ipl-logo

Machete Season Chapter Summary

1400 Words6 Pages

In 1994, Rwanda was gripped with murderous fervor as Hutus across the country took up machetes against their Tutsi neighbors in what became 100 days of genocide that left 800,000 dead. Does the history of Rwanda provide any evidence of the implementation of the ten steps of genocide? How did Belgian imperialism influence the relationship between Hutus and Tutsis? What ultimately made the average Hutu decide to murder their Tutsi neighbors? In this paper I will investigate how the ten steps of genocide was used in Rwanda, the effects of imperialism on Rwandan culture and gain insight into why Hutus decided to kill Tutsis through the analysis of the book Machete Season by Jean Hatzfeld. Book Review I believe Machete Season revealed two major themes. The first is that societal factors can influence the normalization of violence. The second is people can rationalize killing others if they believe it is their duty or their mission given by an authority figure. There were many ethical issues that were raised from the responses that the prisoners gave. However, I will provide insights on two of those ethical …show more content…

Should orders to kill civilians be followed? In Syria, helicopters and jets bomb cities and have learned to target Syrian volunteer White Helmets on second bombing runs. The Syrian government has on several occasions gassed its own people with chemical weapons. These orders from authority figures continue to easily influence violent action against the innocent and unarmed countrymen. Just as the pilots have a choice to be inaccurate with their payloads as to minimize casualties, the Hutu did have a choice to not kill. Rwanda is a landlocked country with a handful of countries to travel to in order to escape from rhetoric preparing the society to kill another group of people. What happens after people have been labeled as ‘other’? Are they dispensable

Show More
Related

  • Was The Rwanda Genocide Dbq

    1323 Words  | 6 Pages

    C. Introduction The Rwandan genocide lasted three months and in those three months it is said that 1 million Tutsis were killed. The Holocaust lasted 4 years and 6 million Jews were killed. Bearing this in mind it would be expected that The Rwandan genocide should be extremely well known because of the loss of lives, impact and brutality of the event and the similarities it holds with The Holocaust. The fact is that the Rwandan Genocide is not very well known and is not thought to be in the same category as The Holocaust, where in fact it is.

    Read More

  • Nationalism: Ultranationalism And Genocide

    774 Words  | 4 Pages

    Belgian occupied Africa in 1994 favouring the Tutsis over the Hutus giving them more privileges . Both of these groups developed a sense of nationalism, feeling victimized by one another, this sense of nationalism led to Ultranationalism among these groups causing tension among the groups. Extreme forms of Hutu nationalism fueled by propaganda led to a 100-day bloodbath in which caused mass casualties between these groups. Stirred feeling of nationalism in hopes of a better future increased tensions between these two groups leading to genocide. Ultranationalistic leaders used pride and devotion on one’s country as justification for the actions and racist

    Read More

  • My Lai Massacre Research Paper

    1185 Words  | 5 Pages

    U.S. soldiers are trained to follow orders, which is exactly what they did as hundreds of villagers were indiscriminately killed in the My Lai Massacre. Even if the soldiers were acting under confusing orders, that is a failure of the chain of command, and even if the killings were orchestrated by a few incompetent officers, those officers never should have been placed in leadership roles. The real tragedy of My Lai represents an entire system of willful negligence and lack of accountability on the part of the military. Thus the responsibility for the massacre lies with the men involved, but also with the military chain of command that gave the order and then tried to cover it up.

    Read More

  • Commentary On Night By Elie Wiesel

    1140 Words  | 5 Pages

    When the international community responded indifferently toward the Rwandan genocide, “labeling it an ‘internal conflict’,” as the U.S. Holocaust Museum states, perpetrators could commit those genocidal crimes with little constraint; this directly led to the genocide later in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Adding fuel to [the Congo’s] unstable mix, some one million refugees, mostly the Hutu fearing the… Tutsis, fled into [the Congo]… at the end of the Rwandan genocide” and before the first war of the Congo. Additionally, leaders of that genocide followed, and “Organizing themselves in the fertile grounds of the massive refugee camps in Eastern Congo,... [they] began preying on the local Congolese population and making incursions back into Rwanda” (The U.S. Holocaust Museum 1).

    Read More

  • Dbq Essay On Rwanda Genocide

    1523 Words  | 7 Pages

    No, the shooting down of President Habyarimana’s plane did not initiate the genocide but rather, the genocide was affected by the deep rooted tensions between two groups who inhabited Rwanda, the Hutu’s and the Tutsi’s. These two groups had gone through a long period of power struggles which will be explored throughout this essay. Showing that the genocide did not occur as a result of one assassination. “It is buried too deep in grudges, under an accumulation of misunderstandings...’ . Although it is argued that the plane crash did indeed initiate the genocide and that the genocide was merely a reaction to the plane crash.

    Read More

  • Rwanda Genocide Response

    635 Words  | 3 Pages

    The American Government 's Response to The Rwandan Genocide The United States often have an had interest in the political, social and civil crises of other countries in order to benefit themselves. American senior officials hid the truth of the Rwanda Genocide to avoid public moral obligation. The government did not give any financial or political support to the country because Rwanda did not offer minerals or political advantages and stability; the US ' government did not want to be involved in another conflict, even though it has helped other countries in the past.1 But what is truly deeper hidden, are the stories of people like Immacule, a young girl, who, unlike thousands of others, survived the catastrophic genocide in Rwanda.

