Taking Back Yesterday January 22, 2010

                                                     

The problems faced within the resedential schools, are beyond repair. No one can take back the sexual assult done to those innocent children. No one can take back the physical abuse, or the verbal abuse done towards the youth. The damage has already been done, and it will effect the First Nations People forever. The fact that they were treated any differently because of their religion, beleifs, or race, upsets me, but to know that they were treated so inhumanlike, disturbs me. To know that another human, such as myself could inflicked pain on another so heavily is beyond unbeleivable to me and it makes me disapointed in my own countries past.

As Kaprise says, reducing or cutting taxes doesn’t compare to the abuse they underwent and the government will never be able to make it up to the natives.

As Lisamarie dealt with her problems, drinking her days away and partying her nights away, she slowly began trying to clean up her act towards the end of the book. She tried to quit drinking but with a visit to Aunt Trudy’s house, failed to do so. But the fact that she tryed to do so, shows that she knows she isn’t handling things in the best ways and is aware that she has done something wrong. 

Lisa was also going through the problem of dealing with her gift of communicating with spirits. She see’s a little leprican/troll-like red haired man appear when someone is in danger, and after the deaths of her grandmother (Ma-ma-oo), Uncle Mick, and brother Jimmy has them appearing during times in her life. At first she think’s she is going insane and question’s whether she is dreaming or not, but towards the end of the novel begins coping with the fact that she has a gift.
– serena

A Better Way

                                                                 

                                                    “We need freedom from the problems that surround us.”

Each character coping with their problems in the novel Monkey Beach, had chose to deal with their pain in the wrong way. Drugs, Alcohol, and Violence are not the way to solve any of your problems no matter how severe they are, and therefore the characters just ‘dug them selves deeper.’ There problems worsened as Uncle Mick had a breakdown at Aunt Edith, Aunt Trudy got kicked out of the village, and Lisamarie almosts gets herself killed.

I think that if they all talked about there problems with one another they may have found a way to move on with their lives. I noticed that Uncle Mick kept all of his emotions bottled up inside and i thought that maybe with all of Aunt Trudys drinking and partying that the two of them should have talked about there experience and found a way to put it behind them. They could have found a better way to deal with it together, rather than alone thinking that no one could possibly understand the torture they went through.

dealing with the pain

                                                                            

“Sometimes you give up. That’s the way it is when your mourning.” (Ma-ma-oo,Robinson, P.290)

We all have our own unique ways of coping with the things that hurt in our lives. With me, I prefer listening to music and going on long walks.  The characters in Monkey Beach turn to very different alternatives such as abusing drugs and alcohol.

When Lisa’s grandfather (Ba-Ba-oo) was physically abusing her grandmother, Ma-ma-oo sent both Uncle Mick and Aunt Trudy to residential schools. As Tab states, “Mick and mom went, and it fucked them up.” (Robinson, P.254)

 As a result of the torture from the school, Uncle Mick became a ‘chain-smoker’ having one cigerette immediately after another to releive his stress.  It seemed to me that he held a lot of his grief inside and never really told any one how he really felt about his horrible experience. He felt that no one would or could come close to understanding what he went through. Holding how he felt in,  lead to a very dramatic outpour of emotions:

“What’s wrong?”
“Wrong, What’s right?”
“He’s gone crazy.” Uncle Geordie said.
“Crazy? I’m crazy? You look at your precious church. You look at what they did. You never went to a residential school. You can’t tell me what i fucking went through and what i didn’t.”
“I wasn’t telling you anything!” Aunt Edith said. “I was saying grace!”
“You don’t get it. You really don’t get it. You’re buying into a religion that thought the best way to was us white was to fucking torture children.”
(Robinson,P.109-110)

He mellowed up after this inncident but he should have talked to someone about his feeling’s and eventually he may have been able to move forward with his life.

Aunt Trudy took a worse road then Uncle Mick. She took to heavily drinking and partying. She figured she could drink her pain away but that clearly didn’t work as she was more miserable then she would ever have been if she had handled it a better way. The abuse she underwent in resedential school, not only effected her life but hurt everyone around her. She started dramatic attention-grabbing fights with Aunt Kate and pointlessly yet consistantly screamed and bossed Tab(itha) around. Tab understood that she was very drunk, and didn’t say anything to the horrible things said to her, but when Lisa snapped back at something rude said to Tab, Aunt Trudy called her a bad name but hadn’t remembered a thing the next day. To top all of that, she violently  attacked her ‘fiance’ Josh, smashing a beer bottle over his head, and pushing him down a set of stairs, therefore breaking his leg. This effected both Josh and Tabitha, as they were dismissed from the reserve.

Lisa Marie didn’t go through the horrible experience of a residential school, but the loss of who seemed to be three of the most important people in her life. Her Uncle Mick, grandmother (Ma-ma-oo) and her brother, Jimmy.

With all the emptiness in her life from her missing family members, she took to endless partying which included drug and alcohol abuse.  She consistantly smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol beverages with her poor choice of friends. A lot like Aunt Trudy she tried to drink her pain away but only made it continuesly worse. She ended up cutting all of her hair off as to what she called ‘a way of mourning’ and smoked a lot of marijuana. She did this all to forget, but remembering is an important way of coping. She should have realised her family wouldn’t have wanted her to take to these poor decisions, but to of wanted her to remember them throughout her life and live on, happy and sucessfully.

issue of injustice January 13, 2010

                                                                          

The mistreatment of the First Nations People is the issue of injustice in Eden Robinson’s, “Monkey Beach.” The government would send natives to Residential schools trying to force upon them different beliefs and religion.  They were beaten brutally as they wanted them to speak english, and beleive in the ‘white man’s’ god. In these schools they were treated unfairly and were assaulted in many ways unimaginable. Lisa’s Aunt Trudy is an example of this mistreatment. She is severely ‘messed up’ from her experience at a residential school, and it has changed her for the worst. While forced to live at these schools Aunt Trudy underwent unbeleiveable torture. Physical and verbal assault, aswell as  sexual abuse are just a few of the challenges she faced. These memories still haunt her, and she is now an alcoholic. This abuse, not only effected Aunt Trudy, but now effects her entire family and everyone around her. She is drunk 95% of the time in the book which leads her to have minimal control of her actions daily and has become very violent. Both Aunt Trudy  and Uncle Mick underwent this torture and they have both just held their emotions inside them. The effects of this injustice are very impactful and are extreme long term. The challenges faced at these schools  haunted them up until their late adulthood and never stopped.