Compare and Contrast ‘A desirable society’ Essay

Both Andre Brink’s ‘A Dry White Season’ and James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ display two very different societies undergoing artistic, cultural and political transitions. In 1914, Ireland saw the Nationalist party at its peak, where Irish society was desperately searching for a sense of cultural identity and political stability. Joyce takes an apolitical approach in order to objectively show Dublin to his fellow Dubliners in his ‘nicely polished looking glass.’ Andre Brink, in comparison, documents a temporal shift into 1976, during the Soweto uprising, in which the non-white population of South Africa protested against the Nationalist Party’s apartheid regime. Brink, like Joyce, draws upon this inspiration to offer a truthful commentary upon†¦show more content†¦Brink describes in factual detail the atmosphere the Soweto uprising created; ‘The children massing in the school playgrounds like swarms of bees preparin g to leave their hives. The marches. The police. The gunshots. The dead and wounded carted off.’ (A Dry White Season 1998:41) Brink paints the reader a vivid picture of the atmosphere the Soweto uprising created. The short sentences each supply a snippet of information, as if Brink himself was a bystander towards the event. Isidore Diala comments upon how Brink recounts the Soweto uprising with precision and attention to detail: ‘Brink’s documentations of the facts of the Soweto riots are almost as rigorous as a faithful transcription of history.’ (History and the inscriptions of torture as purgatorial fire in Andre Brink’s fiction 2002:67) Brink suggests a real conflict in culture within this uprising. The Nationalist Party constantly tried to impose Afrikaans culture upon the South African citizens. However, due to its association with the apartheid regime, if anything the Nationalist Party’s persistence alienated the public from t heir own culture and forced them to adopt English customs which came about through British colonisation. James Joyce also tackles the theme of colonisation and the integrity of national identity and culture. The Home Rule Act was introduced by the United Kingdom, after a parliamentary group called ‘The Irish Volunteers’ fought for the implementation of the Act.Show MoreRelatedComparing My Husband And I Cultures969 Words   |  4 PagesFor my sociology project, I decided to compare and contrast my husband and I cultures. In doing so I discovered we shared many cultural norms and tradition although there was some noticeable difference in terms of how our communities are run within our defined societies. My husband hails from a small country on the coast of West Africa named Sierra Leone. That’s a huge contrast from the Hmong people who don’t have a land to call home. Our people through centuries of prosecution have scatted throughoutRead MoreValues are Found in Every Culture, Society, and Nation901 Words   |  4 Pages VALUES Values are universal. 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