Babel by Mariana Araujo

maraujo54 — 2025-09-03 17:06:21 UTC

maraujo54 — 2025-09-03 17:06:45 UTC

maraujo54 — 2025-09-03 17:07:06 UTC

US-Mexico Border

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Summary

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The nanny and kids have to pack up and head to Mexico after hearing the news that she needs to watch the kids longer. She is unable to get anyone else to watch them even for a short amount of time.

Plot

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There are 2 American tourists on a trip to Morocco as a part of a larger group. They are the main characters of this story along with 2 kids from a family in the region. The father of these 2 kids buys a gun used for hunting and gives permission to the kids to use it and tasks them with killing any predators to their live stock. The 2 kids while messing around shoot the wife of the tourist and then hide away. In an emergency the tourists are rushed to a local doctor while one of the two attempts to communicate with the embassy to get emergency services. Local officials hunt down and arrest the kid who shot the tourist. The two tourists eventually get emergency services and they survive.

Main theme

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Cultural clash

Summary

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A deaf teenage girl named Chieko struggles with the death of her mother. The death resulted in a strained relationship with her father. She wishes to fit in with other teenagers and resorts to using her body to communicate. She wants someone to understand her and struggles finding that with her father, friends, and in romantic relationships. The police investigate her father for connections with the murder in Moracco and find he gifted the gun that was used. This location ends with Chieko and her father finally willing to work on their relationship.

Main Themes of Morocco on Babel

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1. Miscommunication and Language Barriers

The inability to communicate across languages creates confusion and fear, worsening the crisis after the American tourist is accidentally shot.

2. Global Inequality and Power Dynamics

The Moroccan villagers are unfairly judged through a Western lens, revealing how global power imbalances influence perceptions and responses.

Main Theme

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Family

Transnational connections

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The gun used is related to a Japanese man
International relations between Morocco and the U.S
The male tourist had kids being babysat in U.S/Mexico

Summary

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The American couple goes to Morocco leaving the nanny Amelia with their two children. The parents were supposed to come back but they didn’t due to the wife being shot in Morocco , which left Amelia not knowing how she will get to her sons wedding with these two kids that she cant find another adult to look over them , so she ended taking the kids with her to Mexico . After a successful wedding her drunk nephew drives them across the boarder and they get stopped by police then he decides to speed off and abandon the nanny and kids in the desert. Eventually Amelia flags down a cop which she thought would be helpful for her and the kids but she ended up being deported and separated from the kids .

Plot Summary

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In rural Morocco a poor herder buys a rifle from a local guide to protect his goats from jackals. His two sons Yussef and Ahmed test the gun by shooting at distant targets. Believing the weapon cannot reach far they fire at a passing tour bus and accidentally hit Susan, an American tourist traveling with her husband Richard. As Susan lies gravely wounded the bus driver takes her to a nearby village where locals struggle to help with limited resources. Meanwhile international media and Moroccan police frame the shooting as a possible act of terrorism and tension rises for the boys family. The Morocco storyline shows how a single accident spirals into tragedy while exposing cultural misunderstandings, global inequalities and fragile ties between strangers across borders.

Transnational Connections

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Border struggles

Cultural Misunderstandings

Transnational connection

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Language Barries and miscommunication

There are multiple languages that create tension and misunderstanding between characters

Globalization

The gun used in morocco comes from Japan, illustrating how objects and problems travel across borders.

Main Theme

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Miscommunication and Family. Amelia has to prioritize her family event while also worrying about how to take care of the kids she's watching. She tries to communicate with Richard that she needs to leave but he doesn't leave her with a choice. Then she tries to communicate with someone else to get them to watch the kids, but she can't. She couldn't communicate that she was a nanny to border control because she didn't know the word for it in English, which caused the border patrol to think that they were child traffickers. At the border and after running away, Amelia tries to communicate with her nephew to stop arguing and just to comply, but he's drunk and doesn't listen.

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U.S.-Mexico border wall and a visual of both sides

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Theme

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One main theme found in this story struggling with adolescence and coming of age. Being a teenager, a lot of adults in the story still view her as a child, but she wants to be viewed as someone more mature and older. With the death of her mother, it forced her to grow up, come to terms with her death, and grieve quickly. Among her peers, Chieko wants to experience the same things they are. This is mostly seen through her friends having sex and Chieko wanting that as well. Her story shows a lot of the struggles of being a teenager going through puberty, but with the unique characteristic of Chieko's disability.

Transnational Connections

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One transnational connection is crossing the border. This can be a scary experience for many people as they might be accused of crossing illegally even though they aren't. The police can decide to deny entry even if you are completely legal. Amelia's situation demonstrated how things can quickly get out of hand at the border.

Amelia has lived in the US for many years, and has established a life there. But now, because of the misunderstandings with the border crossing, she is being deported. Even though she has family in Mexico that she can live with, this is still a jarring upset in her life. The US had been her home, and she felt like she had a stable life there. Issues with migration are a common topic in the US, and this demonstrates one example.

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Transnational Connections

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1) Miscommunication: Cheiko struggles with being deaf and mute which limit her ability to communicate her feelings and hardships with anyone. She has to carry the burden of her mother's death mostly alone because she isn't able to vocalize it. This miscommunication is similar to the miscommunication between the husband and wife in Morocco. After the death of their child, their grief made it hard to communicate with one another. This shows that even across countries and languages, people aren't able to communicate grief and feelings of sadness.

2) Tourism: Cheiko's father didn't understand the impact that giving the man in Morocco the gun while he was a tourist in Morocco. This connects to the couple from the United States struggle with being shot by the same gun while being a tourist in Morocco.

Tokyo

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Transnational Connections

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Ableism
Communication barrier (even within her own country)

These two points are our Transnational Connections. Why? In the movie, it's difficult for her to fit in because of her disability (being deaf). She wants to be as normal as she possibly can, and that can be hard for deaf people because even in her own country, there's a language barrier that may prevent her from connecting with others.

PLOT SUMMARY

2025-09-03 20:06:57 UTC

The story of Japan that slowly and steadily links to the overall conflict of the entire movie, starts off by the introduction to a deaf girl named Chieko. Off the bat, we're shown how people often mistreat her due to her disability, but through out the movie, she tries fitting in by doing what almost any rebellious ordinary teenage girl would do: Getting along with guys, drinking, partying, drugs, etc. Her attempts of fitting in however, don't always work out, as she often would do things that no teenage girl should do, but did so in hopes of being accepted by a society that often ignores and rejects her. Near the end of the movie, she breaks down in her father's arms, as the sole person that ends up showing her the love she desired, was her own father.

Main theme

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The main theme of the Japan part of the movies is misunderstanding. Chieko is deaf, which makes it hard for her to communicate with people. The fact that she has to use sign language, or other non verbal forms of communication lead to her consistently being misunderstood.