At first glance, Boubacar Boris Diop's Murambi, The Book of Bones and Susan Sontag's Considering the Pain of Others may not seem to have much in common. Diop's work chronicles the Rwandan genocide through multiple perspectives and narratives/fiction, while Sontag analyzes the moral and ethical issues of dealing with another person's pain or trauma using real-world examples. However, when these two pieces are put into conversation with each other, they reveal that they are quite similar in the way they deal with the pain of others. With Diop placed in context and viewed through Sontag's scope, it becomes clear that there are deliberate stylistic and narrative choices in the novel that relate to Sontag. Likewise, with Sontag placed in Diop's context, it becomes apparent that the issues she discusses echo those of narratives and storytelling. With Diop and Sontag in conversation with each other, the two pieces illustrate what "meta" storytelling and the logic behind it really looks like. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay First, Murambi's title alone, The Book of Bones is incredibly self-aware. The title refers to the work as a book, drawing the reader's attention to this fact and perhaps even calling it simply what it is. One might even go so far as to say that it is, in a sense, “calling a monster by its name” since the title seems to be an open admission that states exactly what it is (Diop 179). This is not to say that the work defines itself as a monster, but rather that the work defines itself by what it knows itself to be. Furthermore, the title is self-aware in a different way in that it draws attention to the paradox it encompasses: a book cannot literally be “of bones” in the sense that it cannot understand them or be made of them because it is a book. This impossibility draws attention to itself, which in turn draws attention to the impossibility that everyone's stories and traumas cannot actually be captured in its pages. This then links to the idea of the shortcomings that exist in telling a story, particularly the fact that one person cannot fully understand and know another's pain. These shortcomings can also be expressed through a couple of sentences presented in the work: “there are no words to speak to the dead” (Diop 167) and “even words are not enough. Even words no longer know what to say" (Diop 96). The fact that the title refers to bones and the photograph is of bones (which nevertheless transcend the frame of the photograph) echoes the idea that the work is aware that it is simply not enough to fully encapsulate the atrocities it speaks of. To add, Sontag states that “remembering is an ethical act, it has ethical value in and of itself. Memory is, painfully, the only relationship we can have with the dead,” which resonates with the idea that memory and the acknowledgment of atrocities and the shortcomings of telling stories about them are at least an effort to understand what is not can be fully understood (Sontag 115). . Saturated with death and bones, things that are quite inaccessible to our grasp and comprehension, there is the implication that the stories and narratives included transcend the work itself because they cannot be contained: they are simply too large and complex, and it would it is unethical to claim to fully understand things that are completely incomprehensible. Along with the title, the photography on Murambi's cover, the Book of Bones works together with it to draw attention to itself. The photography is intentional, framed in a mannersuch that a full skeleton is seen juxtaposed next to another skeleton that transcends the photo: it is too large for the small photo to contain. This is similar to how the title implies that a book cannot contain real bones and true understanding of another's pain is simply impossible because pain and trauma are so complex that they transcend the medium through which they are depicted: a book cannot truly know or describe a person's pain, and by default, neither can the reader. In Concerning the Pain of Others, Sontag discusses photographs at length, particularly the framing of photographs. There is always a “point of view” regarding photographs and the viewer is essentially forced to have this perspective. Sontag states that photographs “[bear] testimony to the real – since a person had been there to take them” (Sontag 26). The photograph on the cover of Diop's work is an actual photograph that someone took, in that particular frame and in that particular perspective – portraying the impossibility of capturing the totality of the environment and situation. Working together, the title and the photograph seem to echo each other, implying the impossibilities that each represents, namely that a photograph cannot include everything in one shot, and a book cannot contain every narrative and life involved regarding the issues of which discusses. Likewise, Sontag's About the Pain of Others also seems a bit self-aware. In conjunction with the title, the cover of the work is, almost ironically, Distasters of War by Francisco de Goya, which depicts a man who is literally a spectator of someone else's pain - and even enjoys it. Sontag continually mentions throughout her piece that there is a problem with the spectator when it comes to pain because there cannot be an innocent spectator for many reasons, one of the main ones being the ethical questions behind knowing or respecting the pain of a other. Looking closely or from afar is still simply looking, and this raises the question of what is an attempt to understand a person's suffering and what is spectacle. Barbara Korte discusses Sontag in her article regarding co-viewing and states that "confrontation with suffering is impossible to avoid and requires some kind of reaction, even though people may be uncertain what the appropriate reaction is" (Korte 184). Because confrontation is impossible to avoid, each individual will respond to representations of trauma (as well as trauma itself) differently, and there is no way to predict or control responses. What makes this even more difficult is that this could lead to perhaps inappropriate responses and even seeing the pain and trauma as a spectacle. That said, Sontag mentions the problem of co-spectivity that occurs in photographs and how their reproduction allows a number of people to become “witnesses” to another's pain or trauma (Sontag 59-60). Put in Diop's context, a published book seems to have the same problem: a book will reach an audience, and that audience will "witness" whatever story is told within it, and there will therefore be a co-viewership of the audience. narrative that is out of the author's control, which places awareness and responsibility on the viewer or reader (which I'll talk about later). In Diop's work, the character of Cornelius presents an extreme self-awareness within the work. As both the victim and the child of the perpetrator, he plays two different roles in the narrative, while also playing what appears to be a third role in recognizing the narrative's flaws through self-awareness. Throughout the work, Corneliushe continually expresses his desire to write a play about the Rwandan genocide that is itself self-aware because the reader is literally reading a