Currently, In ENG1D we are reading the novel “Ship Breaker” a fictional story written by Paolo Bacigalupi, where ship breakers tear ships apart in order to meet “quota” and earn their pay. Although, this is a fictional story real ship breakers actually do exist and there are many similarities and differences between these fictional shipbreaker and real-live ship breakers working in Bangladesh.
The most obvious of difference between “Ship Breaker” and the video that we watched about ship breakers was the setting, but although the novel “Ship Breaker is set on Bright Sands Beach in New Orleans U.S.A while the “CBS News” video was filmed in Bangladesh the circumstances were very similar. Oil spills, debris and injury are typical in the life of both ship breakers who work in all situations through day and night. Even those who have been injured must continue work as they have no where else to go in “Ship Breaker” Nailer claims that “crew” can’t go anywhere else because they have no money and therefore are unwanted. The news report showed very similarly as an elderly man with only one leg was shown hopping around the beach. Workers in real life are housed in burots without beds, but just scavenged metal from ships. Their walls looked to be brick though, substantially more sturdy than Nailer’s shack like house.
Nevertheless, with similarities come diffrences and in my opinion the largest difference between the real ship breakers and the ship breakers in the story is that the ship breakers in Bangladesh seam to be one large group. In “Ship Breaker” there seams to be a sort of “gang” attitude where all the ship breakers on the beach are in teams; Nailer’s team being himself, Pima, Bapi, Moon Girl, Nita/Lucky Girl and originally, but no longer Sloth. These teams would each break one ship. (Sadna and Richard are adults and no longer break ships so therefore don’t have a team.) Although none of this is confirmed I feel this is the case because these are the only introduced character to break the original ship with, which is many less than who were working on one ship in the video.
In conclusion, the author does seam to have taken real life ship breaking circumstances into consideration when writing this and therefore they are very similar. As the video claims about the profession in Bangladesh “It is the West garbage dump”, identical to how it seams on Bright Sands Beach.
Charlie Hensel 