Yesterday, we finished reading Memed, My Hawk and had a class discussion. It was a coming of age novel about a boy whose family is being starved and punished by a controlling landowner. He runs away at first to escape the constant beating by the Agha, but being away from home for so long he begins to feel guilty for leaving his mother and his responsibilities. He is captured and returned, and tries to solve his problems before his family starves to death. He becomes a brigand and fights for the Agha for his family and village. A brigand is an outlaw and highly romanticized within the novel. The villagers appreciate brigands because they are fighting for their land, rights and lives. I think in some ways we romanticized outlaws in our history. Yes, they were criminals, but if we look back to old Western stories of highway robbers those are romanticized as well. Outlaws like Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and Butch Cassidy have had films made about them or books written on them. I think there are a lot of similarities we can draw between our culture and that within Memed, My Hawk.
Interesting comments comparing American and Turkish outlaws. Are American outlaws out for more than themselves? To rebel against or somehow change the system?
ReplyDelete[Jesse James was once asked why he robbed banks -- his answer, "Because that is where the money is."]