History Is a People S Memory

History is a People’s Memory

What point do rats have in this world? They don’t do anything but eat, sleep, and create mouse holes. They are nowhere near as powerful as us humans. We have feelings and lives and we care about our families and we certainly don’t use little holes-in-walls as houses. But, without memories or feeling, a person is pretty much just as good as a rat or some other meaningless animal. This was they idea conveyed by civil-rights leader

Malcolm X when he said, “History is a people's memory, and without a memory, a man is demoted to the lower animals.” To prevent mentally becoming a rat, we must remember history of horrific events to prevent any more future events of a group of people basically feeling like a rat. Some events that involved human-like mental animals were the

Holocaust and Slavery. Also, the Giver can definitely relate to feeling like a rat.

The Holocaust was a gruesome event. People were kept as slaves, forced to do gross jobs without any pay whatsoever. The majority of the people were all murdered in gas chambers then baked in ovens to get rid of the body. It is most important that we always remember this event in our brains or hearts or we may be turned into animals with nothing to live for like many of these victims of the Holocaust.

Slavery is another topic that always forces my brain to think about lowly animals like mice and houseflies. It hurts my brain to think that people would, and still do, Abduct people and make them work and wear them out with physical labor. These slaves were not allowed to have anything, and they probably never even had a family or loved anyone before they tragically died. We cannot have everyone turned

Into an animal like these slaves were.

In the book “The Giver”, none of the citizens of that community have any feelings at all. I personally feel bad for them, as that would make them have no point at living at all. In any case, we do not want to ever become like these people, who I consider pretty much mentally inanimate objects.

In total, anyone without any point of living is basically like a deformed animal, such as a rat. Rats don’t have any point at all in this world. They can’t think, or remember, or have any feelings/love their family. We too, could become like a rat if we do not remember our mistakes of being tricked into becoming a lowly animal, just like a slave is!