The Diamonds (author J Sorie Conteh) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Diamonds (author J Sorie Conteh) - Essay ExampleThe story is a classic example of handed-down African culture in disagreement with contemporary justice.The Diamonds explores the human misery and social meltdown caused by Sierra Leones great diamond rush of the 1950s. Gibao Semabu, a successful peasant farmer, leaves his village for the Brave untested World of diamond mining at Sewa. It is a totally different, corrupt world, where money is made right away and then lost, theft is accepted, as long as one is not caught, and prostitution is very ofttimes a part of life. Initially timid but driven by an extraordinary ambition to obtain rich quick, Gibao succumbs to the greed and graft of the mines, and takes things further he commits ritual murder after being told by a sorcerer that this will help him find large-size diamonds.The Diamonds, on one level, is a parable of the closing of peasant life by encroaching modernity - in the manner of Thomas Hardy, it juxtaposes the bucolic , beautifully staged society of rural Sierra Leone with the graft-ridden, violent world of unregulated capitalism, showing how a clash between the two leads to the destruction of the former.