Population Shortage vs. Overpopulation

    Imagine a world where the sound of children playing is no longer at every corner. Where the happy family with a husband, wife, and two kids no longer exists. Where women can no longer produce children. Where the idea of a happy, healthy family is gone. This is the world that Margaret Atwood has developed in the book, The Handmaid's Tale. This story follows a woman who happens to be a "handmaid", which is a woman who's job is to produce children. They are assigned to certain households where they are made to have the child, and then give it to the woman of the house to raise it. This handmaid will never have a family, never have a husband, will never know a loving touch in her entire life. The question is, why are women subjected to such a position? Why is this happening?
    The book doesn't give much information on the topic, but from what is given we know that there are toxins in the air that have polluted women's bodies. Thus, a fetus does not have the nutrients to grow into a fully functioning child. Only a certain amount of women have the ability to have children, and they are placed as handmaids.
   A handmaids job is to make sure the sound of children playing at every corner comes back, and that the sight of a happy family of four is once again attainable. Their job is to repopulate in a world where they have lost so many lives.

   The opposite seems to be happening in the world today. Today we find ourselves facing overpopulation. Especially in countries like China, Mexico, and Brazil. Overpopulation has presented itself with it's own set of problems; food shortages, human suffering, collapses in global diversity, and space shortages. In today's society, the sound of children on every corner is heard everyday, all day. That happy family of four is actually a happy family of eight. We may not have a sustaining humanity problem like presented in The Handmaid's Tale, but the other problems presented could lead just to that. With food shortages, and human suffering, the death tole will increase. With the collapse in global diversity, we lose certain animals that are essential to our ecosystem. With space shortages, disease and bacteria is more likely to spread. We may not be dealing with population shortages, but with the way we are dealing with overpopulation, we may lead ourselves straight to being handmaids.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alon-tal/overpopulation-is-still-t_b_3990646.html

Children of Men- A Story of Theo Faron

   Theo Faron. From the beginning, he is just a man that has been through too much; a revolution, death of his child, separation of a family. Sadness, depression, and loss surrounds his life making him seem like the last person on earth who would end up doing the right thing. He is lost and confused in his crumbling life, only finding drugs and alcohol as a way to cope with it all. But some how, in the twisted world that he lives in where everything goes wrong, he found a right. The question is, when did he find this "right"? When did he realize what he needed to do in his life to make everything all good again?

            "Y'know that ringing in your ears? That 'eeeeeee'? That's the sound of the ear cells dying, like their swan song. Once it's gone you'll never hear that frequency again. Enjoy it while it last." -Julian Taylor (Children of Men).

    Theo realized what he should do when he was told that he would die. Yes, his own wife told him so, but it was then that he was finally becoming alive. When he was told that his ear cells are dying, it was really just himself that was, so why not "Enjoy it while it last"? It was the sounds of his wife's words that woke him up, and showed him life again. It was the words of his wife that he continued on, because as Jasper was saying, they are like yin and yang. They are opposites, but they draw to one another. Julian lived through Theo and that is why he was to die in the end. One can not live while the other does not.

Feed the Starving Children

    The stale air, part ash part oxygen had a crisp feel to it. Its freezing temperature seemed to have imbedded into his bones. The layers of clothing on his back felt coarse on his paper thin skin. Everything that touched his body was uncomfortable and hurt, but there was no escaping it. He sat on the mattress with his sister, who shivered under her sheets. A painful churning errupted in his stomach. The knot of pain felt was a familiar pain. It is the pain of starvation. He felt as if he could scream, but the energy to has been long gone. In an attempt to make the pain go away, he shuffled himself up to warm up some snow water. It may not be food, but it is something to fill his stomach with. Standing caused a million aches and pain to resurface themselves throughout his body. His energy slowly escaping him. A fog of black seemed to close in on him as he reached for the water. A vision of black, and the calling of his name are the last things to happen. His name, his name was "Johnny".

    This, this event which is completely fictional is what could have happened if Johnny was not given extra food in the Life As We Knew It book. A debate that we had in class was why was Johnny given more food than the others, and why did the mother make this executive decision? Being the oldest of my three sibling, I would gladly give my younger brother more food over myself, but for others this was not the case. Because of this, I would like to give you a visual of what would have happened to Johnny if he was starved even more so than his older siblings…

    Yes, little Johnny would have not been able to grow correctly, and would of been the first to die if this were so. His mother made sure he ate more because she was trying to make sure all of her children survived. She was not picking favorites, or deciding who was more worthy of eating food. She knew that her older children were able to survive with less food, but Johnny was not. Him being younger, makes him weaker, and more likely to die of starvation.
    Unfortunately child starvation doesn't just happen in this fictional book. It actually happens in todays society, and more so in third world countries such as Africa. It may not be prevalent in America, but throughout the world it is so. A company that is trying to aid this terrible problem is "Feed My Starving Children". Their goal is to solve child starvation by providing food for the body and mind in these third world countries.
  Now I know that America is not a third world country in the book, because this is happening to the entire world, but the same thing that is happening to Johnny is happening to another child on the other side of the world. The only difference could be that Johnny has a mother, and the other may not.

https://www.fmsc.org/about Go to this link to learn more about My Starving Children and donate.