Cara Conaway Post 2

     Being human in this day and age comes with a responsibility to be able to empathize with others and to be fair and kind when your instincts tell you otherwise. In a way, it is unnatural how humans act, going against our most atavistic principles in order to satisfy the demands of modern society.  Most of us strive to be fair and benevolent towards others, even if we must compromise a part of ourselves to make someone else happy. Also, the ability to realize when something is inhumane and wrong is one that only humans naturally possess. But if somehow life throws you too many wrong turns and just one too many strokes of bad luck, our empathic side can begin to corrode. Things that may once have gone against all that we believe in won't even elicit a turn of the cheek, and all the good that we used to strive to vanishes, becoming just another reason to do wrong to the world that wronged you.
     In the book Sold, author Patricia McCormick details the life of a young girl named Lakshmi who is tricked and enslaved into a brothel called the Happiness House. There, a woman named Mumtaz beats her and treats her as if she were no more than a dog, even before Lakshmi can understand what is going on. The harshness and inexorable violence with which Mumtaz treats Lakshmi leads me to believe that Mumtaz's past is littered with a million terrible experiences. I can only believe that someone who is willing to treat a fellow human being in the way that Mumtaz treats Lakshmi has had a difficult and terrifying past that has caused Mumtaz to lash out at everything around her. She thinks now of only herself, not caring if what she does scars the young girls of the brothel for the rest of their lives. Her humanity has been stripped of her, and she has given in to the cruelest of her animal sides, only retaining the look and speech of the person she once was.