Have you ever experienced an unfathomable heartache? Something unexplainable that tugs at you and renders you vulnerable; the feeling is surreal, and most of us have very little knowledge in the matter. The extent of sympathy and human compassion is hardly concrete as there are different levels of responsiveness towards someone else’s sadness.

Many of us have, including myself, can only vaguely describe this feeling brought on by circumstance. You could be attending someone’s funeral, or to a much lesser extent, reading a bittersweet romance novel, and still feel compelled to cry in both situations. There are certain instances in life that evoke unwarranted feelings of grief from humans that may not necessarily be caused by our own affairs.

After I had finished reading Ruined by Lynn Nottage my heart sunk. I could literally feel every heartbeat as it slowed down and pounded harder. The palpitations soon became painful. There was nothing I could do for Mama Nadi, Sophie, Salima, Josephine, and everyone else who lived through the conflict in the Congo. The photographs at the end just made everything more real, these were not just fictional characters; it was based on what had actually happened.

I tried to reason with myself [to numb the sadness] by thinking of other instances in history where hate was resolved peacefully—I needed a more complete ending, an ending where Sophie had gotten that surgery, and Mama Nadi and the girls lived happily with Christian. I was being unrealistic.

Rape, female brutality, racism, genocide and war still exist today as they did when the film was written. Hate just never seems to completely disappear from history.

After we discussed the historical background of the play in class, I went home and reflected on what I had learned.

I thought of people. I thought of our world. I thought of how little appreciation we have for one another. I thought of Black Eyed Peas and their song Where Is The Love? I thought of what it meant to hate, to divide ourselves because of our differences, to kill one another and the result of our actions. I thought about the what ifs.

What if people collectively made an effort to help each other? What if we took action against inequality and suffering? What if there was a way to make life easier on us all?

Perhaps Lynn Nottage had thought about it too—she wrote a brilliant play that spurred political discussion throughout our class. She took a position, and tried to show us the ugliness of human nature. I could tell she put a little bit of her heart into writing Ruined and in doing so, she reminded me that I have one too.

You know what? We could all use a little attitude adjustment. Learn not to hate each other because of our differences and instead love for all the things we have in common. Ruined has taught me at least that much.

Take action. Voice your opinions. Be the difference.

The song I have been listening to as I write this blog has just ended.

People killing. People dying.

Children hurting, you hear them crying.

Can you practice what you preach?

Or would you turn the other cheek.

I never thought that I could feel sorry for a Nazi.  But that’s exactly what happened when I watched the movie “The Reader” last year.

“The Reader” tells the story of a woman named Hanna who has a sexual relationship with a boy only 15 years old.  Later in the movie, it is revealed that Hanna was once a guard at Auschwitz.  She is put on trial for sending women and young girls to their death every week at the camp, and for leaving a group of 300 female prisoners to die in a burning building.  It soon comes to light that Hanna was not an anti-Semitist and only worked at Auschwitz not because she was illiterate and ashamed of it.  Being a guard allowed her to hide her illiteracy.  By the end of the movie, I was shocked with myself for actually feeling sorry for Hanna.  Didn’t she work for the Nazis?  Didn’t she let innocent people die?  Didn’t she seduce a 15-year-old boy?  I hate Nazis with a passion, so how could I forget my morals to feel compassion for this woman?

I think that you have to think about such situations by immersing yourselves in that time period, instead of using the present time to judge the past.  I say this because while reading Ruined, I also felt conflicted between my morals and my feelings for the characters.  For example, I don’t think that it is right for a man to beat a woman.  I thought that Fortune was an inhumane bastard when I read that he rejected Salima after she’d been raped.  And yet, when he came back, and stood outside in the pouring rain for days just to see her, my heart softened towards him.  I kept reading the play, looking for something to make me angry with him again.  But when I read that he brought the little black pot with him, I decided that I couldn’t hate him any longer.  I also kind of understood why he did what he did when I realized that he had probably been brainwashed by his customs to reject Salima after she was raped.  He was (wrongly) taught at that time to reject raped women, so that was exactly what he did.

