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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 5-page paper answers certain questions about imperialism and the life of a worker/peasant, using Ousmane Sembene's book "God's Bits of Wood," which details the story of railway workers striking against French authorities in the late 1940s.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_MToausam.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
Africa during 1947 and 1948. In Gods Bits pits employee vs. employers as it follows the trials and tribulations of trainworkers in pre-independence Senegal. In their efforts to commandeer better
salaries and benefits for themselves, the trainworkers go on strike. As the French managers use various pressures to force the striking trainworkers in three cities to capitulate, the workers and
their families begin to realize the inequities and differences between themselves and their French employers. This knowledge strengthens them and in the end, helps them be victorious over the "Goliath"
that is the French colonial government and the French employers. This book mainly examines the struggles that the workers had to endure and experience to ultimately achieve success over their
"conquerors." In this paper, well examine the answers to some of the following questions. How do the peasants in this book
conceive of their world? Interestingly enough, Sembene tends to express the battle between the workers and the employers as more of a
class struggle than a racial one; but for years, there was the feeling among the African workers that they didnt owe anything to anyone except for themselves (this is the
theme, in fact, throughout the book, as resentments continued to simmer). Peasants, for the most part, pretty much dont know they have it poorly until someone points it out to
them. They might complain, they might gripe, but ultimately, they wont do anything about this unless or until someone comes along to generate loyalty to self (rather to an institution,
such as French colonialism) and the willingness to fight and sacrifice for self. Despite the necessary loyalty to France that the French
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