Writing Project

9/29/21, 4:39 PM Originality Report

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SafeAssign Originality Report 21/FA-ENG-2327-30-Exploring World Lit • Writing Project 1: Voltaire in the Modern World • Submitted on Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 3:29 PM

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Part 1

The downfall talks about the sad tale of Dallin a middle-aged community leader of the shadow people;

an ancient community that resides in the amazon forest and is cut off from civilization. This tries to educate the people about politics and what goes around the political circles. The three sections of the novels nar- rate Dallin’s struggles to gain status and prestige in his community. Dallin a skilled hunter takes pride in his skills, titles, and wealth; he fears failure and hates all that is cowardice, weak, and lazy. Furthermore, Dallin is deeply embarrassed and frustrated by his older brother who is lazy, a womanizer and has debts all throughout the village; Dallin’s success is tied to the fact that he never wanted to end up like his older brother. In the tale, Dallin is appointed as the head and the keeper of the community prison that holds pris- oners of war from rival communities within the amazon forest. At an unfortunate incident, Dallin allows prisoners to escape, which leads to his banishment from the community. After seven years, Dallin returns to a community plagued by white missionaries and a colonial government. In an attempt to resist the mis- sionaries, Dallin and other community members burn down the newly constructed community church; nonetheless, Dallin and his friends are humiliated and jailed. In his last ditch effort to show his bravery and win back admiration, Dallin kills a colonial messenger, but the community fails to rally behind him. Finally, Dallin hangs himself an act that violates the culture of the shadow people and prevents him from getting a proper funeral. The introductory part of the tale describes the childhood of Dallin and his concerted effort to distance himself from the example of his imprudent and lazy elder brother and to make himself an ad- mired and successful member of the community. The beauty about the shadow people’s culture is that it allows Dallin to elevate himself to the pinnacle of society through acts of bravery, courage, strength, and endurance. Dallin’s early years were full of triumph and

success as a brave hunter and warrior and was complimented by his good farming skills, and with

time, he is able to marry and support three wives and several children. The shadow people show their re- spect for Dallin by naming him the head and keeper of the community prison, where all the prisoners of war caught from the rival communities are kept. This brings out his character to the attention of the read- ers making them have pre-judgment of his future actions. The tale then gives a clear demonstration of Dallin’s ability when he triumph and achieves success. This honor propels Dallin to the limelight and marks the high point in his status in the community because after that the bravery and single mindedness that helped him to succeed would eventually result in his downfall. Dallin is controlled by an obsessive fear of failure, a reaction to the condition of his brother. Furthermore, this self-imposed necessity to compensate makes Dallin an angry individual whose violence towards the prisoners and his independence undercuts his reputation in the community. In one occasion, Dallin disturbs the whole community by brutally beating his youngest wife nearly to the point of death while in another tragic instance Dallin’s fear of appearing weak leads him to mercilessly punish a prisoner to death for a minor offence. When Dallin accidently allows sev- eral prisoners to escape, his community members brand him a traitor, invade and destroy his compound and exile him to a distant village for seven years. This reveals how the society can sometimes turn away from one of their own. The second part of the tale talks about Dallin’s exile, a complex time in which he must rebuild his life; Dallin was banished to the distant village where his mother’s people originate. During his stay in this village Dallin’s relatives remind him of the universality of suffering, the limitation of success and the clan’s importance as a source of comfort. Dallin’s increasing sense of community and his forgetful encounters with Christianity in the distant village makes him an

avid defender of the shadow culture. After the end of his exile, Dallin who earlier on had been famous

for his self-interest learns to appreciate the bonds of family and the comfort derived from speaking with one voice. Nonetheless, this newfound interest of awareness and togetherness comes at a time when the unity of the culture of the shadow people has already started breaking down more especially through the influence of colonial rule. In the last part of the novel, the tale focuses on Dallin’s return to his village that has been drastically changed by the active initiatives of the missionaries. The newfound religion has brought a rift between different factions of the community, and Dallin senses that this divide threatens the bond he has with family, his spiritual experience after death, and his culture. When Fred, Dallin’s first-born son converts to Christianity, he openly repudiates his clan members especially his father, strangely parallel- ing Dallin’s rejection of his elder brother.

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Furthermore, when brain, Dallin’s friend also converts to Christianity, exposes a priest in public, which

killed the ancestral spirit in the village altar and disturbed the community’s religion, Dallin leads an attack that burns down brain’s compound and the community’s church. After the incident, the colonial authorities briefly detain Dallin and seven other elders as punishment; nonetheless, Dallin is humiliated because the village does not rally behind him in support. Dallin eventually realizes that he alone is refusing the accom-

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9/29/21, 4:39 PM Originality Report

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modation of the missionaries and that the village will not go to war against them, so in a final defiant and desperate act, he kills on of the missionaries and then hangs himself.

Part 2

In the tale, major purpose was to bring to the light a dynamic and complex society to an audience that

think that Amazonian communities as simple, primitive, and backward. Most western writers of this society have presented such communities as a dark place that is occupied by individuals with primitive and impen- etrable minds; this reductionist portrayal is very wrong and often racist. Most western writers who write about closed communities create stereotypical and flat characters, nonetheless, in the tale, most of the shadow people are highly motivated, and many of them are open to new ideas. Nonetheless, the aim of the tale is not to present the shadow people’s culture as idyllic and faultless but many western writers that wrote on colonialism especially on Africa were against imperialism but nonetheless were romantic to a great measure in their portrayal of noble savages, animalistic and primitive yet innocent and uncorrupted. Nonetheless, the opposition to imperialism that many western writers voice on the premise that an ad- vanced and sophisticated western society destroys and corrupts the non-western world. Additionally, Voltaire would regard this notion as an unacceptable myth and an argument without a basis. Although in the tale the shadow people’s indigenous culture would be destroyed, the culture was not an idyllic haven, even without the coming of the white colonialist. The tale seems to have an after effect on a person’s per- ception, the way of thinking and view about the world. In contrary to what the readers had been introduced to, there is a twist in the chronological events of his life. This also

brings out the fact that life has different lines of story and can change at any time. This is because its

main concern is about the society and the well being of the members.

References

Cooksey, T. L. (2006). Masterpieces of philosophical literature. Westport (Conn.: Greenwood

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Word Count: Submitted on: Submission UUID: Attachment UUID: 1,279 09/29/21 86fa5632-4066-eef6-a048-0bdf54db2d70 df4507df-61ea-5c84-cbc9-65949488cca4

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