City Of God Character Analysis

Informal cites or slums are cities that are set up without the government’s permission but are fighting for their place in society. The government is often weak and at odds with the people which leads to a need for them to exert their ability to shape their own lives regardless of the rules and impact the world around them. GraceLand by Chris Abani, The Children of Sisyphus by James Patterson, and “City of God” all shoe the positive and negative sides of trying to shape one’s life while living in a shantytown. Agency is expressed in all three forms of media through escapism. While in GraceLand the transcendence of stereotypes is used as a way to shape one’s life, “City of God” and the Children of Sisyphus use stereotyping as a tool to show
In GraceLand, many of the main character view America as a place that they can go and escape from the terrible conditions that they are stuck in. Elvis makes a living impersonating Elvis a great American emblem; this is an evasion of personal responsibility and identity, just like how his father uses alcohol as a way to escape from his guilt. The characters are stuck in a closed system due to their economic status. The concept of hoping for a better future is similar to what Cyrus does in The Children of Sisyphus. Cyrus continues to look to the ocean where the ship is supposed to come save those in the dungle, he never gives up his hope that he can escape due to all the faith that he and the others have put into their escapist reality. In both of these cases the people of the informal cities need a place to put their hopes and dream in they need a place that they can escape to – even if it is only in their head to escape the struggles of daily life. In the movie, “City of God,” Rocket escapes the favela through his photography job but is drawn back because it is how he makes his money. This is a tool that is needed in these novels because they need to a way to escape the depression and the general sadness of their lives. In a way this is the only agency that some of the characters have in both novels,
In GraceLand, Sunday’s alcoholism is an acceptance of the dire situation the corruption that globalization has caused, Elvis is reminded that “we are who we are because we are who we were made (312)” and that there is no hope for agency in trying to change oneself. This gives rise to the notion that the people of the slum can only endure their situation and not challenge the injustice, which shows a unbreakable cycle. This unbreakable cycle can be found in the runts in “City of God,” who follow in the footsteps of the infamous hood Lil’Ze. The power in the slums is in the youth, they are always the ones in power, the runts grow up with the idea that killing is normal and they have nothing else to compare it to. In the Children of Sisyphus, the characters are put into a meaningless existence, one that they have no hopes of getting out of. In Children of Sisyphus there is a cycle of poverty, dereliction, brutality, and failure – there is no hope for these people there is only the inevitable fate endless labor on earth as the inheritors of Sisyphus’s curse. Each time one of the characters is on the cusp of achieving their goal it is taken away from them embodying the ideal of a Sisyphean