Preview

Prisoner Without a Name Book Review

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
834 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Prisoner Without a Name Book Review
Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a number
“Argentina is God” Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a number is a melancholy novel that expresses Argentina’s terrorist state. Jacob Timerman, a well respected man of Argentina, an editor of a well know Argentinian paper, La Opinion, tells the audience his story of the terrorist state of Argentina from 1967-1978. His gripping novel both describes his personal experience being kidnapped by terrorist, while he tells us about the condition of the terrorist state of Argentina. His book is important because it tells a first hand account of the fear, the distrust, and the mere insanity of conditions in the country of Argentina during its darkest time. In Timerman’s first chapter, he opens by describing how he lives (though being locked up in a cell is not living) while being locked away in an unknown location (p.g. 4). He first describes his own “cell”. He is extremely descriptive and the reader can feel as though they are in his small, narrow, cold, wet cell. He tells his audience of a little crack in the wall, his only ventilation and only source of light, in such little detail, yet the reader can understand his isolation from light, the outside world, and his family. Timerman describes the crack as a “faint glow, night and day, eliminating time” which represents his unwilling determination and hope for freedom. Timerman’s first chapter also gives the reader a sense that through all the events he has under gone, he still remains the same strong willed person (under the circumstances) he was as he is described in the rest of the book. In addition to he crack in the wall, Timerman describes an encounter with another prisoner when the eyehole of his cell accidentally left open by the guards. He describes his encounter with such passion and emotion, yet they do not say anything,, only stare at each other. Timerman describes how their movements, their eyes blinking, represented emotion and passionate

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In The Country Of Men

    • 806 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Hisham Matar’s 2009 novel, In The Country of Men, offers up the narrative of a child, Suleiman, a boy living under a dictatorship and a family that keeps secrets from him. Through Suleiman, Matar reveals an interpretation of life under a dictatorship through expressing a child’s experiences and views of betrayal and loyalty. Matar symbolizes this child as the nation under a dictatorship. In particular, Matar attempts to further express the transformation of people living under a dictatorship by symbolizing the child, Suleiman’s, through many encounters with betrayals and secrets from his family members, conversion from a naive, ignorant, and subdued boy to an exposed and even malicious and powerful “man”.…

    • 806 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The year is 1954. Government agencies resurrect secret plans previously discarded until a more forceful administration comes to power. Behind the scenes, the CIA and State Department are fervently working in over time trying to engineer a government overthrow against a populist nationalist in their own backyard who has the dare audacity to threaten both US economic and geopolitical interest. Accusations of communism and Soviet penetration permeate the discourse and heat up the rhetoric; swift action must be taken to stabilize the hemisphere. Intervention by any means necessary. Exiled opposition leaders are paid off, trained, equipped, and installed. Propaganda transmits through jammed radio towers and warns the peasant population of invasion and liberation. Psychological warfare in conjunction with paramilitary covert operation is launched. The target—Guatemala, a third world poverty stricken country in which the fruits of revolution and conflict are as ripe as the bananas that dot the landscape. Such a riveting story could easily fill the pages of Tom Clancy’s next best-selling and fictional political thriller but instead, it is the true story unearthed through extensive investigation by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, who with Bitter Fruit, meticulously detail a thought provoking and well-documented historical account of the Guatemalan coup d’état. The sowing of the seeds, subsequent cultivation, and ultimately the dangerous harvest of these bitter fruits is the basis for this compelling chronicle of one of the most controversial and…

    • 3196 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the article by Kevin Johnson, talks about programs that inmates are able to use for when they leave prison. With a sixty-six percent chance of returning after being released from prison a program in Chino California that trains prisoners to be a deep sea divers in order to find a steady job after they are released. The prisoner’s normally find jobs with the oil company for fixing or cleaning the pipes which is a dangerous and physical job which naturally deters others people from working there. Due to the pay rate (50-100 thousand dollars a year) due to the job being dangerous most people do want to do it, most ex-convicts do not return to prison and lowers the chance of returning to six percent. Another program is at a women correction…

    • 249 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    • Rosas walked into a politically unstable, Argentina. To fix this, Rosas believed in a greater amount of power for the governor. Through doing so, Rosas became a tyrant like leader, similar to Diaz. [7]…

    • 1628 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    A forced disappearance “occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person 's fate and whereabouts, with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law”(Wikipedia). In 1975 about 30,000 people disappeared and were horrifically tortured and killed in Argentina. It wasn’t until 1984 that it became known that the Argentine government was behind the death of the 30,000 people in Argentina. The government of Argentina’s main tactic for “insurgency” was known as forced disappearance. However, for what reason did Argentina’s government use forced disappearance, and were they successful in their act based on the effects? Essentially, the Argentine government used the hidden method of forced disappearance because it allowed them…

    • 1692 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    In the Novel “Argo”, the author, Antonio Mendez communicates to the reader that in order to pull off inconceivable acts of contrivance, one must think outside the box. Many people think that crazy and unusual plans never work (especially when dealing with an exfiltration). Their understanding is that when one goes with the ordinary they have a better chance of slipping under the radar. This book helps to disprove that theory by showing its readers the ways a plan can work when it goes bigger and bolder than the ordinary. The book also goes beyond schemes and helps the reader to realize this theme through its profound drama and real life events. Its intensity highlights the seriousness and risk involved with taking chances, but also shows…

