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Leslie Marmon Silko's Poem 'A Long Time Ago'

Decent Essays

Anna Collignon Dr. Rob Wallace INST 2000 Fall 2014 2 September 2014 Globalization Before man had the desire to explore, to know what was outside their own corner of the world there was a multitude of different groups of people that existed by themselves. The different cultures went on peacefully without the ongoing conflict between cultures that exists today. These conflicts arose from a process called globalization. Leslie Marmon Silko’s poem, “A Long Time Ago”, illustrates the world prior to globalization and foreshadows the world after globalization. Globalization according to, “A Long Time Ago”, is about the merging of multiple different cultures which leads to today’s modernistic problems. Globalization is the process by which the world becomes interlinked. During the process of globalization different cultures are intermixing creating major conflicts throughout the world. An example of this would be in, “A Long Time Ago”, by Silko, “The world is a dead thing for them / the trees and rivers are not alive” (96-97). Here Silko describes the future conflict between the Native Americans and the white settlers. The main cultural difference between the two groups is the Native Americans have …show more content…

When the settlers came to the Native American’s land the settlers either killed them for territory or forced them into labor, all for the need to show dominance. An example of this today would be the fight over the holy land Israel. Globalization also introduces things like foreign diseases to different cultures, for example the white settlers introducing small pox to the Native Americans. This is also illustrated by Silko, “They will bring terrible diseases / the people have never known” (132-133). Another modern day example of globalization introducing diseases is the introduction of the Ebola virus. This virus was brought to this country the same way small pox was, through international travel and

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