Spiritual Damage Need to Know Quotations Flashcards
“Some dangled their grenades through the open windows of our vehicles.”
it is clear here that the militiamen have little if any respect for life, as ‘dangled’ suggests that they are toying with Keane and his colleagues’ lives.
“Most of these people had been involved in the murder of their Tutsi neighbours. Tutsi men, women and children had died at roadblocks like this”
These sentences are designed to shock the reader with the listing sentence emphasising the fact that these militiamen had been indiscriminate in their actions towards the Tutsi – all had been killed regardless of their innocence
“Now and again the smell of the dead would drift out across the warm air of the afternoon.”
The reference to the smell (which is repeated later in the text) is important as heightens the impact of the scale of death. The smell of decaying flesh would come in waves and has deeply affected Keane. Even now he can remember it exactly as it was.
“We stared at the menu, although we had already ordered. We gazed out of the window, looking around at the other guests, and stared at the cutlery and tapped our fingers on the tabletop.”
The words ‘stared’ (used twice in quick succession) and ‘gazed’ reinforce the sense that the group - all of whom are experienced journalists - are utterly unable to comprehend what they have seen, never mind be able to express it.
“Ours was an inarticulacy born of sorrow, fear and incomprehension. Each of us had experienced war and killing before, but in Rwanda we had stepped into a place where all previous experience of death and conflict paled into insignificance.”
Once more, Keane makes clear that he feels unable to express or even understand the horror of what he saw through the words ‘inarticulacy’ and ‘incomprehension’. This is particularly relevant given his occupation and reason for being in Rwanda in the first place. This highlights the constraints of journalism. He also contrasts his previous experiences of ‘war and killing’ with Rwanda, making clear that this particular experience was infinitely worse than anything he had previously been exposed to.
“To walk at night across an overgrown courtyard strewn with the rotting dead, to have to watch every step because in the long grass there are the decapitated heads of the murdered.”
The description here makes clear the scale of devastation in Rwanda. “Strewn” highlights that the bodies were in every area of Rwanda. The image of the “decapitated heads” shocks the reader as it depicts how savage and horrific these attacks were which Keane himself had to witness.
“We must not report countries like Rwanda as if they were demented theme parks, peopled by savages doomed to slaughter each other in perpetuity.”
Keane is angry at how some reported on the genocide and wants the real story to be told. His metaphor of “demented theme parks” suggests that Rwanda is demonic and that rules do not apply there. He highlights that many viewed Rwandans as “savages” and that this behaviour was typical and therefore did not need the West to intervene.
“The fact that this was an act of systematically planned mass murder, a final solution of monstrous proportions, was too often lost in the rush to blame the catastrophe on the old bogey of tribalism.”
Again, in anger and frustration Keane links the Rwandan genocide to the Holocaust, this time through the use of the phrase ‘final solution’ – he argues (effectively) that what happened in Rwanda must be seen in the context of other acts of ‘systematically planned mass murder’ rather than simply dismissed as a consequence of tribal conflict in a faraway African nation.
“Although I had covered acts of evil, I had managed to retain a belief in a world where the triumph of evil was prevented by an ultimate force for good. That belief has disappeared”
Keane details the true scale of effect that Rwanda had on him here. He explains that even after witnessing many other war zones in his career, Rwanda was the scene which shattered his lasting belief in the good of human kind. He had maintained a hope that good would be victorious but this belief is this dismissed with a short, blunt second sentence that leaves no room for misinterpretation “that belief has disappeared”
“…if we ignore evil we become the authors of a guilty silence.”
Keane concludes his essay with this powerful and memorable statement, echoing a number of famous phrases which relate to the triumph of evil through the inaction of good people. Keane’s determination that we must ‘care about what happens in remote African countries’ is rooted in the belief that by failing to act to prevent evil we become complicit in it. This is an extremely provocative and uncomfortable conclusion to the whole text.
“Machete-wielding thugs”
This is an effective description as it marks a distinction between an orderly armed force and a bloodthirsty group of lawbreakers, gleefully engaging in the murder of innocents. The word conjures images of violence and disorder, showing how the Tutsis were left completely defenceless. The machete itself is a crude yet deadly implement which conveys the savagery and violence of the times.
somewhere in the bushes were rags and bones and withering flesh
The list of human remains bluntly and brutally emphasises the callous horror that erupted in Rwanda in 1994. As an experienced war reporter, his experiences here were literally beyond words and left him losing his faith in humanity in general. These are key concerns that are effectively established in this opening and explored throughout: the horror, the personal effect and his wider reflections on humanity as a whole.
his eyes started to swim
Here he tried to talk about his thoughts. The image conveys the sense of a deep well of pain, too great for words. The inarticulacy he experienced is partly explained by his anger that the genocide was allowed to happen and it also relates to the systematic barbarity that he saw inflicted on countless innocent people.
Kigali, Butare, Rusomo, Nyarabuy
The nature of genocide is such that it occurred in a wide range of places and Keane conveys this well through structure. This list of Rwandan towns and cities rings out like a prayer for the dead. This emphasises the geographical range of the slaughter and shows where his faith in the goodness of people was steadily broken down. Keane structures his piece well to highlight various concerns: here he moves the focus from the genocide on to the aftermath and how he felt as a bystander.
Vulture
This metaphor conveys a sense of Keane as an exploiter, benefiting from the deaths of innocent people by advancing himself as a journalist. Just as a vulture is a scavenger which routinely seeks out the injured or the sick, so the suggestion is that Keane was an unwelcome visitor who contributed nothing helpful to the people he filmed. In fact he was trying to draw attention to the events in the hope that something would be done!
