Hotel Rwanda

*I wrote this in my Ethics and Film class last week while we watched Hotel Rwanda. I had to write while watching it or I think I would've burst"


Last year in my contemporary global issues: hunger class I read something very striking that has haunted me through today and watching Hotel Rwanda for the first time. It was something like this:

"A person in the United States could find out they have to have their pinky finger amputated and the night before they wouldn't be able to sleep at all. However, tell that same person that millions of people just died that day from starvation, war, and famine, and they will get a good night's sleep."

Whether we want to admit it or not we know that this is the truth. I'm passive about atrocities. You are. We all are at one point or another.

This has long been my main fear of going in to my field of study. My original thoughts were to do some sort of mission work following graduation. Peace Corps, YAGM, LVC, whatever. I felt so strongly that as long as I went somewhere. Saw the devastation. Met and formed a relationship with those suffering. Put a face to what I keep hearing about. I felt that it would make me feel better in that I would know I could never be content nor passive.

Unfortunately due to student loan repayment I see no possible way to do anything else other than go in to computer science. My prayer is that I will go in to this field with any job, make as much money as I possibly can, free myself of my loans, and if I have not yet found a way to help others with computer science, quit it.

I am reminded of another quote spoken earlier this year by a Jewish Rabbi. He was speaking about the history of Judaism and he made such a powerful yet off-handed comment. He was talking about a battle that happened at least a couple hundred years ago. The Rabbi said something like "About 7 people died that day. That was back when human life meant something." It is so frightening how true that is. Today things that happen in other countries will never make the news unless they are politicians or at least a few hundred people die. Genocides have gone unmentioned in history.

I have been consumed with passivity, filled with fear, taken over by coldness. Our tolerance for evil has risen so high.

Hotel Rwanda ended with resolution. The protagonist and his family survived. But what leaves me shaken is that this is simply a movie. An incredibly powerful movie, but a movie all the same. And realistically he likely only survived because he was a "powerful" hotel manager with many contacts.

In real life, I hate to be cynical, but they probably would've died.


There is always room. The last words of this film. We need to remember this. Maintain hope, never become passive. Evil sneaks in through passivity.