book about the genocide. This calls attention to this fact, causing the work to recognize and the reader to realize that the work is not sufficient to understand the entire genocide. Furthermore, Cornelius is juxtaposed with Simon, who in the novel was present at the genocide and has the authority to discuss it. This causes Cornelius to admit that he feels “ashamed of having considered the idea of a play” or of creating a narrative about something that he simply cannot (Diop 179). This juxtaposition itself generates a meta-logic describing a rather explicit distinction between the two as Simon has the authority to speak about the genocide while Cornelius, although indirectly involved in the genocide through his father, was not present and therefore cannot tell in authoritative way a story about it. Beyond that, it seems that Diop forces readers to become self-aware by keeping them close to Cornelius. By positioning the reader in this way, it would seem that the reader must realize that even he or she does not have the authority to discuss other people's pain when they cannot fully understand it themselves. It's incredibly important to note that there is no deliberate logical structure to the creation of a story. Kathleen Gilbert mentions in her article that every story has a certain number of particular elements (a kind of logical structure) present that make up a story such as the beginning, middle, end, characters, intentionality, organization thematic and others, as well as what might be most significant here – perspective (227). Undoubtedly, a story must be organized by the author and then framed in the way the author sees fit. The framing of the story forces the reader to have a certain perspective (note that perspective is not synonymous with interpretation) which provides limited access to information based on the position the reader has been given to follow throughout the story. Diop seems to do exactly that by presenting the narrative through many different (and quite different) perspectives. The first and third sections of Diop's work present these multiple perspectives and juxtapose them with the second and fourth sections which present Cornelius' narrative. In this way, the reader is forced to recognize that there is no single way to tell a story, and the reader is, in a sense, inserted into the narrative – aware of himself in his own structural framework. Furthermore, these multiple perspectives (particularly Cornelius') put the reader in close proximity to many different points of view and versions of a story – which is quite "meta" in itself because the reader is not able to choose a single story that indirectly generates an awareness of the reader's responsibility to attempt to understand each perspective. Furthermore, this pushes the reader into their own self-awareness by implying the idea that the reader cannot understand the scope of the entire event, all possible narratives, or (most importantly) the experience of another person's pain. Sontag also discusses some of the problems with framing when she states that "every image is seen in an environment" (120). From this it can be deduced that the frame is framed: the framed photograph is presented in a built environment. This is similar to narrative structures because someone had to get the information or generate the ideas, decide what was important, and then create/frame the narrative in a way that was logical to readers. Gilbert also mentions something interesting about story construction when he says “We could ask others to tell us storiesand construct meta-stories to explain what we have found that transcends and yet ties individual stories together. As was previously mentioned, a narrative is not “the” truth, there can be multiple points of view on the same event and each has an element of truth in it” (Gilbert 228). Gilbert then goes on to mention that in In Creating Stories , something is gained and lost through processes such as searching, interpreting and filtering information. The final product of a work is therefore a frame within a frame, similar to that discussed by Sontag comes from the. research and from the narratives of others, and the frame, in a sense, must be aware of itself to create another frame Sontag mentions something similar to Gilbert when she says “it is always the image that someone has chosen; to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude” (Sontag 46). The same thing can be said regarding the stories. The information is filtered based on what the author deems significant, and this information is then organized in a logical way and this logical organization is framed within an environment, a construction or a work, as in the case of Diop. In Sontag's case, she discusses how the photographer chooses what to photograph (or what not to photograph), and then decides how to present this photograph (or not) to the public. This brings attention to the fact that photographs and novels are constructions, perhaps even staged (as photographs might be) or existing as fiction. With both being framed this way, there must first be an awareness that one is not and can never be the original, which ties into the idea that one person cannot fully understand another person's original, individual pain. It is interesting to note that in Diop's work it is stated that “genocide is not just any story with a beginning and an end between which more or less ordinary events take place” (Diop 179). (It's worth noting that none other than Simon talks about this). Picking up on Gilbert's list of the elements that create a story, this addresses the fact that there is a narrative structure that this work follows simply because that is how stories are created, but at the same time throws this notion of structure out the window by acknowledging the fact that structure, even when necessary, is inadequate when talking about other people's pain and trauma – particularly on the large scale of genocide. This recognizes the fact that narratives and stories have a beginning, an end and a logical structure, and real events, pain and trauma do not necessarily have a clear beginning or end. Nieman's article expresses something similar by mentioning that “stories construct a position for the viewer, which allows the viewer to take responsibility” (“Art” 84). This ties back to Sontag's discussion of framing, but the interesting part is that she mentions the responsibility of the viewer who is being made, whether noticed or not, who must first be aware that they are no longer looking through their scope. but rather through the scope of another person – or in Sontag's context, perhaps the lens of a camera. Although seemingly different, Sontag's About the Pain of Others and Diop's Murambi, the Book of Bones aim at the heart of the same fundamental question. on how to responsibly recognize another person's trauma and suffering. The arguments Sontag makes paired with elements of Diop's work (title/photo, character, and narrative frame), these pieces prove to be much more self-aware than one might initially think. On their own, they function as tools to discuss viewer and narrative issues around pain and trauma, but when put in conversation with each other,.
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