Tuesday, October 25, 2016

"Young Guns" Response Exercise from Mike

Post your active reading response to the "Young Guns" handout essay here, and use the Comments feature below to post your response, so we can see all the responses here on this one post.

See handout for the prompt and questions to consider.

All best,

Mike

"Young Guns"

The Teen Killers of the Drug War

Child soldiers in foreign conflicts are treated as victims. What about the adolescents on the U.S.-Mexico border?

19 comments:

  1. Reading the young guns I think the main themes of these stories are about those young children getting caught up in these bad situations and how they receive help after these horrible incidents are over with. They have a lot of common things with A Long Way Gone, such as when cardona was instructed to leave his civilian clothes behind along with any personal belongings just like Ismael was ordered to put on his new army shorts and sees a soldier burning his old belongings.
    I think the writing seems best when Alcinda Honwana is talking about Cardona she says "Cardona tells of the macho empowerment he felt as an alpha in a hazardous domain. But he offers another explanation, too, one that is bleak as it is banal" (Honwana). It seems to have very good use of wording to explain what Cardona said he felt like. It makes it seem much more important in this use of wording than it would simplified.

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  2. The main theme of the story in the Young Guns is about young children getting caught up in bad situations. Trying to receive help is something they are doing after going through the horrible incidents. This story and Beah's book are similar in ways. Beah was told to put on new clothes and his stuff was burn, while Cardona was told to leave his clothes and any personal belongings. Also both of the boys used drugs. The writing is at its best where it says "Cardona's father was an abusive drunk who left the family when he was a child" also adding to it where Slater writes "Cardona had "seen enough movies" to blame his father's absence for "part of situation" but only part of it". Also adding to where the writing is at its best is where "Cardona sees that this is no basis for absolutions. He was not an orphan." This part makes you feel how he feels about his dad and that he was not abandoned by his parents and beomes a orphan because he is close with his mother and brother.

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  3. The main theme in Young Guns how young children getting help after the awful experiences they go through in their life. This had many similarities to A Long Way Gone. Both of these boys have to go through rough times in war and need help. Cardona and Beah both go to a rehabilitation center. They both must leave personal belongings behind at some point. It just overall connects by their similarities in their stories. I think the writing is at its best when, "under certain conditions practically any child could be changed into a killer." I just thought that quote was very interesting and showed just how crazy this time was. I also think a good part is "Cardona sees that this no basis for absolutions. He was not an orphan." I think that shows a lot about Cardona's character and how he feels. A vocabulary usage I noticed where, the word "coachable" used to describe the juveniles is a word a found interesting.

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  4. In the story Young Guns I think the main theme would be young kids getting mixed up in the wrong crowd. While Cardona knows he's not making the right decisions he does it to fill a void. I think the writing was at its best where "Cardona can distinguish right and wrong. He knows what he is doing is immoral, but he rationalizes. He tells himself that there is no innocents in the drug trade; if he didn't execute his victims, somebody else would."

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    1. I like the quote that you used, because it really ties in what you had to say about the young kids. They do these things to fill in a void. Great job.

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    2. I like that you pointed out that he had a choice in what he was doing. He could have done things differently, but he chose not to. And nice quote!

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  5. In the story young guns the main theme to me is that these children are going through horrible things in their lives such as having abusive alcoholic fathers and because of this having emotions of having no where to belong so they join these drug trades and cartels so they feel like they have a place they belong and are "important". They dont care if its right or wrong they just have never had a place to belong to so they wanted something to be apart of to fill that void.

    the writing to me was at its best on page 4 when it says "Cardona might have been frio, but he was not a sadist,unlike miguel trivino , he derived no thrill from killing so why do it." it goes on to say that young combatants in the face of persuasive murder "vividly experienced their own powerlessness- except as killers. what does all this mean well it means that cardona may have been cold-hearted as travino but he didnt enjoy inflicting pain on others and got nothing out of it but he did it still because he felt powerless because killing was the only thing he could do where he felt he was important and had a place where he had the emotion and feeling of belonging.

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  6. I believe the main themes/ideas in the paper, Young Guns, is how children all around the world are forced into dangerous organizations, and have even killed, but they still work to be rehabilitated, but these two boys who were part of the drug cartel in Mexico did not get the chance to be rehabilitated. It seems a little unfair because the cartel was fierce like an army, but these boys did not have the luxury of rehabilitation.

