Cutting for stone
Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese is an excellent book that is emotionally suspenseful. Reading it, I was always on the edge of my seat waiting to see what happens next in the story. It is the most well written, unique novel I have ever read. His first novel is an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home. Reading, Cutting For Stone gave me a new perspective on a doctor’s life. Cutting For Stone is an unforgettable journey into one man's remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others. Abraham Verghese makes a good connection between the actions of his characters in the novel when they fight for Eritrean independence from Ethiopia and the events of the actual Eritrean War for independence. War divides the characters and their love.
Cutting for Stone is a very interesting story about twin brothers, Marion and Shiva Stone. The twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics — their passion for the same woman — that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America. When Marion makes his way to America, Shiva takes this opportunity to get close to Genet even though he knows that Genet is the girl Marion has ever loved. Shiva uses Marion’s shyness to his advantage because he knows Marion will be too afraid to tell Genet that he loves her. Hema taught Shiva and Genet a complex series of steps and poses in the time I'd been out. Arms in, arms out, arms together, pointing, dipping, drawing a bow, firing an imaginary arrow, the eyes looking this way and that, the feet sliding, a cymbal clash of anklets every time their heels thumped the floor”(Verghese 239). This proves that the different personalities of Marion and Shiva force a distance between the brothers as they grow. While Marion emerges as the shy, studious, and sincere one, Shiva is his opposite. He was not afraid to do what Marion could not do; Shiva’s love for Genet overpowered his conscience and bond of trust with his brother.
Cutting for Stone is about their experiences during the Eritrean uprising in Ethiopia during Eritrea's war for independence. The twins are especially affected by the revolt due to their close relationship with their Eritrean nanny and her daughter. It's about the actions that lead to one of the brothers leaving for New York, his learning about the cultural divide in America, and another series of events that takes place. Seymour I. Schwartz states, “This epic of family and love is told largely from the operating theater as surgeon and soul become one” (http://www.takemeawayreading.com/2012/03/cutting-for-stone.html.).
The Eritrea's war for independence in Ethiopia divides the brothers apart. As a result, the brothers start questioning their reason for being in Ethiopia and why they are involved in the war at the first place. Marion has doubts about his identity and his love for Genet. As a result, of the war Marion leaves for America to find his true self as a doctor.
“This isn’t your fight. I thought about that as I trekked to the [Sudan] border with two [rebel] escorts [running away from Ethiopia]. What did Solomon [a rebel from the North] mean? Did he see me as being on the [government of Ethiopia] side? No, I think he saw me as an expatriate, someone without a stake in this war [the civil war that erupted after the fall of the Monarchy and the military regime takeover]. Despite being born in the same compound as Genet [a girl he grew up with and loved], despite speaking Amharic like a native, and going to medical school with him, to Solomon I was a ferenji—a foreigner. Perhaps he was right, even though I was loath to admit it. If I were a patriotic Ethiopian, would I not have gone underground and joined the royalists, or others who were trying to topple Sergeant Mengistu? If I cared about my country, shouldn’t I have been willing to die for it?”(Verghese, 456).
Obviously as one sees in the quote, war divides Marion and Shiva because their love for the same woman blinds from the reality of the Eritrean war for independence from Ethiopia. Marion lies about his identity and separates himself from his home, true love, and his brother.
Marion and Shiva come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution, and their lives become intertwined with the nation's politics. Addis Ababa is a colorful, cosmopolitan city: the Italians have left behind cappuccino machines, Capri umbrellas, and a vibrant expat community. But they've also left a nation crippled by poverty, hunger, and authoritarian rule: Ethiopia in the 1960’s and 1970’s is both bolstered and trapped by its notorious emperor, Haile Selassie, and rocked by violence and civil war(Wagner 1).
I saw Addis Abeba a new. I had always thought it a beautiful city, with broad avenues in its heart, and many square with monuments and fenced gardens around which traffic had to circle: Mexico Square, Patriot’s Square, Menelik’s Square, … Foreigners, whose only image of Ethiopia was that of starving people sitting in blinding dust, were disbelieving when they landed in the mist and chill of Addis Abeba at night and saw the boulevards and the tram-track lights of Churchill Road. They wondered if the plane had turned around in the night and they were in Brussels or Amsterdam. … (314).