Don’t get me wrong though, I thought Salima made the right choice.  I fought with myself for feeling sorry for Fortune, but I realized that he still did not deserve Salima.  He turned his back on Salima in her darkest hour, when she needed him the most.  Brainwashed or not brainwashed, he should not have been so cruel to her.  I commend him for learning the error of his ways, which not many brainwashed people are able to achieve.  It is especially remarkable that he gained this newfound feeling of guilt at a time when all around him, women were being used like pieces of tissue and then thrown aside as trash.  I think when you’re surrounded by such wickedness, it grows on you.  It takes a very strong person to be able to resist that.

Another morally ambiguous character in this play is Mama Nadi.  Mama Nadi is the strong, caring businesswoman.  She gives her girls a bed to sleep in, food for their stomach, and a safe place to stay.  And then she makes them have sex with men for money.  Whaaat???  Mama Nadi runs a brothel and I never would have thought that I could like such a person who did this.  However, I liked Mama Nadi.  Mama Nadi only does what she does to survive.  Why shouldn’t she do things like cheat the soldiers out of coltan?  What good have they ever shown her?  Besides, what else could Mama Nadi do if she left her brothel- get killed?  She could just escape, but then all those girls who come to her brothel would have no where else to go.  And the girls are safer with Mama Nadi.  She doesn’t take sides and she makes it clear that she’s just running a business, so her clients don’t harm the girls as they would outside the brothel.  In this way, Mama Nadi is able to protect the girls in a way that they cannot be protected outside her four walls.  Perhaps Mama Nadi understands the girls because she has been through the same things they have.

Mama Nadi does something that helps the girls.  But this play made me think, what about people like us?  Do we have a responsibility to help these victims now that we know their story?  One of my goals when I am older is to do such things.  If I thought about such terrible things all the time now though, I think that I would go insane.  I even watched a documentary last year about a man who gives tours at a concentration camp and becomes a depressed alcoholic after taking up this job.  I probably sound like a terrible person for not taking any action right now, but I do think that people who have the resources (time, money, compassion), should take action.  One reason why I want to earn a lot of money when I grow up is specifically so that I can have the time and resources to help victims like these.

Even though I don’t do anything now, though, these women are always in my heart.  And I know in my own heart of hearts that I will one day grow up to fight for these women and for everyone else who has been hurt around the world.

Rape. The destruction of women. Emotionally. Physically. Mentally.

It’s brutality. It’s torture. It’s uncalled for. It’s unnatural.

These men are heartless, vicious, uncaring, cruel, evil.

Rape is probably the hardest topic for me to deal with because it has happened to someone very close to my heart. Every time it comes up, whether in a serious manner or as a joke among friends, it hurts because I know that many people live with the memories of such a horrible thing, and people don’t take it as seriously as it should be taken. People no longer use the word rape as how it is meant to be used, but rather as a joke, saying they’ve beaten someone or done better than someone. They’re taking the other side of it. Not as the victim, but as the victor. Rape is not a joke. It hurts people. It changes them. It destroys their bodies…their lives. It destroys them completely. They can never be the same.

When I read the play Ruined, it made me feel so strongly against the vicious soldiers, I wanted to kill them all for ever hurting a woman like that. Throughout the book, I had tears in my eyes, hoping for something good to happen, for the violence and terror to stop. Sophie was not only raped, but destroyed. With a bayonet.

Every rape victim is destroyed: Ruined.

Mama Nadi’s house is a place for these girls to stay and be safe, and although they still must perform sexual favors for the men that come in, it keeps them alive. Mama Nadi never takes a side in the war, and she and her girls serve any men who come in. Although she never wanted Sophie because she was ruined, she took her in, I think, because she knew that she herself was ruined too, and that she was no better than Sophie.

Mama Nadi and the girls create a sort of makeshift family, staying together through the hard times of war, and although they are all different, they are all in the same position. Ruined shows the difficulty of a family in wartime, as does Lars Noren’s play, War, in which a family struggles through the absence of their father during a war. In Ruined, however, the “family” at Mama Nadi’s house is thrown together because of horrible circumstances.

