A Long Way Gone Forgiveness Analysis

While forgiveness keeps peace, it’s meaningless when the action needed to forgive is done over and over again; consequently, the rebated forgiveness turns into cold acceptance. It is from testing forgiveness that forgiveness loses its importance. We see this as Jeannette’s own forgiveness begins to wear thin at a very young age. Jeannette had just turned ten when she begged her father to quit his drinking. While he was able to quit drinking for a few days, he soon crawled back, sucking on a bottle of beer like a baby does a bottle of milk. The Walls children typically did not get anything for their birthdays as they were too poor to afford birthday gifts; however, what Jeanette asked for was not only priceless in terms of benefiting her family

Jeannette’s anger shows as she thought, “We hadn’t scammed Robbie, but we’d worked him in a way that felt downright sleazy, and I’d ended up in a tight spot. If Robbie had been set up by Dad, so had I” (Pg. 213). Jeannette never expresses forgiving her father for what he had done that day; she accepted it and moved on. From then on she acted slightly different toward her father. Forgiveness does keep peace, but when tried over and over, forgiveness will wear thin and mutate into acceptance. It’s because the act that is needed to be forgiven is constantly repeated that the forgiveness seems meaningless; in turn, all the person could do is accept things as they were. Acceptance can allow for a form of peace, a time without fighting; however, tension will be kept, leading to an incomplete sort of peace. Jeannette was often hurt by her parents, some might even say abused, and she often forgave them, until the forgiveness ran out.Similarly to Jeanette, Sammy Rangel experiences the situation much severe to hers. During a TED Talk conference, Sammy Rangel depicts his life about the mental and physical abuse he suffers from his