Essay Example on Spoken Word: Expressing Society's Unspoken Sufferings

Putting ideas and information to the wider society can be done in different ways. One of the major ways that most people put across their emotions and feelings is through poetry. Their imaginative thoughts and messages are well received by the audience they are talking to once they completely exhaust their ideas on paper. Most of the poets and writers help in figuring out and speaking out issues in the society that most people don't pay much attention to. There are different kinds of suffering seen in Martin Scorsese's movie, Silence. One of them is betrayal; whereby the two catholic priests; father Rodrigues and father Garrpe find out that their superior and mentor, father Ferreira renounces their religious beliefs by making the step of marrying and living among the congregation of the Japanese (McMartin et al., 2020). They eventually suffer the betrayal and they look for ways to go to Japan. Another suffering they go through is that of opposition. Their role as priests was to spread the word of God. However, they suffer because there is opposition towards Christianity which makes their mission close to impossible. Due to the opposition, there is a lot of persecution of Christians as a way to kill the rise of Christianity. This was experienced in Japan once the two priests settled there. It was experienced that the Christians in the country practiced their faith in underground areas. This was to prevent them from being seen due to political issues arising due to Christianity.

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Victor Frankl's book, Man's search for meaning, can easily integrate with the topics at hand on suffering and its meaning. The book mainly talks about experiences of a prisoner, their suffering and the impact of suffering in the daily life of being an average prisoner. Viktor highly shows in his book how the prisoners imagined things and how their thinking affected their lives in the prison. The writer pays attention to identifying a purpose in the day to day life so as to feel positive however much conditions and situations are difficult and unbearable. Putting in mind the two types of sufferings described above, I think having the knowledge obtained from Frankl's book, I think Frankl would advise the characters to restructure their way of their thinking since it would affect their longevity. I think he would encourage them to think positively for suffering is just but for a season. He would also easily understand their psychological response towards the different phases they went through. It would therefore, be easy for him to make people suffering have a proper meaning of their lives. This is found in how he concludes about life being a learning process and it never stops. That would encourage the people suffering since a notion of suffering being inevitable or unavoidable is put into place. They would easily be prepared psychologically to face any difficult situation. Their brains are structured in a way that they no longer see it as suffering anymore but as a learning process. The most dominant form of suffering in the movie is persecution. This is mainly caused by political changes in the countries that Christianity is being introduced. This was to discourage the spread by making the Christians quit on their spiritual journey. Spirituality and suffering are relationships that go hand in hand as seen where spirituality triggers suffering (Schneider et al., 2020). If it is not due to the Christianity, there would be no persecution. However, the suffering influences a person's spirituality by letting the Christian fight for their spirituality despite the unbearable circumstances.

The whole story puts across our minds that suffering is unavoidable in the daily life. Therefore, regardless of sufferings, one has to come to their sane mind and be strong enough to follow what they still want. It is clearly seen where Frankl concludes that freedom of choice on how someone thinks defines their lives. This is against whatever suffering they could be going through. Another instance is well seen where he talks about the prisoner's psychological feedback which is the most important in the journey of suffering. There are instances that the two have showed that they wholly depend on each other. For instance, where the Christians were persecuted. They went through suffering due to their spirituality. They greatly depend on each other.

The character I identified is Father Ferreira who abandons his faith and does not look back but even continues to marry. His character doesn't change at all in the movie. He chooses to not suffer probably because he is afraid of the persecution. As a character in the movie, he has the understanding of having the freedom of choice just as Frankl indicates in his book. He further helps me understand the importance of lack of compromise in one's choices. The main aspect that has challenged me is having silence in all situations in life. This calls for the degree of understanding psychological conditions in every situation. It also emphasizes in the choice of freedom in all situations of suffering. It is therefore important for a person to go out of their way to survive and learn at the same time in suffering.

Conclusion

In conclusion, suffering is a process of learning. It is the most definite way an individual can learn and easily be motivated. Suffering too measures you up as a person whether you're weak or strong. It calls you to follow what you want and make decisions that you are in accordance with your priorities in life. It should therefore be embraced and appreciated since in some way, it has no end.

References

Edwards, S. C. (2020). Book Review: Emmanuel Falque, The Guide to Gethsemane: Anxiety, Suffering, and Death. Journal of Moral Theology, 9(1), 232-233.

Schneider, J. R. (2020). Animal suffering and the Darwinian problem of evil. Cambridge University Press.

Shannonhouse, L., Aten, J., Hall, M. E. L., Silverman, E., & McMartin, J. (2020). Christian Meaning Making through Suffering in Theology and Psychology of Religion. Journal of Moral Theology, 9(1), 120-135.