What reflections and connections can you make with this novel?

         When I read this book, the concept of the Peace Child puzzled me. How can a culture so incredibly dedicated to evil have a concept that seems to transcend anything I have ever heard before? For those who don’t know, the Peace Child is when a newborn is given to another tribe and for as long as that child is alive, there will be peace between the two tribes. In our day and age, people hardly trust one another for pedestrian things, much less something as precious as a newborn child. This really got me thinking about what trust is based on.

         With the Sawi, trusting one another was a gamble. They might actually be trying to make peace or they are executing some dastardly plan. Rejecting peace could start a war but accepting peace has its dangers too because one waness bind later, you could be the tribe’s dinner. It is a textbook case of a catch-22 situation. A peace child, by comparison, seems to be an anomaly. Nobody in their right mind would entrust their child to a stranger, an enemy, no less. The only explanation for this was that peace for these people is so sacred that it can only be obtained through the most valuable thing anyone can give: a human life. Looking at it from that perspective, I started to wonder how our society’s value of trust measured up to the Sawi’s.

         In modern society, trust is dictated by convenience. Though we do not lie in order to kill others (at least, not regular people), small scale deceptions are such a big part of everyday life that being able to tell lies from the truth is a common skill. Anyone to trust others is often called gullible. This isn’t any different from the Sawi. Though no lives are at stake, everyone lives their lives in a certain degree of suspicion of others. In fact, I cannot think of times when someone in modern society is guaranteed to tell the truth. This novel made me think: what is our Peace Child?