Monthly Archives: December 2018

WEEK 16: SUNDIATA

It was interesting to see how the story of Sundiata played out because even though we know he ended up being the greatest kind, the storytelling of the griot made it feel like it was suspenseful. So many interesting questions were raised in my mind while I was reading Sundiata, and I don’t even know where to begin. Well, for starters, when the griot says, “Do not seek what is not to be known.”, encapsulated me. It did so because I remember in IB Math, my friend and I would talk about religion, life, and all the above and my friend, Dileny, said that God doesn’t want us to seek for some knowledge now because we wouldn’t ever understand it. She said that when we died he would tell us and she backed it up with evidence from the Bible and I don’t exactly remember where. It’s interesting to see the connection between this and the Griot’s remarks. Can the truth actually hurt us that much that we should not seek it? I think that we should be able to obtain all the knowledge possible. There’s certainly going to be a lot of risks involving that and there will be moments where ethics come into play but how will we ever know what we don’t know if we don’t push ourselves to those limits. Knowledge is right, a right that we all have, a right that Eve risked it all for. We should go to great lengths to know all the truths, but that’s just me.

WEEK 15: SUNDIATA

Sundiata is an interesting text to read due to the fact I was never really exposed to any African literature. I have only read one other African work of literature, Things Fall Apart. I knew some concepts were going to prevail such as deities, religion, and magic in Sundiata due to my exposure to Things Fall Apart. However, Sundiata raises an interesting concept of destiny or past causing the future. The Griot states that due to the fact that one has blood within them that has done great things, they are meant to be great. There are often times where the Griot makes things appear as free will when he tells Sundiata’s father that he must marry the ugliest woman so that his child would be the greatest ruler that has ever existed. This really got me thinking about fate vs free will and I applied it to my own life. All your actions lead you to the future you essentially constructed, but what if you are to take those actions in order to lead to your destiny? For this is presented to me in a manner of religion and Church. I have a calling to be a Pastor, I personally don’t want to be one due to the task entailing me leaving all of what I have constructed behind to preach the word of God throughout the world. So even though I believe God, His calling for me is something that I have not been fond of. I’ve been resisting but as time progresses, I find myself more and more inclined to the thought of being one. It really makes me think if that is what God wants for me then it’s for the best, right? However, I choose not to go forth with it because I want stability, I want my degrees because what if I need a backup? But how long can I just keep on running and running? AT some point I’m going to have to make a decision. What if I embrace my calling and become someone so powerful, used by God to save souls? What if this is my destiny, to be grand in that manner like Sundiata in his respective story.

WEEK 14: INFERNO, CANTO 25 TO 32

It’s interesting to note how deeper Dante descends in hell, his pity for the damned souls diminishes. In the lower circles, the punishment for the souls becomes harsher. For example, in Canto 26 Dante sees flames all around him. When he further inspects him and he finds that each flame has a soul that is imprisoned within the fire and here we encounter Ulysses. When first reading the Canto, I thought Ulysses was some random person that I’ve never heard of but as time progressed, I figure out that it was Odysseus! It made sense why he was located in one of the fraudulent circles of hell. The Italians didn’t particularly like the Greeks due to the Greeks winning the Trojan War. However, there’s more of a purpose why Odysseus is in that circle. Odysseus used his intellect to deceive the Trojans when he gave them the gift of the Trojan horse. Furthermore, we can see his pity be completely gone by the 9th circle. He placed traitors in ice in Circle 9 because traitors are the farthest away from God’s light. The most interesting thing to note is that when a Friar asks him to clean his eyes from his ice so he has a little bit of time to cry before the ice comes back, Dante says nope and shows no courtesy. Personally, I would have cleaned his eyes because like he’s spending the rest of eternity there in Hell. Also, who are you to judge and just have no pity towards them in that one second? But that’s just my opinion. Like yes, they were wrongful in doing what they did, but you’re no better in any circumstance and we can’t help the fact that we’re sinners by nature. But we are humans and we have souls, show some compassion.

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