The Cycle of Revenge Can Be Broken

Murdock 3
Lauren Murdock
Mr. Van Velzer
Beginning Composition- Block 1
7 November 2014
Hatred
Matk Mathabane, author of Apartheid account, The Cycle of Revenge can be Broken,
as well as Elie Wiesel, holocaust surviver and author of Holocaust biography Night express
through writing a sense of injustice, anger and hatred. Mathabane argues that hatred can be
vanquished only by humanity, and the, recognition that one is not fully human until one
acknowledges and affirms the humanity of others, and I agree because inequality is inevitable
and with it the inevitability of hatred and the repetition of the past.
Hatred can be vanquished only with the absence of inequality and self superiority. These
two forms of prejudice, the ignition of hatred, however, are unavoidable in society. Mark
Mathabane writes the article, The Cycle of Revenge can be Broken as a recollection of his
views and emotions growing up in South Africa under an apartheid. At one point in the article,
Mathabane contemplates how the white people could even be human. He says, If they were,
then why did they not feel my pain? Why were they complicit in an inhuman system that
confined me and my family to a shack without running water or electricity, and made me sleep
on pieces of cardboard, scavenge for food at the garbage dump, wear rags, and watch helplessly
as black children died from preventable dieses? The answer is simple, racial superiority. It is a
never-ending cycle, prejudice feeds the fire of hatred, while hatred satisfies prejudice. Therefore,
it is that inequality is inevitable, and it is that principle which is the cause of war, and all
injustice done to man by man.

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Racism is not only present on an individual or small group basis, but can in fact be
governmental The is know as institutionalized racism, and can be seen occurring repetitively
through history, from Nazi Germany, to South American Apartheid, and even here in America
with racial segregation and Jim Crow Laws. In Germany, to determine who was Jewish, the
Nazis established a set of laws, which eventually come to be know as the Nuremburg Laws.
These laws assumed anyone with three or more Jewish grandparents to be Jewish. Similarly, the
Jim Crow Laws were used as forms of segregation between the colored and the whites
before the civil rights movement. One such clause, the grandfather clause forbid free African
Americans from voting if their grandfather had been inslaved. Conditons during the South
African Apartheid were no better. Mathabane says, My mother had repetitively been denied a
birth certificate for me, a necessary document for school registration because she did not have
a permit proving that our family had a right to live in Alexandra. But we couldnt get the permit
without the birth certificate. All of these cases are examples of discrimination through laws and
other practices, which is by definition institutionalized racism, and the fact of its recurrence in
society proves the powerlessness of the government in vanquishing inequality and with it hatred.
Revenge comes in many ways, shapes, and forms. Sometimes people find revenge in
violence, for others accomplishment, but for many, its the comfort that the past is behind them,
or in some cases the simple fact that they lived to tell tale. People may even attempt to erase
reminders that the event ever occurred. In this way, it is that Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel
describes his return to a normal life in the preface to his novel Night. In the text, Wiesel says,
And now, scarcely ten years after Buchenwald, I realize the world forgets quickly. Today,
Germany is a sovereign state. The German army has been resuscitated. Ilse Koch, the notorious
sadistic monster of Buchenwald, was allowed to have children and live happily ever after War
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criminals stroll the streets of Hamburg and Munich. The past seems to have been erased,
relegated to oblivion. While he knows he will never forget the horrors done to him and his
family, it seems they are trying hard to eliminate it from the history of society as a whole. It is in
this way that Mathabane shows how the Jews sought their revenge on the Nazis, as living prove
to their defeat, and by removing all evidence of their previous work.
Individuals, government, nor revenge cannot overcome hatred. It is only when people
realize the inequality that is human nature in society, that anger and injustice can truly be gone
forever, and this is similar to the views of Mathabane expressed in his article when he says that
hatred can be vanquished only by humanity, and the recognition that one is not fully human
until one acknowledges and affirms the humanity of others.

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Murdock 3

Mr. Van Velzer

Beginning Composition- Block 1

injustice done to man by man.

to their defeat, and by removing all evidence of their previous work.

until one acknowledges and affirms the humanity of others.

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