys. You’re not going to sit around here and whittle store boxes and tell stories all your life. You’re going away to school and make something of yourself. I’m just awful proud of you. You won’t go and get mixed up with the Swedes, will you?’
‘I don’t care anything about any of them but you,’ I said. ‘And you’ll always treat me like a kid, suppose.’
She laughed and threw her arms around me. ‘I expect I will, but you’re a kid I’m awful fond of, anyhow! You can like me all you want to, but if I see you hanging around with Lena much, I’ll go to your grandmother, as sure as your name’s Jim Burden! Lena’s all right, only—well, you know yourself she’s soft that way. She can’t help it. It’s natural to her.’ (Cather 151)
In this quote, we can see that although Jim’s love for Antonia may be more amorous than familial, Antonia appears to think of Jim like she would a younger brother. This would explain why she is willing to scratch out Lena’s eyes if Lena gets up to any “nonsense” with him, and yet is not willing to kiss him. Another quote that shows how important “family” is to Antonia is when Lena and Jim talk about her and her fiancé. “That’s Antonia’s failing, you know; if she once likes people, she won’t hear anything against them.” (Cather 175) This quote shows that Antonia values family above all else, even to the point of blindness. And at the very end of the book, when Antonia is an old woman with a family, it is more than just her reason for living. It keeps her from getting the lonesome spells that she often got when she lived in town. (Cather 212) This is why family is happiness to Antonia.
Happiness is being unconditionally loved. There is nothing greater than the feeling that someone admires you just for being you. Throughout history, even the wisest men and women have done incredibly stupid things for the sake of love, and almost every high school guy has pulled some dumb prank hoping that a girl will notice him. Most people’s entire lives revolve around their significant other and perhaps their children, who also love them unconditionally. Married people live longer on average than unmarried people, and they have lower stress levels. Love is so essential to our lives; it has the possibility to be the greatest source of happiness to you.