Sam Hammil Response

Sam Hammil Response
I was deeply saddened to read this writing by Sam Hammil, but realizing that all his words are sadly true in our society today is even more saddening to me. His first sentence grabbed me strong: “And yet we go on living closed lives, pretending we are not each personally responsible for the deaths we buy and sell. We go on living our sheltered lives among the potted plants and automobiles and advertising slogans. We don’t want to know what the world is like; we can’t bear very much reality.” (Hammil) Here Hammil is practically saying that we don’t care about our society and that we may be contributing to the deaths around us.
We as humans walk out into the world everyday not taking into consideration all the horrible things people go through daily. Many of society today doesn’t see that usually how we are raised and put in certain situations, is how we are going to be when we become older. Hammil states many real life situations to help us better understand that most rapist, killers, and violent people don’t just become this overnight and have usually had some past that can relate to what is going on. When children are being raised in an abusive household, many people don’t realize that those past situations have helped contribute to their violent behavior. Most women are raised to be hand and foot for their man and if they do not obey then their man feels it be right to abuse her till she gets things done right. Most of these incidents are brought back to the western days when the men thought it was alright to slap their women around a bit to teach them a thing or two. When men are beings raised they are taught to be tough and learn how to stand on their own two feet.
Many battered women in society today feel or think they cannot get out of the situation for many reasons. Reasons could be because they are too scared or they feel that they can’t survive without him or no matter what he will just keep coming back around and she will have no choice. With all the media and advertisements out today are no help when it comes to showing people the positive of our societies to becoming better. Society has also show how hard it is for them to change ways because that is what they are use to.

A couple of the poems from the poetry of witness that we are reading can relate well to Hammil’s writings. The poem “Rite of Passage” states how the older boy can beat up the younger boy because of their upbringing. The poem “The women hanging from the thirteenth floor window” is talking about a woman in a battered relationship and how jumping out the window could set her free. We as a society need to be more strong and knowledgeable of what is going on around us.

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http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=2883