Left to Tell by Immaculée Ilibagiza

 So, yes, I guess it is sort of odd that I chose to read about the genocide in Rwanda over my holiday break; "the most wonderful time of the year".  This autobiography, Left to Tell, is one I have been meaning to read for a while.  My Dad went to hear Ilibagiza speak at a Yale seminar last year and he was moved by her story of faith; my Dad then relentlessly asked me to read her story, not saying that I would like it, just saying that I should try to understand what he learned at that seminar.

Her story, as my Dad had promised, was one that did not just depict the pain of Rwanda, the pain she had to endure being a persecuted Tutsi, her story portrayed the evolution of hate in Rwanda and the generations of Rwandans that were brought into a culture laced with hatred.

A disclaimer I must add before discussing this novel: I know that I can never truly understand what this woman endured.  I fully recognize that I can never grasp the pain of watching my homeland turn into a war zone literally overnight and being forced to endure the pain of losing not just a loved one, but all the people one ever loved in an entire lifetime.  The story was saddening, wretched to read at times for she described “the vicious, sadistic chants of killers…holding [her] brother’s skull in her hands…smell of death…shattered faces…shattered lives” but as I read this it was all blurry to me (129-199).  My mind is one born in raised in Fairfield, CT and as hard as I tried to feel this woman’s pain, I was at a loss.  She had to live through pain far greater than I think and hope to never have to feel.  I guess I felt embarrassed by my lack of empathy while reading the novel, how could I not be utterly moved by this woman’s story? 

It was not the basic story of her life that could move me by my juvenile understanding of genocide, the thing that moved me the most was Immaculée’s ability to have faith in such suffering.  The story I could must aptly connect and relate to was the story of her faith.  One of those big ‘life and faith’ questions is how can there truly be a god if people such as the millions of people in Rwanda have to suffer so greatly?  Immaculée’s story answered that question for me. 

I sat in church this morning (I swear this is not going to be a religious thing because I know I go to public school and all, just a recognition…) anyway, the priest discussed that in one year 1,000 people who were recorded in our church’s census no longer come to church.  The priest discussed that people find an answer that disproves the need to go to church and they move on.  I am no saint, my family is not super religious, but the fact that Immaculée was living in a “a small bathroom four feet long and three feet wide…the room not big enough for a sink” and she stayed there with at one point 8 other women for months and had the strength to keep her faith baffles me (73-74).  I could surmise that because she lost everything—family, friends, her home, her belongings—other than the dress she wore on her back, made faith really the only other thing she could call her own during the genocide.          

The most awe-inspiring point in Immaculée’s story was when she wrote,

“Because I felt that my faith was under attack, I spent hours contemplating two verses I’d memorized from Mark, which talked about the power of faith.  [two verses] …Even a few minutes not spent in prayer or contemplation of God became an invitation for Stan to stab me with his double-edged knife of doubt and self-pity.  Prayer became my armor, and I wrapped it tightly around my heart” (85).

When any person would ask for a machete or gun to keep them safe, she asked for a bible—she did truly armor herself with a power greater than weaponry.  When she found the man that was responsible for killing her two brothers, her mother, her father, as well as all of her aunts and uncles that lived in Kigali, her hometown, she uttered “I forgive you” (204).  At first I thought she was insane, scarred from the pain of losing so many loved ones that she had gone mad when she told Felicien, the killer of her family, that she forgave him—but then it eerily made sense, even to me.  A vast majority of her fellow Tutsi’s who came out of the genocide alive were unable to move past the event, some died after the war had unofficially ceased out of grief.  She was one of the very few that could move on with her life by forgiving the man that killed her family, thus releasing the hate that was the root of the Rwandan genocide in the first place.

Returning to the ‘small-world view’ disclaimer that I spoke about above; I always wondered and asked how people can hate one another to such a degree that they are willing to commit the atrocities of mass murder?  As much as I realized the strong faith that can be born from great pain, I also saw the other side, the side that is a lot gloomier.  To know that 1 million of my own people were killed in less than a year, I cannot honestly say that I could forgive as Immaculée did.  Resentment would most certainly settle in my bones as did the resentment of the ethnic hierarchy in Rwanda; Hutus feeling inferior to the Tutsis after the genocide in 1959 when Tutsis persecuted Hutus (the opposite of what the genocide was in 1994, this novel). 

