Deogratias Seminar Reflection
1) I think that the most interesting idea presented in our seminar was the reason for Deogratias choosing poison as his method of killing and the significance it held. What was so interesting about the poison was that it was a poison used to kill parasites on cows. Tutsis were originally herdsmen, which connected them to cows, and they were dehumanized as vermin, which parasites can fall under the classification of. This deeper meaning of the poison was only apparent in one frame, otherwise the poison seemed to have no significance whatsoever besides convenience. But because Deogratias didn’t seem to discriminate between the two ethnicities, I think he may have turned into a twisted means of vengeance. This really helped me understand Deogratias’s view towards the people he killed. He didn’t kill them because they were Tutsis, but something had made them seem to him as below human. That something could have been anything from a personal situation to something specifically having to do with Deogratias’s involvement with the genocide.
2) At first, I thought our group’s seminar started off very roughly. Everybody was interrupting each other, myself included, and at some points there was even a little bit of a sense of disrespect. However, I thought we were able to pull out of that sticky situation pretty well and everybody put an effort into the seminar, which I thought ended up as a success. We stopped talking over each other so much, and I feel like a lot of the people who usually don’t get to talk were involved in the discussion. Tyler presented a different way of looking at a couple of points that the group hadn’t thought of, and Brock made a really interesting point about the significance of the poison. Trevin was also respectful of other people’s ideas and allowed them to talk, and also provided some very interesting insight and a graphic example of a physical/psychological idea. Nobody was really monopolizing the conversation and I think that for the most part, the discussion had a good flow.
2) At first, I thought our group’s seminar started off very roughly. Everybody was interrupting each other, myself included, and at some points there was even a little bit of a sense of disrespect. However, I thought we were able to pull out of that sticky situation pretty well and everybody put an effort into the seminar, which I thought ended up as a success. We stopped talking over each other so much, and I feel like a lot of the people who usually don’t get to talk were involved in the discussion. Tyler presented a different way of looking at a couple of points that the group hadn’t thought of, and Brock made a really interesting point about the significance of the poison. Trevin was also respectful of other people’s ideas and allowed them to talk, and also provided some very interesting insight and a graphic example of a physical/psychological idea. Nobody was really monopolizing the conversation and I think that for the most part, the discussion had a good flow.