Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Iqbal
Iqbal takes place in Pakistan, which, like many other middle eastern countries, has many problems. One such problem is child slavery. In Pakistan children are often sent to sweatshops after their parents are dead or if their parents are in debt, so they send their children to sweatshops to pay it off. Often in these factories or shops children are forced to work without pay, in dangerous conditions, and without any hope of escaping unless they are thrown out when they become older. Although it is illegal in Pakistan, people still practice it quite often. The Police don't strictly enforce the laws that prevent it. Since the events of Iqbal, things in Pakistan and many other countries with child slavery have not gotten significantly better, although Iqbal has brought attention to the subject of child work abuse. In fact, a Bollywood movie was made in 2005 about him. If I were Iqbal, or any child labor slave, I would want to try to escape if possible. I'm sure I wouldn't have as much courage as Iqbal. I know for a fact that I wouldn't be able to survive the punishment for not obeying the master. The punishment that they receive is days in the tomb, which is an old dried out cistern without food or water in over ninety degree weather. My question is: what book you are reading, and do you think the punishments or hardships the people are going through in your book are better or worse than what I described?
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Ethan, I’m reading the same book and the hardships in Iqbal are child enslavement. He and his friends were slaves who were trying to pay off their parent’s debt. They are miserable. I hope that people are noticing that what they are doing to these kids is wrong. This is more things you can veiw about heroic Iqbal. This link will show you how the carpet enslavement came around. The world is cruel and the people in it aren’t any better. My question is, why do people think someone is less than you are.
ReplyDeleteThe book that I am reading is called 'Boys without Names' and In the book, 11 year old Gopal and five other boys are trapped in a sweatshop. The boys are not allowed to talk and they are also not allowed to call each other by name. For punishment the owner of the sweatshop either does not feed them for one day, or his beats them. On one boy, the beating was so bad he lost his front teeth. Personally though, I think that since this is a true story, that it is worse than mine in the book. I remember rooting for Gopal and his new friends to get out of there but now I realize that they could have either barley make it alive out, or get caught and die trying.
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