Once Were Warriors Essay, Research Paper
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In the movie, Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff, he explains how a family is ruined mainly because of alcohol. Once Were Warriors is a movie that is all about the truth in cultures. As we all know, alcohol usually causes negative behavior. For example, in the movie it shows how alcohol causes violence, poverty, and child abuse in a family. Alcoholism is something common in mostly every culture. Usually alcoholics do not want to realize that alcohol is the problem of many things. To alcoholics, alcohol is a substance that does not do any harm and does not hurt anyone. As shown in the video, the children and wife are victims in certain ways of the alcoholic husband/father. Therefore, we can say that every person in society is a victim of alcohol no matter if they drink or don t drink.
Violence was one of the main components in the movie. It shows how the family had to live with violence instead of love. Also, it shows how the wife has to put up with the beatings, Jake the husband would give her. This is usually seen in every culture where the man drinks until he is drunk. After certain man is drunk he takes the power to beat the wife and feel that he is the boss of the relationship. I have been a witness of this situation, where the woman is always being violently beaten by the spouse. This is something that occurs everyday and everywhere. I believe that the woman can put a stop to this situation by giving herself the position she deserves.
Usually the woman puts up with the violence because supposedly she loves the spouse. She may love the spouse, but she does not love herself and in order to achieve she needs to love herself and put atop to everything that causes her harm. As we all have seen, the woman always considers herself a victim of a violent relationship. Being a woman, there is not only one victim in the relationship. Every person that is involved in a drunken society is a victim of society no matter what. Every person has the solution in their hands, all they need to do is be confident and use that solution. However, there are a certain types of victims in a family that need love from the parents and do not have the solution to work on their own and stop the abuse. These are the innocent children that do not deserve to see these violent acts that alcohol causes.
Once Were Warriors showed how children are part of the violence created by alcoholism. This is another issue that certain cultures deal with. Not only does alcoholism create problems with the adults, but it also creates problems and affects young children. This is another issue I have witnessed, which is very painful and unfair. Children are victims because they cannot defend themselves and all they want is love and care from their parents. In a family with alcohol, usually the children get beatings and are mistreated. The bad thing about this is that children usually remember everything from their childhood and when they grow up they become abusive with their family. The children are no able to experience family love and will grow up not showing love towards the family they will create one day.
Poverty is and issue that is common in many places. Alcohol causes people to lose their jobs and by losing their jobs they have no money to support the family. This is something else Once Were Warriors showed. There was the time where Jake the husband lost his job and had no money to feed the children and support them. He never had money to support the family, but he always had money to buy alcohol. I see this situation everyday in the neighborhood I live in. I see the neighbor drunk everyday without a job, just like the movie shows it. You can hear him screaming at the children and his wife because food isn t ready.
This is something experienced by everyone and everywhere. As we all know, there is a solution to everything but most of the time we are just afraid to make that change. The solution to this problem is to leave the abusive father/husband. If he is always drunk and does not do anything to help around the house, that means you certainly do not need him to eat what you can afford for the children. The main reason why this solution should be used is because of the children. It is very bad for the children to grow up in an environment where there is no love and all there is in the family is hate and abuse in the household. If this solution is used there is a chance that the children will be raised with at least love from one parent, which I believe is enough and there will be a lower amount of violence, child abuse, and poverty in the family. This will maybe help the family not go through the situation that went on in the movie.