Hope In Hempfel's 'The Man In Bogota'

Hope for a Person’s Survival In order for a person to want to survive there has to be something for them to hold on too. A person’s life always has some kind of influence. Most people look for a positive outcome in order to want to wake up each day. This form of outcome could be hope. Hope is essential in one’s life in the desire for a positive outcome. Hope gives every person the belief in different expectations that are unseen and unknown, but still the ability to believe. Hope gives a person the fulfillment to be able to strive to succeed in life and become a better person than the day before. It gives a person the ability to have the desire to anticipate a future. It is clear in “The Man in Bogota” by Amy Hempfel, that she
is attempting to show the relationship of hope being necessary for survival for an individual. Hempfel illustrates that if she were the one talking the woman down from the ledge, that her story would offer hope as an alternative to a bleak future that the woman currently visions. After failed attempts by the police, emergency personal, and the woman’s husband, it is apparent that any hope that can be offered is the only chance at avoiding a potentially tragic outcome. With Hempfel’s story about the man in Bogota it is not an exact portrayal of hope, but it offers the indirect assumption that while being held captive the man had to rely on hope to get him threw until his release. Hempfel illustrates that hope is the key ingredient for the survival of an individual, and this is shown by the life experiences of Martin Luther King Jr. and Helen Keller. The main focus of Hempfel’s essay effectively shows more than once throughout the essay.
Hempfel was trying to give the woman a different type of outcome, which was hope. Hempfel explains, “Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn’t good.” Even if there is a negative situation happening, hope can always be the alternative to get a person through the problem. Another example of hope in the essay is from the wife. She has to have hope that the captors will release her husband after she gives them the money. Also the husband has to have hope that his captors will release him after the ransom is paid. Hempfel stated, “His captors made him quit smoking. They changed his diet and made him exercise every day. They held him that way for three months.” If the man in Bogota did not have any hope he would have given up and not done what the captors had said. This is a great example of how hope is essential for a person to survive. First, Martin Luther King Jr. is a great person to show as an example on how hope is necessary. As any person knows he was a highly influential person with the civil rights movements. Editors of The Millennium Reader, by Stuart Hirschberg and Terry Hirschberg
explain:
King focused national attention on the predicament of southern blacks by leading a citywide boycott of the segregated bus system. The boycott lasted over one year and nearly bankrupted the company. King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and adapted techniques of nonviolent protest, which had been employed by Gandhi, in a series of sit-ins and mass marches that were instrumental in bringing about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964 in recognition of his great achievements as the leader of the American civil rights movement. (533)
Martin Luther King Jr. through several movements and his public speeches inspired and instilled hope into the black community. In reading “I Have a Dream” by Martin Luther King Jr., he explains:
This is our hope.
This is the faith that I go back to the South with. And with this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to play together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. (536) This gave the blacks the desire for the unknown through hope. From Martin Luther King Jr. any person could understand how hope is key to waking up each and every day. Hope gives a person the ability to anticipate the future and look for a positive
outcome. Second, Helen Keller had to deal with many struggles throughout her life and found hope strive. Helen Keller is a great inspiration to any person. She was born with no handicaps but developed a disease, which caused her to become blind and deaf. Without hope Helen Keller would not have ever learned to sign or communicate with anyone. Hirschberg and Hirschberg explain, “Because of the extraordinary efforts of Annie Sullivan, Keller overcame her isolation and learned what words meant. She graduated with honors from Radcliffe and devoted most of her life to helping the blind and deaf through the American Foundation for the Blind. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Lyndon Johnson in 1964” (229). This shows that no matter how negative a situation someone might be faced with, hope can always bring them out of that. Helen Keller, Author of “The Day Language Came into My Life” states, “Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten-a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away” (231). This seems as if this is the part where Helen Keller realizes how hope comes into her life. She realizes that being able to learn new words to everything gives her a new found freedom to a greater future. This gives her endless opportunities to be able to strive. She now has the ability to have believe in what is not able to be seen or heard in her circumstances. Without having hope she would have never wanted to learn how to communicate with others. In reading “The Man in Bogota” by Amy Hempfel, one may feel that the main theme of the story is the necessity a person feels for hope given with the example of the lives of Martin Luther King Jr. and Helen Keller. For a person to feel like one wants to have a future, hope is the key. Hope makes a person look for the positive in any situation instead of focusing on the negative. Only the individual can control how to handle each day with having hope for a better tomorrow. Hope is a part of life and it is essential for an individual’s own happiness. Hope is what a person needs to hold onto in order to want to survive each day.

Works Cited
Hempfel, Amy. “The Man in Bogota.” 1985. The Collected Stories of Amy Hempfel. New York:
Scribner, 2006. 73-74. Print.
Hirschberg, Stuart, and Terry Hirschberg. “Helen Keller.” The Millennium Reader. Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Pearson-Prentice Hall, 2009. 228-229 Print.
Hirschberg, Stuart, and Terry Hirschberg. “Martin Luther King, Jr.” The Millennium Reader.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson-Prentice Hall, 2009. 532-533. Print.
Keller, Helen. “The Day Language Came into My Life” The Millennium Reader. Ed. Stuart and
Terry Hirschberg. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson, 2009. 229-231. Print.
King Jr., Martin Luther. “I Have a Dream” The Millennium Reader. Ed. Stuart and Terry
Hirschberg. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson, 2009. 533-536. Print.