What worked well in the book I thought, was the fact that it did not focus entirely on just the helplessness of Dallaire and his men. It also went through their successes in helping people or the few happy moments they had. For example, when Dallaire and his men went to a bar and Romeo started dancing surprising the soldiers with their commander's casualness. Another of these moments was when Brent and Troute rescued a pregnant woman, her husband and her baby from a mob of hutus dead set on killing them.
The book is relative to Black History, because it involves the most famous (and perhaps most devastating) genocide in Africa to date. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda had an estimated eight hundred thousand to one million casualties. It also depicts issues like race because the UN was not helpless to stop the genocide, they just failed to. The french soldiers sent in to aid the victims, only actually evacuated all foreigners visiting the land. Dallaire thinks that this would be different if the world erased all of it's prejudice. To take a line from Hotel Rwanda, "You're black. Your not even a n*****. You're an African." - Colonel Oliver.
One of two truly outstanding passages from the book was:
"He was about three years old, dressed in a filthy, torn T-shirt, the ragged remnants of underwear, little more than a loincloth, drooping from under his distended belly. He was caked in dirt, his hair white and matted with dust, and he was enveloped in a cloud of flies, which were greedily attacking the open sores that covered him." P. 2
I liked this passage because it shows how vividly Dallaire remembers things. This happened a long time before the book. His capacity to describe things is incredible as well. The way it evokes an ache in one's heart to view the poverty of these children is a true "walk a mile in someone else's shoes" scenario. Passages like these are the kind that really make you wonder about poverty, hunger, and disease that are running rampant in Africa.
The other passage that was really good, also from the same page is:
"...but to me this child had the face of an angel and eyes of pure innocence. I had seen so many children hacked to pieces that this small, whole, bewildered boy was a vision of hope." P. 2
The excerpt made me think of the victims of the genocide. The Hutus gave no mercy and slaughtered man, woman, and child alike. The majority of the casualties were all innocent civilians. They were completely innocent, and yet the rage of the Hutus was directed upon them. In fact, Hutus who opposed the genocide were also killed. It is touching that a small boy instills hope in a hardened soldier who has been seeing many innocents much like the boy getting killed every day.
Shake Hand With The Devil was a truly eye-opening and informative novel exploring the extremes of human nature.
