Exit West

The book Exit West was an interesting read for me. When I first began to read it, I was confused on what was happening, when the two main characters of the book were looking for doors to be able to travel to go to a different place. “…Rumors had begun to circulate of doors that could take you elsewhere, often to places far away, well removed from this death trap of a country…A normal door, they said, could become a special door, and it could happen without warning, to any door at all.” This book reminded me of the Chronicles of Narnia, where they would go through the wardrobe and they would be in Narnia.

 I think that it would be cool to be able to have a door appear and take people to a new place, free of danger. In the book it talked about how refugees were being bombed in their homes and how they would be sleeping on the streets. “Refugees had occupied many of the open places in the city, pitching tents in the greenbelts between roads, erecting lean-tos next to the boundary walls of houses, sleeping rough on sidewalks and in the margins of streets. Some seemed to be trying to re-create the rhythms of a normal life, as though it were completely natural to be residing, a family of four, under a sheet of plastic propped up with branches and a few chipped bricks…Others didn’t move at all: stunned, maybe, or resting. Possibly dying.” (2) 

It is sad to think about how these people are just trying to flee from danger and people want nothing to do with them. This may be just a book, but stuff like this happens in the real world today. People are trying to find safety, and some end up dead on the journey to freedom. “IOM said at least 631 people have died trying to reach Spain by sea since the start of 2018, and 2,075 migrants have died at sea”

A New Life

In the book Refugee by Alan Gratz, a girl Isabel and her family along with her friends' family are fleeing Cuba to go to Miami, Florida. There is a part in the book where Isabel stops to think what the United States will be like. “ ‘Shelves full of food and the store’, Señora Castillo said. ‘Being able to travel the anywhere we want, anytime we want!’ said Amara ‘I want to be able to choose who I vote for,’ Luis said.” (p. 84) As they continue to go through all the things that they can have in the United States, her father says “Be free”(p. 85). In Cuba they were rioting on the streets trying to get Castro out, there was no food, no work and they were searching for freedom. For people coming to America they are looking for freedom and wanting to start an new life. In the book The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family had the same idea that America would be a place to start over, where they can finally be free and make a better lives for themselves. 

Happening right now is the Honduras Caravan, where thousands of people are leaving Honduras and walking to the United States. These people are leaving for a better and safer life, free of gangs and kids being able to go to school; to start and new life. “Many people are leaving because they fear for their lives if they stay, because they’re being threatened by gangs and the local government is either complicit or absentee. They’re seeking asylum, even if their circumstances may not fit neatly into the definition of “persecution” in US asylum law.” When Isabel and her family finally made it Florida, it became their home, a fresh new start, but in the Grapes of Wrath the Joad family was not welcomed with open arms. How are the people from Honduras going to be welcomed?

The Bigger Picture

“Palu, in Indonesia’s Central Sulawesi province, was ravaged on Sept. 28 by a 7.5-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that lashed the coastal city with waves up to 20 ft. tall. The twin disasters claimed nearly 2,000lives, according to the U.N., with thousands more injured and missing.Survivors will feel the consequences for years: some 74,000 people lost their homes, and will live in refugee camp-like settlements for the foreseeable future.”

Climate change is making the U.S. Southwest, drier, hotter and dustier, and there are predictions that more disasters are coming. Ferocious storms used be very rare, and it would be a small storm here and there, but now these huge storms are becoming more frequent it is destroying homes and families. “In March 2017, “wildfires raged across four stated, fanned by wind sand fueled by a drought-starved prairie,” reported by New York Times, “killed at least six people and burned more than2,300 square miles.”

 “Earth is on track to face devastating consequences of climate change – extreme drought, food shortages and deadly flooding – unless there’s an “unprecedented” effort made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by2030, a new United Nations report warns.”  This is very sad, and I think that people are so focused on unnecessary things that are not opening their eyes to see what is happening right in in front of their faces.

CNN news headlined that President Trump gets two scoops of ice cream, while everyone else gets one; that is far from important, and people want to know why this world is coming to this terrifying end. Thousands are dying from heat alone, and they have dust storms towered 8,000 feet high and buried entire homes. “climate change presents a risk to people and infrastructure around the globe.” We need to look at the entire picture, because a ton of little things add up to big things.