Both Sophie and Salima are given some sort of false hope in the play, that things will get better, but their hopes become ruined. Sophie wants surgery to get better and is given the opportunity by Mama, who gives Mr. Harari her diamond to take Sophie to a doctor. But Mr. Harari leaves without Sophie, and Sophie no longer has the opportunity. Salima, in the beginning wants to go back to her husband and her town, but once she finds out she is pregnant, she knows that there is no way of returning and being welcome; Not even when her husband comes to find her.

But who would want to go to a man who blames you for being raped?

Mama Nadi is the only one who tries to stay realistic throughout the play. She doesn’t believe in fairy tales or happily-ever-afters. She is a pessimist to the extreme, but she manages to keep herself sane through her will to survive the war. Throughout the play, she is strongly determined to make it through the war. her brothel house is her protection. By not taking sides in the war and by owning a business, she cannot be taken down by the soldiers, because she services them. She tricks them into giving her extra coltan, knowing that it is valuable. Everything she does is to survive. It’s her natural instinct for survival. In such hard times, without that instinct, you’re dead.

Dead-which is what all these girls would have been had Mama Nadi not taken them in and kept them safe.

The end of the play, although it was shocking, wasn’t completely inconceivable. The fact that Mama and Cristian got together was a secret desire throughout the play, and when she admitted to being ruined also, it was shocking, but it made sense. I finally realized why she didn’t want Sophie, and why she was always secretly sympathetic to the girls. She understood them more than anyone knew, and she was just like them.

Ruined was a very emotionally pulling story of wartime, and because the girls were so interrelated and their pasts were so graphic, it is hard not to feel in a sense connected to them. It is hard not to feel their pain and suffering when it is so clearly presented to you through detailed examples and terrible stories of their torture.

The worst part of it all is that even though this was only a play, rapes like the ones told in Ruined happen all the time, every day. No one pays attention. No one cares. Because it’s not them. They don’t have to deal with the pain or the suffering. This play, even though it was strong and impacting, will make the readers feel badly for a while after reading, but then they’ll forget.

How can you forget. How can you forget that things like this happen every day. That to someone, it’s happening right now? The victims are destroyed. They are damaged. They are Ruined.

I am ashamed.

I just watched Hotel Rwanda.

My eyes full of sorrow and I feel ashamed.

I am ashamed that I am part of a country that stands for freedom and equality, and yet we sat there and let thousands of innocent mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, babies, get murdered in the name of hate. No matter how strong a feeling within ones self, that gives him no right to release that on another human being. One man should not choose when another innocent man’s life should end. And in such brutality!

I guess now I know how people, who have not been exposed to the horrors of the Holocaust feel when they watch Schindler’s List or The Pianist. I know that even though I have been learning about the holocaust in depth my entire life, watching the Pianist alone, at night, on an airplane is one of the clearest moments I could depict in my life.  This is what it must feel like for someone who has always been in the shadows to finally see light;

Excruciatingly blindly.

I was only a few years old when the Genocide in Rwanda occurred. Yet, I believe that gives me no reason not to be educated about it. Reading Ruined, sparked this need within myself to learn more; to be aware of more than just the primitive world that the media flashes before my eyes. That’s why art is so important. Information is given to us through the news media, but it is always going to be biased and portrayed in different ways.

Yet, there are many truths out there.

Art is a way for people to see a different side to things. This idea goes back to the post topics about the Artist as a social/political critic. Once again, I feel this aspect of artistry is very important and so necessary. Our world does not have one objective truth. People need art to help them understand a situation in ways that the media can never supply. Yet, just because art is a different view on things does not mean it is the truth either.

