Reaction Paper: Children of Heaven

The movie “Children of Heaven” is about the life of Ali and Zahra, two children who come from an impoverished, Muslim family. Ali loses his sister’s only pair of school shoes, and this story is of how the two keep it a secret from their parents, and all the things they do to keep it hidden.

To me, this shows how something that’s insignificant to one person, can be a big deal to someone else. Take this situation, if I were to lose my shoes, or if they got worn out, I would simply buy another pair. For others though, if their one pair of shoes got destroyed, they would repair it until it was held together entirely by glue and thread. Throwing it away would be out of the question to them.
This movie made me reevaluate my life, it made me wonder about the things I was ungrateful for, for all the things I take for granted: sleeping on a mattress instead of a floor, having more shoes than I need, and having money to spare on trivial things like ice cream and whatever else caught my fancy. The movie showed me to appreciate the life I was given, and to show sympathy to the less fortunate, to never turn a poor man away, because he may have faced the same problems those children faced.

It also taught me the value of hard work. Right now, I don’t have to lift a finger, my parents pay for everything I have. One day though, I’m going to have to earn a living, and this movie showed me how some people do so much for so little. It taught me that I’m going to have to work hard to get what I need to survive alone in this world, much like how the father of Ali and Zahra had to garden to feed his