The answer to my question goes further when I saw the evolution of hate in this novel.  The first day of school for Immaculée consisted of “ethnic role-call” or rather the separation of Hutus, Tutsis, and Twas in the classroom (13).  Immaculée came to find at an incredibly young age that the Hutus in the classroom were favored.  She realized that even being “number two” in her class maintaining a “94% GPA”, she would have to fight to have even a glimpse at the privileges Hutus were guaranteed (48).  That resentment that if I were Immaculée, I would feel, thus comes up again.  She was no more than 6 when she was told she was a lesser race—by the age of 20, 30, 40 it would appear that would be irksome.

I am not at all trying to say that what the Hutus did was right, but the hate-society that the Rwandans were raised in was basically inescapable.  As Immaculée concluded her novel “it will take the love of the entire world to heal my homeland,” she was right, it would take millions more people forgiving murder, forgiving rape, forgiving unfathomable atrocities to heal Rwanda (210).  It took just one act of violence to derail peace in Rwanda when the president was killed in 1993, but it would take the entire country’s mutual forgiveness to return Rwanda to the peaceful state of its origin. 

Central Passage Chapters 5 & 6

"As I went over to say goodbye I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby's face...that voice was a deathless song" (Fitzgerald 101).

Gatsby's true character, the one that cannot be concealed with a simple "old sport", is finally revealed in this passage (100).  This man who had so long protrayed himself as a man of wealth and mystery with his lavish parties, is no higher a man than any other on Long Island, when he finally gets to share time with Daisy.  The fact that Daisy is married to Tom and he doesn't even spend a moment feeling guilty over sweeping this woman off her feet, shows so definitely that Gatsby is not really the perfect gentleman who would do anything for anyone.  When Gatsby's interests become entangled, he does not take into account the people he is hurting. 

Gatsby's heart in this passage was depicted as "ghostly".  He encompassed an emptiness, that could only be filled when this affair between himself and Daisy came about.  He lived a lifestyle where he could expend his energy on anything he chose and he chose to use all of his "creative passion(s)" on Daisy (101).  The tone in this passage depicts Gatsby's emptiness that Daisy was able to fulfill.

The most interesting part of this passage was the paralleled emptiness of both Gatsby and Daisy and how that seems to connect them together.  Fitzgerald depicted Gatsby's as having a "ghostly heart" and then proceeded to discuss Daisy as having a voice like a "deathless song" (101).  There is a suggestion that these two characters have sought one another because of the passion that they lack in everything else.  They share a common interest in desiring something more than what they already have to begin with.

Central Passage: The Great Gatsby

"I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair.  Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering.  I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life" (Fitzgerald 40). 

This passage most aptly describes the central passage for the first two chapters of The Great Gatsby because it depicts the chaotic nature of the novel.  There is a continual movement of characters, setting, and action in the novel that makes the form of the novel seem disjointed-chaotic like the characters themselves.  The "soft twilight" is a complete paradox to the insanity of Mrs. Wilson's nose being broken by Tom Buchanan.  The characters seemed very unsettled as they talk in fits of passion and anger. 

This page is also very central because it is one of the few times that we get a lengthy look into what the narrator is thinking amidst all of the chaos.  It is interesting how he feels he is somewhat apart of what is going on in this apartment and also how he is just like the silent onlooker on the street who wonders what is going on in the apartment above.  Nick has a way of being in the setting, but always distancing himself to some point that he is never completely there.

Pre-Discussion Question for "American Literature 1820-1865"

Washington Irving expressed the "difficulty [American writers faced] of how to keep from being a secondhand English writer" (Irving 341).  American writers feared that their predecessors would take too heavy a hand in the creation of their new works, these new works would then be cast out as being conventional and furthermore rejected by the small, elite literary world.  Were Irving's fears of American writing being merely counterfeit English writing confirmed?
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In what ways does this idea speak to the writing of the modern day American Scholars who are finding it "impossible to reconcile their...notions" of American writing because they cannot differentiate between true American writing and writing that is rooted in other countries heritage (341)?