In art history we discussed imperialism of France and England in the world, particularly the Middle East. How these powers felt it was their right to colonize these countries. Citizens of the western world saw these colonies as exotic, far off places, worlds much different than their own. Yet, once colonization began, there was a real foreign influence on European art. It was a bleeding of cultures.  In Jean- Leon Gerome’s 1870 painting, The Snake Charmer, he depicts an “exotic” Middle Eastern scene of a naked boy with a snake and some men sitting around watching. The technique Gerome used is extremely realistic. The painting almost looks photographic. This characteristic makes people believe that this painting is exactly what certain Middle Eastern cultures are like. The painting could have easily been a combination of scenes Gerome had seen in photographs. People will reduce a culture down to what they see in a picture. This is an example about how our view, of certain places that are so far away from us, can, even today, be shifted from reality. This painting made me realize that I must understand a situation before I automatically believe it to be true.

As we discussed in class, the play Ruined, displays the many tensions there are in war and in life. How war twists what we believe to be true and make us shift the way we were programmed to think. What is really good? What is really bad? What is moral? What is unjust?

All of these questions are too complex to answer in times of war. Sometimes, something we would normally see as bad is actually something that will save someone’s life. Like the brothel that Mama has created in Ruined. Whorehouses are not something Western culture would see as objectively good or moral. Yet, while reading this play about the terrible genocide and conflict in the Congo, the reader is forced to re adjust their lens. We must remember our human sensitivities. “What would you have done?” is the classic question to ask. It really does the trick. Putting yourself into a difficult situation will always make you feel a stronger empathy towards it. That is also why art can portray sensitive topics in a really beneficial way. When I watch a movie, or read a play, I get to know the characters and their lives. I feel their pain, and experience their joy. When they watch people get viciously murdered, and their entire world crumbles before their eyes, my eyes are there, I am watching and feeling what they are feeling. After watching Hotel Rwanda and reading Ruined I feel like I have felt one hundredth of the pain and desperation that these people have felt. That is enough.

Enough for me to cry.

Enough for me to be outraged.

Enough to be ashamed.

Stop picking on women!  In Ruined, the biggest victims in the Congo civil war are the women.  Sophie was “ruined” by being raped with a machete, shattering her internal organs.  Salima was raped by multiple soldiers in a field against her will, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, when she finally got home, damaged and bloody, her husband beat her, kicked her out of the house and called her a slut, as if it were her fault and she invited the rape!

Thankfully, Mama Nadie had a brothel that kept women safe, provided they become prostitutes.  Sophie and another girl, Salima were lucky enough to join Mama’s brothel because of Sophie’s uncle, who had to beg, plead and negotiate with Mama Nadi to take them into her brothel.  Clearly if Sophie’s uncle pushed so hard to get them into the brothel, it must have been a good place to be.

In normal times of course it wouldn’t be ideal or lucky to join a brothel, but in wartime that is exactly what it was- lucky.  Mama’s brothel saved their lives.  She protected them and cared for them the best she could- for example, since Sophie was ruined, she acted as the singer instead of one of the prostitutes who sleeps with the soldiers.  Mama Nadi also has a rule that the soldiers have to put down their weapons before coming in.  The only time Mama Nadi forces the girls to do something they don’t want to is to avoid a dangerous situation, such as when a soldier was getting angry that Sophie wouldn’t sleep with him and Mama made Sophie give him oral sex to placate him and diffuse the situation.

I think it is much better for them to have joined the brothel because this is the safest they will ever be during war time.  And yes, they’ll still be forced to have sex with the soldiers, but at least this time they’ll get paid and there are civil rules, such as no weapons or machetes.  If they weren’t in the brothel, they would still be having sex with the soldiers anyway- they would be raped against their will with weapons and machetes, just like what happened to Sophie originally.

I also strongly disagree with people who criticize Mama for being an opportunist and taking business from soldiers on both sides.  First of all, why shouldn’t she?  It’s a business, and a customer is a customer, regardless of which army he is part of.  Also, if Mama had been loyal only to one side and refused the other, she and her whole brothel would have been killed.  She was only looking out for her and the girls’ safety.  Especially during the wartime there were no men to care for and protect them, so the women needed to protect themselves and I think Mama Nadi did a remarkable job.

