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Hotel Rwanda Essay

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In the early 1990s, the nation of Rwanda broke out into a civil war. The Hutu party rose to power in an attempt to eliminate all Tutsi people due to their ties with the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) who the Hutu people believe to be rebels against their people and against God. Though these two parties were pressured into forming a peaceful, unified government (known as the Arusha Accords), the Hutu party was dissatisfied, feeling as though by agreeing to this they were conceding. In 2004, the film Hotel Rwanda was released to the general public, acutely depicting the tragic and painful transgressions of the Rwandan Civil War through the perspective of Paul Rusesabagina, the manager at the Hôtel des Mille Collines.
Paul navigates his way through …show more content…

Personally, I was born two years after this tragedy. I did not know the Rwandan Genocide had occurred until after watching this movie. For me, that is terrifying. Still to this day, Americans do not hold themselves accountable for their contribution to the loss of 800,000 lives that they do not even teach the genocide to their youth. These movies are incredibly thought-provoking and an important agent of change. People often discuss America’s involvement in foreign affairs as part of an identifier for political opinions, policy, and justice. Hearing an opinion on America’s involvement in foreign affairs, positive or negative, is much less effective in determining where your values lie than experiencing the tragedy and horror second-hand through the lives of the characters. Journalism possesses a beautiful, truly invaluable lack in biases and ability to present facts. Where it lacks is in situations like this, where a certain pathos is needed to connect to the human nature. I recognize sometimes that is not even enough. My point is that films like that help to contribute to humanizing these type of global catastrophes. These stories stick with people more than black and white reports of what is happening. This should not be the case but it is. People need it to matter to them. The way we stop history from repeating itself is by not letting things go. We use our medium, our art, our ability to connect with the world to hold people accountable and to never let them

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After reading Night and watching Hotel Rwanda, we are able to find many comparisons along with differences between the main characters Paul Rusesabagina in Hotel Rwanda and Elie in the book Night which reveals that no matter a person’s position in society, events such as mass genocide cause great affect on people, but based on their position or class in the environment their ability to show gratitude to others is deeply impacted. Both Paul and Elie fought through horrific and terrifying mass genocides in their home countries. In Hotel Rwanda, Paul is not being directly oppressed as he is Hutu and the genocide was attacking the entire Tutsi population, while the Holocaust directly targeted Jews they yelled at Elie, ‘‘Lie down on it! On your

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