The Rabbi's Cat

AnaMarie Mehmel

Professor Benander

World Literature III

23 May 2011

            The Rabbi’s Cat by Joann Sfar was a very good story. The story has a very good plot and the graphic panels bring the reader into the story by appealing to the reader’s vision. So when reading this a person gets more than just one single focus. A person could read this by just looking at the pictures because they tell the story so well. Of course the story can be read just like a regular book, by just reading the bubbles or one can read both the pictures and the bubbles at the same time.

When reading the panels one can tell when a scene is important because Sfar will make the panel more detailed. Also he changes how the characters actually look so as to amplify their emotions. For example at the end of chapter 2 Sfar completely distorts the cat so that the reader will know that the cat is very angry. Consequently, Sfar uses colors and shapes to show what the cat thinks is important or not, and therefore what Sfar thinks is important. Like when the rabbi’s rabbi was talking Sfar put shapes with squiggly lines instead of words to show that he thought the rabbi’s words were meaningless. Also, in chapter 3 when the family goes to Paris, Sfar makes the panels gray when in Algeria the panels were always bright and colorful. He is saying that the colonial powers and their native lands are dark, dreary, and truly inferior to the land in which they are trying to colonize. Unfortunately, the rabbi’s daughter has been colonized and the rabbi himself has been changed by his trip to Paris; like in Nervous Conditions, by Tsitsi Dangarembga where Tambu changes because of her time at the missionary, she is colonized. The rabbi’s daughter reminds me of her, and the rabbi reminds me of Lucia.   

This story is really eye opening too. It is trying to get people to see that people might be different, but they are still people. It shows that people who are different can still be friends, like when the rabbi left his house and met up with the an Arab, and they had a great time traveling together or when the rabbi met his son-in-law’s father who was not religious at all. They had a great time chatting together. Seeing people as human beings no matter their nationality or skin color is something the world really should learn. It would make things so much better for everyone. I like to think that I am like the rabbi. That I can pray and be faithful to God, but still have a open mind about things. He is someone people should try to emulate.  

Nervous Conditions

AnaMarie Mehmel

Professor Benander

World Literature III

2 May 2011

            Nervous Conditions, by Tsitsi Dangarembga, is a very twisted, complicated story that makes the reader work to understand the first few chapters. It is a very interesting story, but the author uses a twisted writing style in the first few chapters that will make anyone’s head spin. After those chapters, though, the story goes to a linear story line making it easier for European readers to understand.

            The character Nyasha is an interesting one because she rebels against life her family wants her to lead. Her father Babamukuru, the head of the family, moves her, her mother and her brother to England when she was little. This starts a chain reaction of events that lead to Nyasha’s rebellion. Being in England changes her so much that she cannot function properly in her native Shona culture. She has learned that she can act a certain way, the European way, but when in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, everything she learned in England is wrong and her prents want her to go back to the traditional Shona culture. Yet, as Nyasha says in the story, a person cannot unlearn things. There is no going back once a course has been set and begun. So Nyasha has a hard time fitting in her new life in Rhodesia because it is not right for a girl to speak up or defy her father and mother, but in England the views on the woman’s role in the household and in life is very different. She does not understand why she cannot act the way she does because it is the European way and if it is European it must be right. Her rebellion only gets her pain and sorrow. In chapter 6, Nyasha and her father get into a fight that goes from verbal to physical and it is a fight that Nyasha loses. She suffers physical, emotional, mental, and every other kind of abuse you can think of at the hands of her father with the effects lasting a very long time. She become bulimic and dissocializes herself from her family. Her rebellion did not give her anything but pain.

            I believe that many people could probably relate to Nyasha. I know that I do. I moved in with my uncle to get away from my father and his domineering ways. Poor Nyasha did not get that option, unfortunately. I think her life would have been vastly different if she did not have to deal with the humiliation her father forced on her. She does escape in her schooling, but one can only hide behind books for so long. I know that is what I used to do so that I did not have to be around my dad and his hypocrisies. Maybe fathers do not realize how their actions hurt their children, but a wound, whether inflicted intentionally or not, is still a wound that leaves a scar. Each one changes a person for good or evil. Nyasha became bulimic, I left to start a new, better life.