The only man who I felt a little bad for in this play was Fortune, Salima’s wife.  Yes, he kicked her out of her home and cursed her after she was raped, but he genuinely seems to regret it and want her back.  I know its not an excuse, and if I were Salima I would NOT go back to him, but I still felt bad for him as he stood waiting outside of Mama Nadi’s brothel for a few days in the rain, waiting to see Salima.  He seemed to really love her and want her back.  Unfortunately, there in no going back.  And that’s one of the worst consequences of war.  War changes everything- it changes people, it changes relationships and it changes families.  Most families break up during war, and that’s what happened to Fortune and Salima.  I do think it is partially Fortune’s fault, but he is partially a victim of war as well.  He didn’t singlehandedly break up their family; war did.

The ending of Mama Nadi and Christian dancing together was this play’s version of a happy ending.  Of course it wasn’t a completely happy ending- the war was still going on, Salima was dead, Sophie didn’t get her operation and Mr. Harari ran off without Sophie or Josephine (who always fantasized that she would run away with him).  What made the ending “happy” is that it showed that things were looking up.  Mama Nadi and Christian were dancing together and Mama Nadi found love even though she herself is ruined.  This gives us hope for Sophie- yeah, Mr. Harari ran off with the diamond that was meant to pay for her operation, but she isn’t doomed.  Now we can hope and imagine that Sophie will one day find love and happiness just like Mama Nadi, who is also ruined, did.

As a side point- although all this raping and discarding of women makes them seem insignificant and unimportant-meant to be used and discarded- it actually highlights how important women truly are.  In the Congo they are matrilineal, which means that lineage depends on the mother- if your mother is part of a certain tribe, then the children are of the mother’s tribe.  By the soldiers spending so much time trying to ruin the women, it shows that women were the most important and therefore they were the ones who needed to be destroyed.  Once the women were destroyed, the tribe can be destroyed, but as long as the women are still alive and can reproduce, the tribe will live on, showing how important women are to the tribes’ survival.



Put an end to war!

That was my only response to the play Ruined, written by Lynn Nottage. Yes, previously we had read War, by Lars Noren, which also focused on the genocide in the Congo; however, I viewed Ruined to be much more graphic and harder to take. I felt so much sympathy for the characters, especially Sophie, who was ruined, and Fortune, who only wanted his wife back.

The play was the perfect example of the artist as a political activist. Lynn Nottage exposes the difficulties faced by both women and men living in the Congo, and then provides a list of websites, through which women could become involved in helping the women and ending the conflict. The playwright reveals to the reader the horrors associated with war, as well as the social and political hierarchies that exist in society.

There is no good in war…War brings out the worst in all people. As I was reading the play, I thought that Mama was a terrible person. She runs a brothel, where soldiers from both sides of the war come to relieve their stress. I couldn’t believe that a woman, who we later find out was ruined herself, would put these women in such a horrible situation. It wasn’t until we discussed the play in class that I realized that Mama really had no choice, and probably did the right thing. These women would have been condemned to the same fate, or worse, if Mama had not rescued them. This is a terrible truth about war.

During the entire play, up until the very end when Mr. Harari leaves without her, I felt so bad for Sophie. At first Mama doesn’t want to let her into the brothel, which is a point worth noting. Although it may seem selfish of Mama to not want to allow her to move in with her just because she is damaged, a possible reason for this is that Mama doesn’t want to have a constant reminder of her own past. This is understandable, and the reader must have some sympathy for Mama. Throughout the entire play, Sophie sings in the bar. Although many of the songs do have an upbeat kind of rhythm, the alienated character in books, films, and plays, is often the one who is singing. This is certainly the case in Ruined. Sophie hides money from Mama to save enough to pay for the operation that will fix her. Mama finally agrees to give her the diamond so she could have the operation, but of course Sophie is let down, when Mr. Harari leaves with the diamond and without Sophie.

