Chanda's Secret- Stigma
Sang 1
Sang To Meeraal Shafaat Interpreting Texts 20th December 2012 Final draft AIDS- The stigma of life Since the invention of medicine, never have human beings needed to face as a big challenge as the present: The AIDS epidemic! When people have HIV virus and it continues to develop seriously, the HIV virus badly damages their bodies’ immune systems, which leads them to the risk for opportunistic infections, meaning they easily get sickness without any protection. In this period, their disease will turn into AIDS, which has taken countless lives of people and left the pain for many families in society. Surrounding this incurable disease, there are plenty of intractable problems. Especially the perceptions about AIDS of community and even the patients are not enough to rescue the patient from improper judgments of society. To bear resentment against society for having boycotted the patients, Allan Stratton wrote Chanda’s Secrets. Through this novel, he shows us the real lives of AIDS patients, the loss, the loneliness and their tragic fates while facing death in the contemporary society. Not only Africa but also all over the world there is a lot of prejudice and misunderstanding in society about AIDS and the people who get this disease. AIDS is the most horrible disease that everyone fears whether they suffer from it or not. Despite the reason leading to their diseases, they are shunned and despised by community. As Stratton describes Jonah, “Jonah liked to party” and after Sara was born “he just stayed at the shebeen getting drunk on shake-shake.” (21) At that time, he usually goes out with Mary and probably that is the reason
Sang 2
why he gets AIDS. Until the disease is evidently shown on his body, “He’s a skeleton. The flesh has been sucked out from under his skin. The skin’s dried so tight to his skull that the bridge of his nose has ripped through.” (106) he is outcast and his sister- Ruth is the first one to detect his symptoms of disease. She
Sang To Meeraal Shafaat Interpreting Texts 20th December 2012 Final draft AIDS- The stigma of life Since the invention of medicine, never have human beings needed to face as a big challenge as the present: The AIDS epidemic! When people have HIV virus and it continues to develop seriously, the HIV virus badly damages their bodies’ immune systems, which leads them to the risk for opportunistic infections, meaning they easily get sickness without any protection. In this period, their disease will turn into AIDS, which has taken countless lives of people and left the pain for many families in society. Surrounding this incurable disease, there are plenty of intractable problems. Especially the perceptions about AIDS of community and even the patients are not enough to rescue the patient from improper judgments of society. To bear resentment against society for having boycotted the patients, Allan Stratton wrote Chanda’s Secrets. Through this novel, he shows us the real lives of AIDS patients, the loss, the loneliness and their tragic fates while facing death in the contemporary society. Not only Africa but also all over the world there is a lot of prejudice and misunderstanding in society about AIDS and the people who get this disease. AIDS is the most horrible disease that everyone fears whether they suffer from it or not. Despite the reason leading to their diseases, they are shunned and despised by community. As Stratton describes Jonah, “Jonah liked to party” and after Sara was born “he just stayed at the shebeen getting drunk on shake-shake.” (21) At that time, he usually goes out with Mary and probably that is the reason
Sang 2
why he gets AIDS. Until the disease is evidently shown on his body, “He’s a skeleton. The flesh has been sucked out from under his skin. The skin’s dried so tight to his skull that the bridge of his nose has ripped through.” (106) he is outcast and his sister- Ruth is the first one to detect his symptoms of disease. She