The parallels between The Crucible and the Rwanda Genocide Essay Example for Free

The parallels between The melting pot and the Rwanda Genocide EssayThe Parallels between The Crucible and The Rwanda Genocide The themes of justice, community and sacrifice in The Crucible are oecumenical and can be identified in many an(prenominal) modern events in history, including the Rwanda Genocide. The genocide in Rwanda and The Salem Witch Hunts in The Crucible direct many striking similarities, primarily these are the hunting down and killing of a gathering of community identified as being different, the mass killing of people for no valid reason and the taking of revenge on a whole group of people for the acts of one or more individuals of that group. Common to these two events is the ruthless hunting down of victims. The judges in The Crucible pressure Abigail and the girls for the names of possible witches. Their mission is to convict as many as possible, without skeptical if they may be innocent.The judges are merciless predators hunting their prey, exactly l ike the relentless Hutus seeking out the Tutsis in all(prenominal) part of Rwanda. The Hutus burst into peoples homes, ruthlessly searching for any Tutsi, ready to savagely torture them with machetes before killing them. Any Tutsi they find, no matter of age or sex, gets brutally slaughtered in order to totally eliminate the tribe. Another similarity is the relative escalation of death and murder once the trials/genocide had started. The poesy of deaths in The Crucible were much expectanter than anyone in the beginning could have predicted. Once Abigail realised the extent of the damage she had caused and saw how out of hand the trials had gotten, she fled. The fury in Rwanda reached extremes far greater than expected and became a genocide, resulting in the deaths of between 500 000-1 000 000 people, with thousands and thousands of brutally butchered corpses littering the streets.The motive behind both events is revenge. In The Crucible, Abigail initially uses the conceit of w itchcraft to save her own skin, she then realises that she can use it as excuse to seek revenge on Elizabeth Proctor for dismissing her and destroying her relationship with legerdemain Proctor. Similarly, the Hutus seek revenge on the Tutsis for shooting down their president, killing him and everyone else in the airplane. The Hutus believe the Tutsis were trying to regain power. There was a long history of rivalry and violence between these two tribes and the killing of the president was the catalyst ignited the voracious flames of revenge. The Hutus began their manhunt to find and kill the Tutsis in revenge for the years of perceived oppressionwhen the Tutsis ruled Rwanda.Like John Proctor in The Crucible, there too is a protagonist in the Rwanda Genocide Paul Rusesabagina. They both display strength in stand up up for what is right, they refuse to betray their friends and they both show great fearlessness to do what is right, even if it means sacrificing themselves. In The Cru cible, as things start to get out of hand, John takes it on himself to stand up to the authority and set things right. raze when standing up against the church places suspicion on him, John leave alone not compromise his beliefs and fights for what he believes is right. This is the same fight Paul Rusesabagina undertakes. Paul refuses to advert into the violence and hatred between the Hutus and Tutsis. He questions the idea that Hutus are better than Tutsis. He himself, a Hutu, is married to a Tutsi and he will not let himself be threatened into changing his beliefs or into following what the other Hutus are doing.As a Hutu, Paul is expected to abominate the Tutsis and to be a part of the violence and the killing. Instead he takes in the homeless, terrified Tutsi refugees and turned the hotel he was managing into a refugee camp. Paul knew that he and his family would be killed if the Hutus discovered what he was doing, but he did not falter. He took them in, protected them and p rovided for them when no one else had the courage to. He refused to betray or toss out his family and friends or his people. He saved the lives of 1 268 refugees through his sheer strength, intelligence, perseverance and bravery. Pauls refusal to betray his people to save himself is strikingly similar to Johns refusal to betray his friends. Although his betrayal would have saved his life and allowed him to be with his family, he could not do it.Johns refusal to betray his friends leads to the ultimate sacrifice. His last-place act of defiance, to refuse to be part of something untruthful, ultimately led to his death. This emphasises his strength of character and his immense courage. Like John Proctor, Paul also made sacrifices and took great risks. Paul sacrifices his home, his job, the safety of his family and was even willing to sacrifice his life to save the lives of people he didnt even know, but was willing to protect. He gave inspection and repair to anyone who needed it,Hu tu or Tutsi. Both of these acts of sacrifice, from just one individual, led to the salvage of many lives.The themes of justice, community and sacrifice in The Crucible are universal and timeless. The Crucible teaches us about these themes and teaches us to identify them in historical events. The baseless killing of innocent people simply because they belong to a certain group is repeated over and over in history along with how the courage of one or many individual/s can lead to the saving of multiple lives. There are always individuals in brutal situations who display enormous courage and humanity in standing up for what is right and not blindly following others individuals who have the courage to question authority.The Crucible teaches us that the courage of one individual can save the lives of many if they only have the strength to question and to stand up for what they believe. The Crucible teaches us to identify these themes in real life events. In addition to the Rwanda Genoci de, the relevance of The Crucible is manifested in other recent situations, we only have to consider school girl Malala Yousafzi who was shot in the head by the Taliban after speaking out and standing up for the right of girls to go to school in Afghanistan. The themes of justice, community and sacrifice are evident in The Crucible and The Crucible teaches us to recognise them in real life situations and teaches us the importance of courage and sacrifice, and the great impact that one brave individual can have in a repulsive and seemingly hopeless situation.