The play is also a representation of the universal nature of the “American Dream.” Mr. Harari gives Mama an estimate of the value of the diamond she owns. Mama dreams of moving out of the Congo and living a better life, but in the end she gives Mr. Harari the money for Sophie to have an operation, showing her inherent good nature. Mama was a good person, but war forced her to run a brothel, a position not many woman want to have.

Of course Americans don’t view the current war in the same way that Ruined forces us to view the war in the Congo, since we aren’t experiencing the total war that is indeed taking place in Iraq. Innocent civilians are killed everyday. Although the war might not be classified as a genocide, the lives of people who have no political involvement are at risk. All wars are bad, as most plays and movies about them will reveal. Still, people can’t seem to find meaning in the line “Why can’t we all just get along.” Maybe then the world will be a better place….

Sitting on the bus the other day, I was across from two disheveled looking men. I could not help but overhear that they just came from a hospital.

“They don’t care about us anymore,” one of them said to the other, “no one does.”

I found this to be so heartbreaking: they weren’t treated fairly, like every person deserves to be treated. This reminded me of the lyrics:

And yet the bird

Still cries to be heard…

These lines are from the song “A Rare Bird” in Lynn Nottage’s play “Ruined.” The songs in this play are fantastic, because they provide social commentary in addition to being ironically upbeat.  “A Rare Bird” especially caught my interest because it shows how the world ignores the two people I overheard on the bus, and it relates to the book and the situation of the women in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A whole war is going on there, women are treated so terribly, and I had no idea about any of this! Few people in the class knew that such atrocities were even going on.  This song, where the bird “still cries to be heard” make me think of the women of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and all over war-torn Africa. They are crying out for attention, for their story to be told.

In fact, this was the point of Nottage writing this play: to give these women a voice. Look at the back of the play, of the pictures of the women taken right after they have told their story. Each pair of eyes reflects pain greater than we could imagine. I admit that towards the end of the play I even shed a few tears. The picture of the first woman is especially powerful; she is on the verge of tears. I am the type of person that cannot hold back tears once someone around me is crying, so this picture made me even more sad.

Despite shedding a few tears at the ending, I think it was a happy ending. As we touched upon in class, anything happier would have made it seem unreal. War has no happy ending. This play, however, has the happiest ending the girls are able to have in the story. Honestly, the hopeless romantic in me expected Salima to return to her home with Fortune. This would not be possible though, after all that she has gone though, and with a baby on the way, things just would not be the same with her husband.

I also think Mama Nadi is a very interesting and complex character. She is morally ambiguous, but I really think that she is doing a good thing for the girls. The soldiers do not bring weapons inside, so the girls cannot get hurt. Mama Nadi makes sure the girls are safe, even though she acts tough at times. She could have left the area long ago, but she chose to stay and protect girls who have nowhere else to go. Although she does mention that she stays for her own stubborn reasons, she is still doing a good thing for the women she employs. She is my favorite character in the play because she is so interesting and can be interpreted in many different ways.

When Mama Nadi tells Christian that she is ruined, I was shocked. This does make sense though, because she never does anything with the men aside from flirt. She is not afraid to flirt, but when things get more serious, as with Christian, she becomes hesitant to proceed. At the end, when she dances with Christian, she begins to accept who she is and that she is ruined. She allows herself to give in and accept love. Despite her tough exterior, she is almost as fragile as Sophie. The ending is so sweet, when the two dance and Sophie and Josephine are happy for her. In this scene, I can picture an old couple just like Edna and Walter dancing slowly and beautifully. They are so peaceful, and so content.

Overall, I really loved reading this play. It was one of my favorites of the semester; it was very informative and it achieved its purpose in drawing attention to the women of wartime Africa. If I weren’t a poor college student, I feel like right after the play I would have donated to one of the websites listed in the back. The references to the war and its reflections of how it has effected the women make one want to take action in a cause they had not previously known about (or at least, that I didn’t know about). It is really frustrating how something like this can go on in the world while we just sit in our comfy homes and cry over such insignificant stuff. Plays like these really put things into perspective.