In 1962, Ethiopia annexed Eritrean as fourteenth province and Italy has occupied a long strip of the Red Sea and colonized Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s notorious emperor, Haile Selassie, mention as the emperor in Cutting for Stone was able to exploit United States security interest to control Eritrean causing poverty. The main cause of the Eritrean independence from Ethiopia was a conflict over a border line. The Eritrean people got independence in 1993(The betrayal of Etritea1). The armed struggle for Eritrea's independence began in 1962, after a decade of Ethiopian violations of an UN-imposed Ethiopia-Eritrea federation, and following Ethiopia's annexation of Eritrea as its fourteenth province. In the early 1970s, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), was organized and, throughout the next decade, emerged as the dominant liberation force. The Eritrean independence struggle became synonymous with "self-reliance"—a 30-year war fought from wholly within the country by a politically mobilized population supporting a large, well-trained army using captured weapons. The historical and political necessity of Eritrean self-reliance forced Eritreans to plan and test—while fighting for—the kind of society they wanted, with education a vital factor in the liberation movement's success and a key element in the Eritrean model of development.
Shiva sleeps with Genet—the daughter of their housekeeper and the girl Marion has always loved. This second betrayal, now by the two people this sensitive young man loves most, sends Marion into a deep depression. And when Genet joins a radical political group fighting for the independence of Eritrea, Marion's connection to her forces him into exile: he sneaks out of Ethiopia and makes his way to America.
“Call me unwanted, call my birth a disaster, call me the bastard child of a disgraced nun and a disappeared father, call me a cold-blooded killer who lies to the brother of the man I killed, but that loamy soil that nurtured Matron’s roses was in my flesh. I said Ethyo-pya like a native. Let those born in other lands speak of Eee-thee-op-eee-ya, as if it were a compound name like Sharm el Sheikh, or Dar es Salaam or Rio de Janeiro. The Entoto Mountains disappearing in darkness framed my horizons; if I left, those mountains would sink back into the ground, descend into nothingness; the mountains needed me to gaze at their tree-filled slopes, just as I needed them to be certain I was alive. All possibilities resided within me, and they required me to be here. If I left, what would become of me?” (349). The above quote shows that Shiva regrets his actions. The war did divide the characters in the story but later Marion and Shiva were able to reconnect their bond of brotherhood.
The characters actions the novel Cutting For Stone, represents a very good resemblance between the fictional reality of the boys’ life and the Eritrean community involvement in for independence from Ethiopia the war. Cutting For Stone, is a very complex novel where the plot jumps around from one aspect of the story to another. The reader can have a very enjoyable reading experience. Abraham Verghese is a very talented writer. Abraham Verghese’s writing technique makes an interesting story about two boys’ lives and allows the reader into another story about the actual Eritrean War for independence from Ethiopia is unique in the way he divides the characters and their love because of war.
Works Cited
"Borderline War: Ethiopia and Eritrea Growl about Border Line L a." Global Agenda (2007): 1-2. Academic OneFile. Web. 17 Apr. 2012. <http:// www.gogale.group.com>.
Ducan, Liam. "The Plot Thickens." Canadian Medical Association Journal (2009): 1. Academic One File. Web. 25 Apr 2012. <www.galegroup.com>.
Eritrea - History & Background." Http://education.stateuniversity.com/. Web. 17 Apr. 2012. <http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/434/Eritrea-HISTORY-BACKGROUND.html>.
Jenny. "Cutting For Stone." Take Me Away!! Web. 17 Apr. 2012.
Verghese, Abraham. Cutting for Stone. New York: Vintage, 2009. Print.
Wagner. Erica, "Doctors and Sons." The New York Times [New York] 8 Feb. 2009, Arts and Entertainment sec.: 1-2. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Apr. 2012
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Wrong .Michaela, "The Betrayal of Eritrea." I Didn't Do IT For YOU: How The World Betrayed a Small African Nation. New York: Fourth Estate, 2005. 1-2. Gale Opposing Viewpoints. Web. 1AprIL2012. <http://www.gale.group com>
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