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 Compare/Contrast: Blood Diamond and Chanda's Secrets First, I will examine Blood Diamond. Blood Diamond is a 2006 Hollywood movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. As stated in the title of the movie, the movie centres on the illegal trade of blood diamonds or conflict diamonds in Africa. In Africa, rebel forces like the R.U.F. are capturing civilians to mine for diamonds and they use the money generated to buy weapons to start civil wars. The diamonds meanwhile travel to the western world to be sold to people as wedding gifts. This movie, as it is a “Hollywood” movie, has exaggerated some of the violence; but this is only to show the crisis in Africa and how Africans are dying so we, in the Western world, can buy our loved ones wedding rings. This movie also presents the insecurity and poverty in African villages and how it has lead to prostitution and civil wars, which is fought by many child soldiers. The movie ends off saying that Sierra Leone (the setting of the movie) is now in peace and that many countries have signed the Kimberly Process, a process to eliminate the flow of conflict diamonds. Now, I shall examine Chanda’s Secrets. This is a novel written by author Allan Stratton. This book is about a young girl in Africa named Chanda. Chanda lives in poverty and people around her are dying of Aids. She is fine until she thinks that her mom has Aids too and also her best friend. In the end, Chanda realizes that Aids is not the end of the world and she thinks about the future and what she can do to help those with Aids. The themes of this book are Aids, shame, and poverty. These three themes are all connected. Poverty has lead to prostitution, which leads to Aids, which leads finally to shame. This book reveals the Aids crisis in Africa, and how Aids in Africa is not only a physical battle, but also an emotional one. These two works have many similarities and both focus on problems in Africa, but at the same time, the two are also quite different and with different main themes. Both of these works present the problem of poverty in Africa. In both works, there is mention of prostitution and people dying from diamond mines (Chanda’s dad and brothers died in a mining accident). But the main focuses of the two works are different. In Blood Diamond, the focus is on the illegal trade of conflict diamonds and how it relates to civil wars. While in Chanda’s Secrets, the main theme is on the Aids crisis and how people have been shunned because of Aids. Finally, keep in mind that one is a movie while the other is a book. These two works both show the many problems that Africa is dealing with, and while their main focuses may be different, they both end off with the same idea and wish: a hope for a better tomorrow in Africa. Article posted April 13, 2009 at 04:05 PM • comment • Reads 179 • see all articles |
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