    One thing I found interesting that could pose as a good question is at the top right paragraph on the first page. The writer asks, "Were they psychopaths to begin with? Or were they ordinary kids whom the Zetas had sculpted into monsters?" This could be asked about Beah. Was Beah already a vicious killer? Or were his acts of ferociousness and brutality due to the manipulation of the war?

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    1. Completely agree with your main ideas of the paper. The author does a great job of explaining the dangers that these children had to go through in their everyday lives. You definitely have an interesting question. I find it could be found in the psychology of child soldiers and how they end up following these dangerous organizations.

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  7. In the paper, Young Guns, one of the strongest themes is the use and manipulation of children around the world. The author talks about children being controlled by criminal groups. A strong example of this theme is the story of Gabriel Cordana, a young boy who's life was completely taken over by drug cartels.

    An important vocabulary word that I found in the reading is indoctrinate. The definition of indoctrinate is to teach someone a set of beliefs uncritically. This is important, because it is the perfect term for what is happening to these children. They are taught to fight and follow the orders of their leader, without questioning if what they are doing is of evil in any way.

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  8. One theme that I kept noticing in the essay called Young Guns was that there was a lot of doubt written in this essay. Throughout it the author writes about how "If Ishmael Beah is eligible for redemption, should we extend a similar dispensation to Gabriel Cardona?".(Keefe 4).

    I thought that the writing was at its best when Keefe brings the short film "Beasts of no nation" into the essay. For me it brought back the memories of watching the movie and I felt that he did a great job of connecting the two stories together as he went a long.

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    1. I liked your use of a passage from the reading. It was very to unique to the rest of the group. Also, I agree with your statement. The writer does a great job of tying everything together.

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  9. The main Theme or Idea in my opinion were choice. Gabriel had the choice of going over the border to become apart of the cartel. Although he didn’t have to, he still did. He chose to kill and participate in the drug trade. He wasn’t forced to do any of it.


    Some new ideas that this essay can bring to our classes discussion of A Long Way Gone, would be that the vulnerability of children is much more widespread than we originally thought. There are kids all over the World that are being taken advantage of, that’s way closer to home. Leaving the children to be depend on their commandants and drugs, people know they can make them do anything.

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    1. I agree with what you said about the new ideas it can bring. I never really thought about how many people are child soldiers. I honestly didn't think it was that much of a problem, but it is, and a lot of people are getting affected because of it.

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  10. The main themes and ideas in Young Guns is talking about how Cardona, and Reta got their punishments decided by the supreme court, while in other areas where murder is common, kids like them barley get punished due to the fact they had to kill to survive. Ishmael Beah barley got any punishment because in Sierra Leone murder is common in young kids. It also talks about how kids in other countries were easy to manipulate. It said that they used kids because kids are innocent and hard to kill. The U.S. sees the children here as different because they do not live in a place where war is a problem. There are gangs and drug problems where they choose to be close with the group. The Supreme Court decided that kids be tried as adults now. Another theme is about how Ishmael Beah had killed many people being a child soldier in Sierra Leone, but they did not know whether to try him.
    This reading brings new ideas to the book A Long Way Gone that we should think about. We now have to think about how much detail Beah used in his books. Maybe he had a choice and he would rather kill than run away. Maybe he knew exactly what he was doing the whole time, and maybe he wasn’t on drugs the whole time. We now have to ask ourselves if its right that he isn't serving any time now. He did kill many people when he was younger, but the fact that people have done those same or less crimes here in the U.S. and are getting so much time for it brings attention to our eyes. It doesn’t seem fair that these kids are being locked up all their lives. Then again, they made the choice to be in these gangs, Beah was fearfully forced, or killed if he chose anything other than being a child soldier.

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  11. The main theme of Young Guns is the vulnerability of children and the ability to easily manipulate them. The author describes how child soldiers are often used because they are easy to manipulate. Most of them have lost their families and see the military as security. Joseph Kony said "He eventually switched to children, because they were easier to indoctrinate." (Keefe, 74).
    A significant vocabulary word, as used above, is indoctrinate. Indoctrinate is defined as, teach a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically. A synonym is brainwash. This ties in with what i believe the main theme is, manipulation.

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    1. I like what you had to say. I really like the quote you used because it shows us why he ended up using children. I didn't know what that vocab word meant before until you told us, so good choice of vocab word and I agree that it does tie in with what you had to say.

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    2. I like the vocab term. It ties along so well with the point they are trying to get across of the kids being easily manipulated by older adults.

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    3. I couldn't agree with you more that children are so vulnerable. I also had to look up that word to figure out what it meant, so good choice in picking that word!

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