ENGL1201 Diagnostic essay Sept. 2008
Fiorela Caro
Through centuries we have seen the effect of war on mankind. How terrible conditions impulse people to search for something more, a greater being, when family and loved ones are gone. We are all aware that when one is going through hardships in any aspect of life, we are told to fall back on our families. This is because family is a group of people united by certain convictions or a common affiliation, as defined by the Merriam Webster’s Dictionary. As stated in the definition, family is unity. A unity that is hard to break. Hence, this is why families are separated in catastrophes, as in Immaculee Ilibagiza’s case. It’s hard to go through pain when your family is not there to support you. This is why people seek God when everything and everyone else is gone.
People take family for granted. This is due to the fact that we are all convinced that no matter what happens, whether it’s good or bad, our family will be there. Sometimes, we don’t realize that our families can be gone as well as material things. We don’t meditate about this matter until someone like Immaculee shares their story.
Immaculee had a very religious family. Her father was a minister and they prayed so often as a family that it created a stronger bond within them. Because she’d previously had a relationship with God before the genocide, it wasn’t a challenge for her to retreat to her faith when she felt she couldn’t go on any longer. However, as selfish as it might seem, it is very common for people to become very devout to God when there’s something wrong. It happened in the holocaust during WWII, as it happens today.
When Immaculee found herself in that tiny bathroom with seven other women who were complete strangers, whom she couldn’t even talk to, she couldn’t have felt lonelier in her life. She missed her family. She wondered if anyone in her family might even still be alive. She kept on thinking if what her brother...