Monday, December 12, 2011

What are 6 different points that show how the author makes the impact of the white man so significant in the novel The River Between?

In The River Between, "the white man" arrives in the form of Christian missionaries. They impact the land by building schools to educate converts' children. These schools teach the white man's ways and disrupt the cultural teachings of the people of Makuyu and Kameno.
Individual people who convert to Christianity are considered traitors, and so they become further disconnected from their people. These tensions also increase mistrust and cause hyper-scrutiny between tribe members. Converts to Christianity begin to blame the deaths of people who won't convert on the fact that those people are "pagans."
This story takes place at a time when tensions are also increasing between the people of Makuyu and the people of Kameno. The white man's presence complicates those tensions as well. The impact is so severe that when Waiyaki, a member of the Kameno tribe, visits with Joshua, a Christian convert, to try to make peace, the Kameno elders fear that Waiyaki plans to sell the tribe to the white man.

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