    • 1739 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    This paragraph is the introduction to the whole novel. Usually an author would use some background information about the main character, or maybe even the time period, but not this one. This author chose to introduce her book with a long metaphor about dreams, men’s in specific. This metaphor talks of how the dreams of man are like ships on the horizon, always in sight but never in reach. She implies that no man has control over his dreams, and that no matter what they do; it is only by chance that they will achieve these dreams. Another important part of this paragraph is that “Time” is capitalized, as if it were a person mocking the Watcher by showing them what they can never achieve, and aging them so that they will never even have a chance.[…

    • 1616 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Mariano Azuela’s The Underdogs, is about a brotherhood of the Mexican people taking a journey with only one thing on their mind; revenge against Huerta and the Federales. In this story, we as the reader are confronted with characters, such as Demetrio Macias, who is destined to lead his people into the depths of retaining an incorrupt lifestyle and hopes to find peace from the effect of war. Although Demetrio is seen as one of the main characters in the novel, we are also briefly engaged in the other revolutionary forces under Pancho Villa, Carranza, Obregon, and by peasants under Zapata. These appositional forces gain strength against the Huerta government as well. The Underdogs almost symbolizes a Robin Hood story, in which, Demetrio and his peasant guerrilla forces revolt against a higher commanding army of the government, that relies on corrupting the lives of innocent people.…

    • 1512 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Unredeemed Captive

    • 1818 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Unredeemed Captive- A Family Story From Early America, John Demos, Vintage Books, April 1995, New York…

    • 1818 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Imagery: “He turned around and looked for somebody else to pick on, but everyone- whether in the dark or under a light, whether on a bottom bunk or a top one- was shoving his legs into the black, padded trousers with numbers on the left knee.” – This helps show imagery along with the sentence before it describing where these prisoners have to…

    • 2025 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Unredeemed Captive

    • 1617 Words
    • 7 Pages

    From the perspective of a twenty-one year old college student in the twenty first century, it is hard to relate to the colonist's of the 16 and 1700's. Crossing the frontier was a necessary task for these colonists to begin new lives in New England. The only way to tap into this same theme is through placing one's self in the wilderness, both physically and mentally, and peering out to the other side. As a class we were able to accomplish this by visiting the Buttolph-Williams House of Old Wethersfield and look upon this house through the cover of trees, just as these earlier settlers and Native Americans had done. The story of Eunice Williams is a wonderful example of the reciprocal theme of embracing the wilderness, by personal choice alone. In The Unredeemed Captive by John Demos, we hear the story of the raid upon Deerfield in 1704 and the significance of not only the torturous trek these captives endured, but the willingness for one child, Eunice Williams, to attach herself to these Native Americans captures and to embrace life in the wilderness.…

    • 1617 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Before Night Falls Essay

    • 1376 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Arenas writes this book through his imaginations and pastimes in Cuba as if it were his diaries. He analyzes his secrecy with artistic writing and sex. Reinaldo Arenas says, My sexual activity was all with animals. First there were the hens, then the goats and the sows, and after I had grown up some more, the mares (Arenas 149).” This shows the indifference towards women and the rest of the societies interests. In other words, Reinaldo was a homosexual and hid through his fear of the totalitarian government by taking his pain out with the animals. This book represents Reinaldo’s search for…

    • 1376 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    “Slavery by Another Name” is a documentary about the brutality southern white men inflicted upon black people. These white men would still hold slaves in one form or another even after laws have been passed prohibiting the use of slaves. They tried to find ways to bypass the laws that have been passed the hold these slaves in their custody. The reason the south couldn’t let go of these slaves is because their economy relied heavily on the use of slaves. The south was doing very well economically because of free labor and once the amendment was passed, the south felt the economic troubles instantly. So, what these southern slave ringers did was they would find away around the law by creating their own state laws that would arrest blacks for little insignificant crimes. They would use these prisoners just like slaves except they are not called slaves, so the law is perfectly ok with it. These blacks were arrested for stupid misdemeanors such as talking loud in front of white lady, stealing a pig which is worth one dollar, and they were even arrested for absolutely nothing. A lot of these free black men would roam around the soft only to be stopped by slave ringers who would lie to them and say “You owe me money”, and they would arrest these blacks with an official trial in court and they were sent straight to farms to work. This was called peonage, not only was it peonage, it was fake as well. When the word spread to the north that the south was still practicing slavery and peonage, they sent many investigators down to the south to convict these slave ringers. Even though these slave ringers were convicted and sent to prison, the effect wasn’t as promising because they were only sent to prison for a few years. The government thought that only a few years was needed to scare the south from continuing their illegal practices. They were wrong, and peonage still continued. After continuous unsuccessful…

    • 402 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Allegories of Life

    • 1682 Words
    • 7 Pages

    In the the cave there are a group of prisoners bond form their neck to their feet facing a stone wall. They have been their since childhood. All they know of is what the puppeteers have shown them through the fire images. They hear sounds made by the puppeteers. And the shadow of images cast from the fire. They think that this is reality because it is all they have ever known. One prisoner is lead away from his shackles and is lead out of the cave. He his blinded by the sun at first. Once his eyes had adjusted to the light he see’s a tree a real green tree that is alive. Not the shadow of a tree shown by the puppeteers. The prisoner also see’s his reflection in the water. He see’s the world in its entirety. He has been enlighten. Just as the prisoner was getting a grasp of the real world he is lead back into the cave. The other prisoners are mocking him for what they thought of as a…

    • 1682 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    As you can see, Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the most important Latin American novels to ever be written. The story depicts the life of what was once an ordinary town in Colombia forever changed by a murder which was inspired by a death of Marquez’s friend. He also displays the dominance men have over women and how the town expects both genders to behave. It is these reasons why I acknowledge why the book is not only of the most important books in Latin American literature, but one of the best ever…

    • 1751 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays

Related Topics