    Read More

  • Paul Rusesabagina An Ordinary Man Quotes

    403 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the book “An Ordinary man: An Autobiography” by Paul Rusesabagina, the author faces many bad problems and experiences distasteful moments throughout the whole novel. The author uses quotes the explain the significance of the 1994 Genocide in his own eyes. Near the middle of the story, as Paul explains the harsh treatment and taunting of RTLM against them, he tells us about a teacher who brainwashed her students into hating the “Hutus.” “It always bothers me when I hear Rwanda’s Genocide being described as the product of ‘ancient tribal hatred.’ I think this is a easy way for westerners to dismiss the whole thing as a regrettable but pointless bloodbath that happens to primitive brown people (Rusesabagina Chp.4 Pg.53).”

    Read More

  • Stop The Rwanda Genocide

    2030 Words  | 9 Pages

    International failure to stop the Rwandan genocide is a matter of shame for the western world and the rest of the world need to learn lessons from this slaughter. It is pertinent to mention that genocide is the result of a systematic development, culminating in the crime of crimes which implies that it is possible to prevent genocide by finding its causes. Prevention is better than cure always. It is best to detect the roots of genocide early on or before it even begins. The world should adopt the political re-socialization to replace nationalistic attitudes and value systems with more international and humanitarian based ethos (Krugar 103).

    Read More

  • Genocide In Hotel Rwanda

    989 Words  | 4 Pages

    Terry George aims no less than to demonstrate the Rwandese reality through the extremely violent and cruel scenes in the movie, he manages to convince the audience that really, over 800,000 people were in fact killed in no more than 100 days and more than 2 million refugees had to seek shelter elsewhere in the world (1). To begin with, it is important to understand the root causes of the conflict between Tutsis and Hutus to in turn understand the genocide demonstrated in the movie. Rwanda was

    Read More

  • Effects Of Imperialism In Rwanda

    1889 Words  | 8 Pages

    “An in-depth analysis on effects of Imperialism on Rwanda” Nowadays, European countries such as England, France, Germany, Belgium, and many other countries possess a colossal clout throughout the world. It is an impeccable fact that such countries, indeed, have served as a rudiment pivot and step for the world to be advanced to the point where we are since the Industrial Revolution. Such countries, because of it, without a doubt, have a crucial status globally and become the superpower and commercial hub on our planet. On the back side of their gleaming growth, however, there is an invisible part left behind their luminous development: the Imperialism. The term “Imperialism” refers to a policy of extending a country’s authority and political clout by using its military forces and diplomacy.

    Read More

  • Film Analysis: Hotel Rwanda Genocide

    896 Words  | 4 Pages

    When the Rwanda genocide began in 1994, its population stood at more that 7 people. Roughly 85% of the population was Hutu, 14% Tutsi, and 1% Twa (un.org). The decades following Rwanda’s independence from Belgium in 1962 saw growing ethnic tensions and periodic violent attacks and reprisals between Rwanda’s Hutu majority and its Tutsi minority. On April 6, 1994, the deaths of the Presidents of Burundi and Rwanda in a plane crash caused by a rocket attack, ignited several weeks of intense and systematic massacres.

    Read More

  • Slaughterhouse Five Passage Analysis

    829 Words  | 4 Pages

    In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five, the reader realizes just how much significance every passage has and how much it contributes to the rest of the novel. Slaughterhouse-Five is a novel about World War II experiences and journeys through time of Billy Pilgrim, from his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant, to postwar and early years. During the novel Billy experiences the events of his life in random order, moving from his past as an American prisoner of war in World War II, to his humdrum middle-class life in the present-day, to his future as a zoo curiosity on the planet Tralfamadore. One passage that summarizes one of the main themes in this novel is when Vonnegut says, “It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again.

    Read More

  • Negative Effects Of Globalization: The Rwanda Genocide

    848 Words  | 4 Pages

    The genocide was an after affect of the scramble for Africa by European countries who help no regard for the people who already lived their. In the scramble for Africa many European countries raced to make claims on land in Africa that was already lived on by natives, they mistreated the natives and killed and enslaved many of them. This was prevalent in Rwanda when the belgians imperialized the land. The belgians sent the Hutus who were the majority of the population into slavery and lead to mass deaths of their people. But they lead the land through another ethnic group the tutsis who made up about 15% of the population compared to the 85% population of Hutus.

    Read More

  • Ethnic Conflicts In Rwanda

    1464 Words  | 6 Pages

    Rwanda has a history of deep rooted conflict which originates back to when it was once a colony of Germany. Once it became a colony of Belgium after world war one this conflict also came with it, The conflict that exists is thus of two ethnic tribal groups the; Hutus and the Tutsis and their strong hatred of one another. Rwandans myths seems to indicate that Hutu and Tutsi identities did exist before the colonization but the hatred of two predominate ethnic tribal groups of one another only came into existence after colonization. This conflict between them has nothing to with religion, race or language it is to do with territory and the ownership of Rwanda. It is because of the colonies exploitation and classification of the Rwandan people into“an ethnic group” that the conflict seemed to come to a head.

    Read More

  • An Ordinary Man Analysis

    1339 Words  | 6 Pages

    One cannot fight fire with fire. While massacre reigns in Rwanda and people take betrayal to the extreme, Paul Rusesabagina in his book, An Ordinary Man, proofs how violence is unnecessary while standing against the power of the word. As Rusesabagina states, words are “powerful tools of life”(Rusesabagina, 19). The war between the two different ethnic groups, Hutus and Tutsis, and the death of thousands left a mark Rwanda’s memory; the author says: “It is the darkest bead on our national necklace” (222). Even though a large part of Rwanda’s population is massacred, many are saved by one of Rwanda’s timeless heroes.

    Read More

More about Machete Season Chapter Summary

Open Document