The Rabbi's Cat

In the end of the novel “The Rabbi’s Cat” the Rabbi starts to question the intensity of his faith. The cat then starts to question if his lack of faith is what he really wants. This grabbed me because it shows religion as tradition vs. modernity, which is loss of religion.  At the begging of the graphic novel I thought I was more like the cat. I would consider myself less religious, than more religious, but through the character of the Rabbi, I quickly learned I was really more like the Rabbi and his faith. The Rabbi showed me that religion and faith is not all about technicalities and following the rules set right to a t. The Rabbi taught me that faith and religion is about trusting in what you believe. The Rabbi loves his tradition and his religion, but in the end understands they will still be there, even if he doesn’t completely live his life around them. The cat loves modernity, but believes in tradition, so at least a small amount of religion must be present as well. “The Rabbi’s Cat” showed me the good that can come from questioning faith.

I absolutely love reading graphic novels. The mix of picture and text makes for an interesting read that keeps me entertained all the way till the end. The short about of text with the detailed about of pictures is a strength of a graphic novel. The information is more compact and is not an overabundance of words to sift through to find the true meaning live a novel. A graphic novel is definitely and upgrade from reading a regular novel.

Nervous Conditions

Nervous Conditions by Tsiti Dangarembga so far has been extremely interesting. I think it is very interesting to read about African culture. I am not sure about my other classmates, but for me this novel was a lot different than I expected. The novel taught me a lot about how important school is for children in Africa, something I believe as Americans we often take for granted. The novel also showed me the connection as a family they have. The way their family interacted with one another is a lot different than I think families in America are today. The main reason the family interacted with each other was through work. They did not have much of personal relationships with one another, unlike my mother and I who are best friends. On the other hand tradition is something that I believe is largely cherished in African culture. My family personally doesn’t respect the thought and beliefs in tradition like Tambu and her family do.

               The largest connection I felt with this novel was when Tambu speaks about her cousin Nyasha being a victim of her femaleness. She speaks about have being a victim is universal and I agree with her completely. She speaks about how she thought a lack of education or poverty were the reasons why women were discriminated against. She also believed that only certain men did this. After what Babamukuru did to Nyasha though she knew this was wrong. I loved the last two lines in the paragraph it states, “What I didn’t like was the way all the conflicts came back to this question of femaleness. Femaleness as opposed and inferior to maleness.”