City of God impacted me greatly not only because it portrayed the vicious, never-ending cycle of gang violence in Brazil, but also because of how it portrayed the gang leaders as humans. These grown men showed the exact characteristics of small, petty children, on a larger scale: when Li’l Ze is turned down by a girl, he throws a childish tantrum–in the form of holding the girl’s boyfriend at gunpoint and making him strip. This analogy is made prominent by the filmmakers during the last scene, when Li’l Ze is dead, and the focus is on the “Runts,” who are only elementary-school age, making plans for who to kill next.
This reminded me of a major theme of Lord of the Flies, a novel in which a group of school-age boys becomes stranded on an island. Without the laws of society, the boys quickly turn savage. Indeed, we as human beings are only as “human” as the laws that guide us and the morals that tie us to other humans.
By living in a civilized society we find ourselves either forgetting or ignoring the issues present in other parts of the world, where children are raised into violence without ever knowing or having the opportunity to live another life. It is troubling to hear these stories and it reflects poorly on immigrants as a whole when world leaders view these acts of violence and generalize an entire nation of people. I hope that in the future there will be people who stand up and help these children so that they don’t grow into the savagery that is expected of them.