De Niros Game

De Niros Game De Niros Game by Rawi Hage is a feeler of age story roughly a boy named Bassam from fight divide Lebanon. The main mounts atomic number 18 the headings of the three parts of the novel Roma, Beirut and Paris. The settings attend to illustrate character development, the novels themes and are classical symbols throughout. The prototypical section of the novel is entitled Roma, but the events all occur in Beirut. Bassam never goes to Roma, however it is always present in the novel and an important symbol throughout. Roma is a smear that Bassam has wanted to go his broad(a) life.Roma symbolizes Bassams hope for a better life. He fantasizes that it is a finished place, almost a heaven. When a little girl from his neighborhood dies he says I went to the little girls funeral, the little girl who was on her way to Roma. pg. 25. While visiting his friend George he says that they whispered conspiracies, change m angiotensin-converting enzymey, drank beer, rolled has h in soft, white paper and I praised Roma. pg. 34. In the Roma section Bassam is younger and more innocent than in the early(a) sections. Bassam is still a petty criminal.He only commits small crimes such as vandalism and drug use. The fact that the first section is called Roma, yet it is non in Roma, is a form of foreshadowing, suggesting this fantasy may never get acquittance reality. The second part of the novel is called Beirut. This section is the turning point of Bassams life. In this section Bassam stops dreaming about Roma. Beirut symbolizes Bassams loss of innocence. He starts committing major crimes, such as murdering the militiaman Rambo. Bassam starts to learn about the brutality of the war and the slaughter being committed by the militia.Beirut is a symbol of the horror in the world. In Beirut, Bassam realizes how harsh reality and the war are. Soon after realizing this he says Ten thousand coffins had slipped under priming coat and the lifespan still danced ab ove ground with firearms in their hands pg. 88. At one point Bassam says From the roof I could see West Beirut on fire. The Israelis bombarded the inhabitants for days, orange light glowed in the night, machine gun bullets left the ground and darted into the air in red arches. The city burned and drowned in sirens, audible blood and death pg. 163.Not only does Bassam learn about the horrific things going on in the war but he also witnesses his surmount friend George killing himself, because George cannot go on knowing that he has committed such heinous crimes against humanity. Because of the war Bassam is betrayed by his best friend, tortured by the militia for a crime he did not commit and is force to realize that the militia and war are not good, but alternatively morally wrong and pointless. Part III, of the novel is called Paris. Bassam escapes from Beirut and goes to Paris distinct for Georges father. After Bassam finds Georges family, they soon betray him.Paris is a symbo l of Bassams complete and utter hopelessness. In Paris Bassam thinks I had no plans, and complete that I could not think of any. Other than Rhea, no one in Paris knew me, no one was expecting me for dinner, nor to walk in a funeral procession, nor to work, eat, endure the wounded, speed around on motorcycles pg. 215. He has almost no place in Beirut and even less of a place in Paris. Paris symbolizes that Bassam is ruined by the war in Lebanon. Bassam is an outsider in Paris because of his twisted morals and values that were corrupted due to the war.He reads The outlander by Albert Camus, which talks about the meaninglessness of existence and realizes there are many similarities between him and the character in the book. No matter where he goes, Bassam will always be an outsider. Paris helps Bassam develop as a person, realizing that things are horrible everywhere, and he cannot escape his past. Near the end of the novel, Bassam says And so I drifted for hours, trying and failing to reconcile Paris with the phantasm of my youth, with the books I had read, with my teachers stories pg. 204. Bassam realizes Roma is a fantasy.Setting and place are vital literary devices in De Niros Game. The settings are linked to the themes, in that Beirut is a city destroyed by war as Bassam is destroyed by war, and due to his journey through Paris he realizes his dreams of Roma are unattainable. The changes in setting also parallel and mark the stages of his coming of age. In Roma Bassam was a boy, in Beirut his transformation began and in Paris, Bassam became a man. While Bassam is in no way a perfect or even good person, he has made a transformation into adulthood. Without the setting his transformation into manhood would have been less clear and with