Growth through Violence

Violence, whether it is physical or metaphorical, is always present when a self or cohesive group successfully emerges from a transitional phase. The word emergence itself implies a change and people do not change spontaneously. There is often a struggle with morals and self-doubt that hinders the the emerging process.

A Native American poet, Joy Harjo's work focuses on conflicts between her people and the Europeans who colonized and stole her ancestors' lands. The hierarchy of the empowered Europeans over the powerless Native Americans serves as the basis for her violent conflicts. Much of her poems' imagery portrays disparity because the European presence is malicious and oppressive, not at all conducive to allowing the Native Americans to regain their identity as a race. Harjo shows that it is only through their will to endure the oppression that the Native Americans survive and retain their dignity as a people.

Unlike Harjo, Anne Sexton focuses on the emergence of an individual self rather than a group, but she does use the same empowered versus powerless conflict as a stage for the violence. Because of her abusive upbringing, whenever men are subjects in her poems, they generally are the source of violence against women. Women, on the other hand, are subject to a variety of conflicts. They struggle within themselves against social ideals that guide how they are to act. Giving in to these ideals, beauty especially, results in conflicts between older and younger women. The younger women, armed with their youth, always emerge victorious in her poems. The constant victim is the older woman, often Sexton herself. She rebels against society's emphasis on beauty because she feels age has destroyed hers. Without beauty she feels ostracized from society, wanting to re-enter. As a result her poetry's tone is desperate yet hostile.

The conflicts in the movie 13 ally more with Sexton's battered women than Harjo's struggle with the oppressed. Instead of the older woman being the constantly powerless undividual, the younger female is. As she transitions from adolescnence to adulthood, the path she chooses to make this transition becomes the source of conflict and violence. Craving acceptance and the feeling of belonging in society, she seeks to befriend Evie, who engages in illicit activities. Choosing this path causes young female versus young female violence as they struggle to out-do one another in sex appeal and drug activity. Since the two girls feed off each other they both are in positions of power and yet powerless. Internal conflict also results from physical violence such as cutting and widespread drug use. Her mother, seeing the changes occurring in her daughter as she struggles to emerge as an independent adult becomes concerned and attempts to intervene. An emotionally violent struggle ensues and the balance of power falls in favor of the daughter until she finally surrenders and stops pushing her mother away. We are then assured that the daughter will choose a smoother path to transition into adulthood.