Fatima Poggi

A Decade of Pulitzer Playwrights

Jennifer Robideau

02/10/15

Final Exam: Part II

The picture of the kid holding a gun with puppet strings brought me back to the play

Ruined. It’s the perfect image to describe the play due to the subject of the Congo war, which

is the war between the rebels and the government. This play mainly focuses on the effect of

war on women and how they were raped and therefore “ruined” by the soldiers of the war. As

I did research on the play, I learned that most of these soldiers were abducted as children and

manipulated into thinking that doing those horrible things to people specially women was the

normal thing to do. The puppet string is the perfect imagery for this situation because it

shows the manipulation in which these children were raised. The photo not only reminds me

of the children but also the adult soldiers because in one of the articles I read, it was

mentioned that a lot of these soldiers were forced to rape. Not only soldiers but also innocent

people were also forced at gunpoint to rape family members in front o their children, and

even worse, they were forced to rape their own children. Even though the image of a child

holding a weapon is strong and heartbreaking, the puppet strings that are attached to him

speak to me even louder because the strings are the imagery of what the kid’s life is as a

rapist and a killer to what it could’ve been as an innocent child.