How does it feel like to wake up every morning and know exactly everything that’s going to happen? At times, I feel that my fate is pre-determined, that no matter what I do, there is already a planned agenda or destination waiting for me to get to. Yet, there are so many other factors to consider and can affect the course of what happens next. That is why I have no idea what’s going to happen next and I don’t plan to because every day is a new adventure. Television shows, films and novels have that kind of affect on audiences, ending with a cliff-hanger or the phrase ” to be continued “; this kind of anticipation and unpredictability motivates us to continue. When reading What is the What, the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, and the novel by Dave Eggers, anticipation was at the flip of each page. Sure enough, the fact that he survives is made pretty clear but the experience and journey that he took was not. As well as the people he meets and interact with, there fates are unpredictable and unknown to the readers unless we continue to flip through the pages, for example: Maria

“It was from one fot the new arrivals that I heard about Maria. Shortly after I saw her that night, when she urged me not to leave, she had attempted to take her own life. She swallowed a mixture of cleaning solution and aspirin, and would have died had it not been for her caretaker…her story ends well” (Eggers p.527)

When I read the part about how Maria chose to suicide, I, as the empathetic reader understood it through the first-world teenager’s idea of suicide (situational,depending on the person). Through this idea of suicide, I made connections to what I know, relating it teenagers` who decide to suicide because of they are under situations such as bullying. One particular example was the Amanda Todd incident, which went viral and was discussed intensely online (in particular facebook). In the case of Maria, Valentino continues by explaining that the fate of Maria’s was depended on her decision to suicide. She ended up at the hospital and “met a Ugandan doctor, a woman who listened to her story and took it upon herself to guarantee that Maria would not return to the man who wanted to gain from her the best bride price” (527). Instead, Maria was presented with the opportunity to leave Kakuma for education in Kenya and eventually London (527). This unpredictable success to not only leave Kakuma but to also receive education, is perhaps, one can argue luck. However, from a reader’s perspective, I like to interpret it differently and say that Maria’s good deed of helping Valentino deserves to get a chance to turn her life around. The fictional aspect of What is the What, definitely helped with the contextualization and visualization of situations that Valentino experiece and the people he encountered throughout his journey. As a reader, I felt that because Valentino`s story was written as a novel it helped with my imagination to feel empathetic towards the situation faced by the “Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan” and acknowledge their existence as humans instead of characters in a typical fictional novel.

Furthermore success (meaning varies in context) seem to be in the hands of audiences if applied to life narratives as noted by Schaffer and Smith that “stories are received and interpreted in unpredictable ways by the audiences” (Conjunctions: Life Narratives in the Field of Human Rights 15). Relating back to “The Lost Boys of Sudan”  and their walk for survival to a better location was probably unintentional to garner global awareness (Western attention primarily) since their prime intention was based on survival. However, it is arguable to say that how is it possible that thousands of boys (unaccompanied minors) who walked in order to get to Ethiopia and later on Kenya to avoid the Sudanese Civil War would not attract the attention of the global community. Yet, at the same time this more or less depended on the so-called Western audience and their response/action to this issue.