Modern Slavery

This research prefers Kim Purcell among all the contemporary playwrights by not taking time and space into consideration. The role of this very contemporary playwright; her grip on language, characters, themes and imagery in her masterpiece Trafficked is also dealt in this study. It’s a postmodern text extracted from the young adult literature genre.

The present work aims at retrieving some of the grave historic, artistic and appealing contexts where such women playwrights sometimes act out themselves or their female characters play the part of a narrator, observer and arbitrator. However masculine literary contributions are also the part and parcel of this study, therefore this study intends to appropriate male literary Transnational and Marxist theory.

This research aims at the issues of immigrants; especially concerning young girl and women immigrants. Women are trafficked more in numbers than men. That’s what Kim is conveying through her writing as she sympathizes with trafficked women. Kim’s point of view is clearly evident in her words about the way the young girls enter in the US while considering it a land of opportunity, freedom and happiness.

And the reality is totally opposite and this research discloses this very fact. American Dream is an illusion even for the Americans too, those who own American nationality. Americans are also mentally discontent, restless, unhappy and under severe mental pressure regarding this American Dream.

This study engages with some of the womanist themes ranging from sexual violence to, domestic slavery incorporating with theme of modern day slavery that includes betrayal, homelessness, unpaid labor, despair and fear. There are some experiences regarding people who don’t even want to talk on this topic and the reason, probably, is that it is measured against the morals of contemporary society. It is also evident that these people are justified for not discussing on this grave issue or not even bothering to know the reasons behind it.

For this society sees or hears the perpetrators being locked up in the dark rooms once in a blue moon. It wants the offenders to be avenged but hopelessness prevails mostly. This research demonstrates that there are thousands of people in United States who were pulled towards the American Dream, and unfortunately got themselves stuck in the situations where they would be tagged as either victims or criminals.

Human trafficking is a postmodern issue and also a burning issue in United States of America. This filthy business is run behind the closed doors with great urge and dominancy so that if get caught no one around bothers to report it due to fear. People hesitate to highlight this very issue on any platform as they get extremely severe threats.

It’s a mafia activated. U.N Office on Drugs and Crime define Human Trafficking as “the acquisition of people by improper means such as force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them” (qtd in Human Trafficking in America, 2013). Trafficking is not constrained to just sexual desires. Rather slavery, forced labor, forced marriage, sex trade, bondage, and even organ donation, unwillingly, also encapsulates in this alarming and, day by day, growing illegal activity. After drugs, it is the fastest growing and the second-largest criminal industry in the world (Archer, 2013).

In America, on every occasion we hear this word ‘Human Trafficking’, we inevitably think of young women and girls trafficked into United States in the veil of the American Dream, but in real when the box opens, these trafficked find themselves fulfilling the norms of modern day slavery.

Young girls are most vulnerable to these offenders as they are offered chances to go to USA to do jobs in like modeling, dancing or sometimes working as a nanny in some rich families etc. To find their own identity and make a remarkable place in the class struggling society, these poor young pretty girls get themselves entrapped nowhere but in mirage. Traffickers find their weak points and then exploit those. In this way, the seeds of manipulation laid down by trafficking network grow.

Traffickers always search for people who are an easy prey for them. Human trafficking industry looks for those who are, most likely, already migrants; runaway youth, or lack of human rights, lack of accessibility of jobs, the victims of natural calamities, political conflicts, weak governmental system, internal armed conflicts, militarism, and economic insecurities and disruptions.

Lack of economic support to protect oneself in an economically unbalanced society adds to individual’s emotional vulnerability. It is also read that some parents or guardians often sell their girls not necessarily for money but in the hope of their secure future full of opportunities. Destabilization in populations may make them disproportionately vulnerable for trafficking mafia. In some cases, the women and young girls who face devaluation and perilous living settings, by practicing traditional roles following early marriages or prior sexual exploitations in a society, are an easy object for trafficking.

The huge demand for beauty in sex trafficking also takes part in targeting young women as 98 percent of targeted for sexual abuse are adult girls and young women. According to International Labor Industry (ILO), the sum of total outcome solely from human trafficking industry is $150 billion per year, out of which 66.6% is made through commercial sex exploitation and the rest is generated through forced economic exploitation like domestic slavery, and that is what Kim has penned down in her master piece, Trafficked.

There are the service industries that commonly exploit human trafficking by demanding cheap domestic labor. The captors lie about propitious jobs and stability to their captives in order to recruit them across the borders. The trafficked are primarily offered a secure work place with a handsome salary and then, lastly, find that they are forced to work overtime and paid less than lowest or even, in some cases, given nothing but threats.

And just because these victims can barely protect themselves by divulging in front of the law enforcement officials and investigators, the business mafia continues to do illegal practices. The victims are well-concealed by physical and mental pressure and distress. In addition to this, the victims are petrified to face police officials and unable to respond to them just because of sudden shock and scariness. Traffickers along with the consumers are well aware of the consequences of this criminal attitude, thus they do their best to hide this unlawful activity (Simon, 2016).

On the other hand, society plays an alarming role by neglecting what they see around while coming back to their homes after job or any workout; most often people see them late at night on the streets in heels and inappropriate dresses, thus ignoring them by thinking that they are there just for the specific purposes but no one sees the abuses they have been facing; that are physical abuse, mental abuse and sometimes child abuse.

People don’t bother to think that maybe she’s been preyed on by some pimps. And when such pimps take complete control of the victims; that is, they successfully maintain their dominancy in preyed minds, then they are upgraded to ‘domestic abusers’. Disobeying the orders from the abuser may result into severe consequences. He may sell them to another pimp. This study conveys that this very issue is not third world’s issue but everyone’s. This epidemic issue is everywhere, disturbing all of us, not just ‘them’.

The state of bound in servitude is called slavery. So if one is sold to another one, if one is forced to do anything against his/her will, and he/she is not allowed to quit and doesn’t find a chance to escape as well, and in the last, if a girl and a young woman is trafficked into United States of America by manipulation then it is the true presentation of slavery, a modern-day slavery (Frundt, 2005).

The audiance can never make any judgement or say the execution until it is biased and emotionally affected. The sole mention of the offenders can cause to intensify one’s emotions, the emotions that are a compilation of rage, impertinence, surprise and antipathy. This research is out-and-out to voice new understanding about the perpetrators and the perpetrated by piercing the veil of marxist approach, objectively.

You see, this flight to achieve American Dream takes off from all over the world, especially from a society that is reprobated morally and financially and lands at a land that is, too, stung with socio-economic struggles along with lack of humanity. And still, even today, after making incredible efforts to stop this fairly-disguised immigration; like broadcasting this very hot issue of being trafficked, through movies, documentaries and talk shows, nothing seems to diminish its evil roots.  And why to blame individuals, why not the system. Queries about the core reasons behind have probably been less scrutinized somewhat. Social characteristics of the both offenders and offended should be put under discussion.

This unfair world or, we should say, society shows a mirror to the girls to be trapped, a mirror that reflects their sufferings and hardships, and then urges them to escape that harsh reality, to join and walk shoulder to shoulder with well settled people in their world; the world that is, no doubt, apparently very beautiful and worth living in, until the victim girls get to know what they are there for actually. Bad luck shouldn’t only be delinquent.