An old man sits on a bed of grass, his knees pulled into his
chest. He looks sad and perhaps
thoughtful. He may be thinking, “why me?
My sons, my brothers, they are all dead”.
He is the last man standing, “The
younger men were murdered or fled before they were caught in the war”, Salgado
writes. Countless numbers of men,
slaughtered. Why? For what purpose? Probably for money, power, glory, whatever
the people in power are seeking to obtain.
But is it really worth all those lives?
What is it that makes humans so cruel that they would drive countless
numbers of people from their homes and slaughter the ones that were too slow to
escape? I don’t think I will ever
understand the minds of dictators. I’m
not sure they have minds at all! Their
actions and words are mindless and unfeeling.
But in the end it doesn’t matter what the dictators do, it
matters what we do. If we do nothing,
then the dictators continue their mindless rampages unchallenged. But if we can somehow spread the message
about what these horrible people do then we are one step closer to ending their
reigns of terror. The question is not about
the existence of a war, but who will be the last man standing.
Source:
Salgado, Sebastiao. Migrations. pg 128 Paris:
AMAZONAS, 2000.
That would be so hard to sit alone after losing all your brothers and sons and not have any one to even mourn with. I can't imagine being in that man's shoes. I wouldn't be surprised if I had similar thoughts and wished that I had been killed with the rest of my family. Terrible thoughts, but they are understandable.
ReplyDeleteThe questions you ask are very good considerations, and open your mind to understanding how horrific it was. We need to stand up to the dictators and others, and bring down the evil that is happening throughout the world. So, that the righteous are the last ones standing, rather than the evil.