Cain And Abel Analysis

Near the middle of the memoir, Gourevitch makes an analogy, comparing Tutsis and Hutus with Cain and Abel. In the first paragraph of the fourth chapter, Gourevitch begins to explain the story of Cain and Abel. “In the famous story, the older brother, Cain, was a cultivator, and Abel, the younger, was a herdsman. They made their offerings to God-- Cain from his crops, Abel from his herds. Abel’s portion won God’s regard; Cain’s did not. So Cain killed Abel” (Gourevitch 47). Later on in the chapter, Gourevitch says that, “Hutus were cultivators and Tutsis were herdsmen” (48). Gourevitch’s analogy of Hutus being Cain and Tutsis being Abel routes back to when “Tutsis were favored for top political and military offices, and through their public
Gourevitch uses these stories in his memoir, so that readers will never be able to forget the haunting events that had happened to them. One story Gourevitch included in his memoir was Odette Nyiramilimo story. Odette was a Tutsi and she explained her life story, about how she was harassed and expelled from school for being a Tutsi. Eventually, Odette’s house was burned down by Hutus, so she had to live behind a bush for two months with her family. Odette was secretly put into school, where she wasn’t filed in the books because Tutsis were not allowed to enroll in school and participate. The life of Odette puts the reader in her shoes and conveys that the genocide had been happening for a long time. The genocide didn’t start when all of the mass killing had started, but when the harassment of Tutsis by Hutus were observed because even back then, Tutsis were murdered for being Tutsis. Gourevitch typically includes stories of Tutsis rather than Hutus, because Hutus never admit to what they have done and also for the reason of Gourevitch wanting to readers to be able to realize the amount of harassment and ethnocentrism the Tutsis had gotten from the Hutus. Laurenice Nyirabeza had told her story of how her family’s murderer was her next door neighbor. Considering that many Hutus had participated