Miguel Wong Ant 316 Essay 3 Part B: Dramatic DiscussionBiuThank goodness is carnival time again, and the best part is that this year I’m going to wear a really nice red dress. My belly is not bothering me and my kids are big enough to take care off themselves, they probably will be playing all night on the street along with the other kids of the “el barrio.” My oldest daughter probably will stay with her boyfriend. FelixI got to work this week, so I’m gonna have a wonderful time this carnival weekend, I’ll get drunk and party with my friends, this will be my best carnival ever. Dona FelipaI don’t understand you people.
You barely can sustain yourself and when ever you got work at the sugar cane you always spend all your money available. Why don’t you take care of your wife and the son to be born soon. You Biu, I understand that carnival time is very important for us, but I don’t want you to be sick and unable to work for me later on. FelixI respect your point of view Dona Felipa, but even though we are poor, we still have the right to have fun.
Carnival week is for everybody here in Brazil, if we can’t have fun on only this sacred week, where else and what else can we do to entertain ourselves. Biu Felix should take care of his family I have a son in my belly from us, from Felix, but I agree that carnival time is for party and is for everybody to enjoy. We are so poor and miserable that carnival is the only thing no body can take away from us. We live in misery, we don’t have nor running water nor clean water, we even don’t eat regularly, but carnival time is a brief moment for us to escape our reality, our miserable reality, if we cant have that little thing, we might kill ourselves as well.
Felix Some day, I’ll be rich enough to be able to enjoy carnival where the rich people go. I’ll mingle with the government and high society people of the Alto. Someday my woman will never have to work again. Someday my woman will never have to wash clothes for others never again. Dona FelipaI think Felix, that you are a good man, and you want the best for yourself and for your family. But I think you are a fool by thinking in that way.
I don’t wish you bad, but it is nearly impossible for people like you to succeed here in the Alto. Even for people like us, with education and schooling, it is difficult to survive. My husband is a doctor, and I pay your woman to wash our clothes and help us at home. We make some good money and all I can do is to share it a little with your wife. Reality is sad, you should look at the future with both hope and common sense, but not with fantasies.
I know you are a god man, but look at you, you don’t even have a steady job, much less any education. Sorry if I sound rude, but that’s reality. BiuI know that our reality is very sad, we don’t have a future, we ” ll be poor all the times, that’s why we party on carnival time. Even though we don’t have anything to eat, carnival is more important than food for us. When I was a child my I remember my mother going to the carnival all the times, there was never a year that she would miss it. Sugar cane factories were abundant and she had jobs constantly.
We were 6 brothers and sisters, and when the time came, we also participated in the festivities. I never met my father but the man my mother was living with, was a good person, he never treated us bad. Felix is a good person too, but sometimes when he is drunk he had hit my children a few times. I don’t like that, but I understand that men sometimes need to drink in order to forget their troubles in life. FelixI know I don’t have a steady job, but Dona Felipa you don’t have to remind me that. If I don’t have a job is not because I don’t want to work, is because there are no jobs for me available.
I was hurt many years ago, and I can’t lift much weight since. I’m not the same youngster who once cut sugar cane in a very fast way. I’ll get a better job and I’ll be able to support my wife, but for know I rather beg in the streets than sending my wife to work at the sugar cane. I know I can feed my family, but as I said before, I rather starve on the streets than allowing my wife to work for those mean landlords.
Dona Felipa Why are you so stubborn Felix? Don’t you know that with hard work you can accomplish whatever you wanted in life? It was difficult for us too, my husband was in medical school when I was first pregnant, now our two kids are grown up and soon to finish high school. They too will go to college and work their way up in the same hard way as we did. It seems to me that you are just waiting for a miracle. BiuI had many pregnancies and I also lost many babies, I too think like Felix, I don’t like to work in the sugar cane, it is much better for me to do your laundry and clean your house. I also have hope and I too fantasize about having a home like yours someday. But it is curious it never happened not even in my dreams.
I want my children to go to college too, I heard that the state has some programs to help the poor, but maybe that is not true. I just hope my children to live long enough to finish school. Dona FelipaI admire your strength Biu, but I don’t understand why you keep becoming pregnant, and now from Felix, who don’t even have a job. If you had taken care of yourself long time ago, I’m sure you wouldn’t have to suffer as much as you are suffering right now. I cut my tubes right after my second baby, we didn’t want to have too many kids, we decided that two children would be enough. Money is scarce and a family too big is more difficult to maintain and support.
I’m a religious person same as you, but God told us to adapt according to the circumstances. I believe there are something you can do and some others you simply can not do. BiuI can not go and cut my tubes, that would be too much for my beliefs and that would upset Got even more. I don’t want to upset God, he will punish us more than he is right now. If there is anything I respect and trust in, that one is God and Virgin Maria.
If I loose that belief, then I’m completely done in earth, and I better die for once and for all. FelixI agree with Biu, God is the only one we have and trust. I know that he punish us by making us poor and wretched, but he is wise and he will not let us go to hell ever. We are paying our dues here in earth. I too think that God is in every child on earth. Woman should have all the babies they can, because if a woman refuses to have babies, then she is upsetting God, and worse things can happen.
Even though my mother died young she had 7 children, as a miracle as it is, all of us are still alive. Dona FelipaI respect and understand your way of thinking, I just wish you the best of the lucks. Biu was good to me and she is very helpful, I even gave her extra money to buy medicines for her children, sometimes my husband is too busy to see Biu children I had to take her to the Municipal health post myself. Someday you too will enjoy life as same as I am.
Biu You been good to us, I recognize that. I take your advices just as that, as advices only. I know we the poor people did something very bad in the past. That’s why God is punishing us in that way, making us to suffer this badly.
One day we all will meet in heaven and we all will become equal, with no injustices and with no suffering at all.