The Choice Ruthie Made

In our discussion in class today of Marilynne Robinson's novel Housekeeping, many comments were made supporting the idea that Ruthie was given no choice to follow Aunt Sylvie, but rather Aunt Sylvie took Ruthie under her wing and forced her to be a part of the unconventional lifestyle.  Teachers questioned Ruthie's ability to stand on her own two feet without the guidance of another person, commanding her that she is "going to have to think for [her]self"(Robinson 135). Yes, it did appear that Ruthie hid behind the shadow of her sister Lucille and Aunt Sylvie, but as Lucille put it, "[Ruthie] has her own ways"(135).   Ruthie's evolution as a woman was in her way; she would sit by the lake instead of going to school, refuse caddy discussion over Coca Cola's, and enjoy adventures with Aunt Sylvie.  Ruthie was not reading "books that were to be improving" as Lucille did, nor did Ruthie desire to sew a "a skirt and a small jacket" alongside Lucille--she wanted to be a kid, to not have to face the fears of growing up, the fear that she may fall into the depression that forced their mother to commit suicide in the opening of the novel (125).  Ruthie chose to be a young lady, her development would come, but not at the same moment as Lucille was 'maturing' into a proper young lady.


Ruthie was given a choice when it came to becoming the characteristic and acceptable women of the 1980's.  Although it was a method for Aunt Sylvie to keep custody of Ruthie, the two of them "polished the windows...washed the china...burned the boxes of magazines in the orchards" to prove that they were capable of being proper women, to prove that they could be together (199).  In these actions, Ruthie had a choice to participate or not.  She could have allowed Aunt Sylvie fail in her efforts to have perfect housekeeping and in the court of law, Ruthie would be taken from Sylvie, but Ruthie obviously did not want that.  She was much more content amidst the frazzled life together with Aunt Sylvie then be the women Lucille, and all other women of that time had become. 


Returning to the idea of Lucille and Ruthie's mother's death, it seems that Ruthie's mother was driven to complete insanity by perfect housekeeping and Ruthie learned this early, escaping this fate.  Ruthie described her mother in the painful rant on page 197, "I remember her standing with her arms folded, pushing at the dust with the toe of her pump while she waited for us to finish our sundaes"(197).  She was pushing things into order, but this 'housekeeping' was an acquired ritual, for Ruthie described her in the "eccentricities" that defined her mother most, her eccentric-nature that did not really care about having a floor clear of dust (196).  Her mother sunk into society, sunk to the level society wanted her to be at: a perfect women; being a perfect woman was what killed her.  Ruthie and Lucille, even at the young age, could recall how she was filled with "bitterness...fell silent from time to time...she would soften and shrink in our hands and become infirm" (197).  Ruthie and Lucille watched their mother die--watch society take hold of her and Ruthie refused to have a parallel fate, of driving her car into the "smothered, nameless, and altogether black" lake in Fingerbone because she was being forced to live in the constraints of society (9).  It is in this notion, that Ruthie's choice to leave with Sylvie and cross the bridge, securing that her life would be surely unconventional from that moment is made.       

The Interaction Between the Raven and the Protagonist

As the Raven is introduced in Poe’s poem, he serves as a very calm, eerie sort of character. The protagonist, no doubt, questions if the bird is a bizarre omen, or a “bird of the devil” (Poe 85). The bird’s composition holds true to that of the conventional description of the devil—cunning, as the Raven keeps repeating the word ‘Nevermore’ and manipulative in that the protagonist becomes increasingly drawn to the Raven by asking “What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore/ Meant in croaking ‘Nevermore’”(71-72). With no answer the protagonist becomes more anxious and shouts frantically at the mysterious bird.

The protagonist begins to falter under the aloofness of the Raven, who simply croaks a single word, driving the protagonist mad. The style of how calm the Raven is in relation to the frantic-nature of the protagonist further emphasizes how the Raven is superior to the man. The man shrieks, “bird or fiend…/Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore/ leave no black plume/ leave my loneliness” (100-101). The fear in the protagonist as he shouts and the foreshadowing when he speaks of the ‘black plume’ emphasize the death to come.


The Raven is most characteristically like the Devil in these moments; the Devil’s capabilities to inflict death and retell the stories of death are depicted just as in the Bible. The Raven, or rather the Devil, harnesses the protagonist’s soul in his dark shadow, bringing the protagonist to demise akin to the demise of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The protagonist began this night pondering “a curious volume of forgotten lore” or simple things, as Adam and Eve lived in quiet serenity (2). The Devil then came to sweep this “weak and weary” man into his hold (1-2). As Eve was beguiled by the Devil’s allure, so was this man by the Raven.