A Time for Change
Education changes minds. As Burned Alive unfolds we as the reader are able to see how Souads perspective of the world is changed as she is introduced to Europe and it’s customs and lifestyle. It is amazing the turn that her perspective of the world takes as she becomes educated and is introduced to the world outside of her country. How vastly different the life she lives in europe compared to the life she had lived in the West Bank shows how education can change a mind.
Malcolm Forbes a great entrepreneur and son to the founder of Forbes magazine said this quote on the mind “The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one”. As Souad becomes acclimated with her new country she begins to learn of what life is like in europe. In europe she is a free woman. In the hospital as she is being treated for her burns she is exposed to the freedom of women in europe. Souad was amazed that the nurses at the hospital were able to dress in skirts, laugh and even talk
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In Souads village girls would be looked down upon, but in her new life with new education her point of view has changed. Her children are able to go to school, and enjoy the freedoms of being a girl in a 1st world country that would have not been enjoyed in the West Bank. Souad’s point of view on the world has also changed. In her homeland the Jews were evil and others were not to be dealt with. As a parent Souad encourages her children to be with someone they would be happy with something that would not happen in her country where arranged marriages were the way of the land “It may be an Arab, a Jew, a Spaniard, an Italian. The most important thing is that they choose the person they love and that they are happy, because I haven't been” (Souad 181). She hopes that her children's life will be better than her own, a common belief between parents and what many parents work for