Post #6

Choose a representative passage from this novel that holds particular significance to you. Type it in and comment on its significance.

In many of the legends that the Sawi people tell to their children around the campfires, the heroes are men who formed friendships with the express purpose of later betraying the befriended on to be killed and eaten. p. 8

This passage is in the author’s introduction, but it really caught my attention and reminded me of the songs I was sung when I was a child. Although they aren’t the same message, they seem just as bizarre to tell children. The songs that came to mind which I danced around the campfire to were “London bridge is falling down” and “Ring around the rosie." They sound like such cheerful nursery rhymes but their meaning is far from it. “Ring around the rosie” refers to the Black Plague and how people died from it. In the same way, the Sawi children enjoy legends that are vile and repulsive to the majority of societies today.
It seems hypocritical of me to ridicule their legends of idealizing men who betray and cannibalize or head hunt other humans, as my own culture sheds a positive light on one of the worst natural disasters in history. "Do not judge lest you be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure it will be measured to you. And why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye' when there is a log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye" (Matthew 7:1-5). We choose to point out other people’s faults, yet tend to ignore our own.