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Aims: The study aimed to analyze the determinants of village midwife performance in maternal and child health services.
Instrument & Methods: This quantitative study employed a cross-sectional design. The population consisted of all village midwives in Muaro Jambi Regency, Jambi Province, with a sample of 171 midwives providing maternal and child health services. This study was conducted over a period of three months, from January to March 2024, with the data collection phase occurring between February and March 2024. The inclusion criteria required participants to have more than two years of experience as village midwives. The dependent parameter was the performance of the midwives in improving maternal and child health, while the independent parameters were supervision, training, and attitude.
Findings: 101 midwives (59.8%) had never attended training, while 139 (81.3%) had received training, and 119 midwives (69.9%) exhibited a predominantly positive attitude. The significant parameters associated with the performance of village midwives in the univariate analysis were age, education level, length of service, incentives outside salary (all with p-value=0.0001), and supervision within the past year (p-value=0.001). In the multivariate analysis, the significant parameters were age (p-value=0.035) and education level (p-value=0.037).
Conclusion: Considering the age and education level of midwives in the implementation and socialization of the Maternal and Child Health program enhancing the performance of village midwives is crucial.

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Cultural conceptualizations show the ways of thinking and world view of a linguistic community toward the phenomena. The study of the conceptualizations leads to the profound understanding of the relevant cultures, facilitate cross cultural interactions, and remove cultural misunderstandings. This research, using the descriptive – analytical method, tries to study cultural conceptualizations in Zazomahroo Bakhtiari Dialect and describe their cultural origins. Regarding to nomadic and rural lifestyle of the people living in the region and their direct contact to the nature, the natural elements and phenomena provide a basis for cultural conceptualizations. Statistical population is 500 of the death-related phrases, expression, lamentations and proverbs which are used in this dialect. Data have been collected by field study and through interview and inquiry. The results of the studying and analysing of the data show that the origins of the cultural conceptualizations lie in the nomadic and rural lifestyle, people’s beliefs and ideas, the physiological effects of death-related feelings and emotions on body organs and people’s imaginations toward death. This lifestyle leads to the direct contact to the nature; therefore, the violent aspects of the nature phenomena are used as a concrete domain in conceptualizing of abstract concept of “death”. Death cultural conceptualizations such as “north wind, flood, avalanche, thunder and lightning” or “extinguishing of the fire, falling of one’s gravel or collapsing of the tent column” are due to the inspiration of the natural phenomena and rural-nomadic lifestyle. 

1. Introduction
 
Cultural linguistics studies the relationship between the language and culture and their interactions on each other; Language is the subcategory of the culture that reflect the different features of the culture. Cultural conceptualizations are linguistic tools that reflect the abstract concepts of language, by using the cultural elements of the society such as religious traditions, beliefs, lifestyle, and imaginations of speakers. Cultural elements of various societies are different; therefore, the study of the conceptualizations creates opportunities for speakers to understand culture-specific differences and to better realize the different cultures. On the other hand, culture is the invisible heritage of each society and the study of cultural conceptualizations helps the culture to be protected. 
Bakhtiari Dialect is one of the dialects of Persian that is spoken in the center and south west of Iran and this dialect has different variants. One of these variants is spoken in Zazomahro region which is located in the south east of Lorestan Province. This is a mountainous region and people have a rural and nomadic lifestyle. This lifestyle provides the use of nature in producing conceptualizations. In this study, some examples of culture-specific conceptualizations have been studied that show the effect of  lifestyle and the continuous contact with nature and the effect of the natural elements on human are important factors in reflecting the conceptualizations in language and instantiate the human experiences in language. Therefore, the role of natural elements can be studied in conceptualization of “death” and the relevant of rural and nomadic lifestyle can be determined in cultural conceptualizations. In this research we are trying to find the answer to this question: “how are the conceptualizations of death realized and instantiated in Bakhtiari Dialect”.  We can say that because the lifestyle can have effect on language, the conceptualization of death can be instantiated by using the natural elements which have a great role in rural and nomadic lifestyle.
 
2. Literature Review
Theoretical framework of this research is cultural linguistics. Cultural linguistics has two kinds of framework: theoretical and analytical. The foundation of theoretical framework is cultural cognition and the foundation of analytical framework is “cultural categories, cultural schema and cultural metaphors”. Cultural linguistics uses these tools to show the relationship between language and cultural conceptualizations. Human beings represent their experiments through these conceptualizations and they are different among different cultures.
The present research is analysed through the cultural schema. Cultural schema are conceptual framework which are shared between cultural groups heterogeneously ( Sharifian, 2011,p24).  Cultural schemas (and subschemas) capture beliefs, norms, rules, and expectations of behaviour as well as values relating to various aspects and components of experience (sharifian, 2017). Cultural schemas that provide a ground for pragmatic meaning are called cultural pragmatic schema which reflect specific speech acts in different situations. Sharifian (2017) represents a pragmatic set for cultural pragmatic schema including cultural pragmatic schema, speech act/event, pragmeme and pract. They have a hierarchy relationship. Therefore, the correct interpretation of practs needs the knowledge of underlying pragmatic schema, speech acts/ events and pragmemes. Sharifian (2017) represents the following example for pragmeme- pract set:
Pragmeme: [Greeting ti a new employee]
Pract: [ nice to have you with us]
It should be said that cultural pragmatic schema produce speech acts and speech acts produce special pragmemes which are realized as different practs.
 
 
3. methodology
This research has been done on the basis of the analytical-descriptive method. The statistical population is the expression, idioms, proverbs and the elegies that are used in this dialect. Data were collected by field study, using interviewing, and attending among people and taking part in different ceremonies. 17 people between 45 and 70 were interviewed, 10 men and 7 women. Different linguistic research methods were used including conceptual-associative analysis, corpus approach, and conceptual text/visual analysis. Data were divided into two general categories, data related to natural elements and data related to human body. Next, these data divided to subcategories. Then, the data that were related to the conceptualizations of death were analysed and interpreted.
 
4. Results
The findings of the present research show that the rural-nomadic lifestyle, environmental conditions, beliefs, ideas, imaginations and conceptions of people have a role in producing cultural conceptualizations. Due to the role of the nature in the life of the people in this region and their continuous contact with the nature, many of the conceptualizations relevant to the death are inspired by the natural phenomena. Among the natural phenomena, those which have destructive, threatening and dreadful power, have a stronger role in cultural conceptualization. Lightning, flood, wind, storm, snow-slide and fire that have destructive and dreadful effect, are used in cultural conceptualizations in this region. People of this region use these dreadful natural phenomena as a concrete domain to represent the concept of death as an abstract domain and the cultural conceptualizations of death can be represented as “death is the north wind, death is the flood, death is a snow-slide, death is a lightning” or “death is the putting out the fire, death is the falling of the gravel, and death is the collapsing of the column of the black tent”.  People’s beliefs on nature and its phenomena also have a role in producing the cultural conceptualizations. For example, they conceptualize the death as “melting the star of a person” because they believe that every person has a star in the sky, when a person dies, their star becomes melted and disappears.  The rural and nomadic lifestyle has also a role in producing cultural conceptualization. For example, the conceptualizing “death as going” has a root in the style of their life as nomadic people are travelling all the time to find a good place for feeding their animals. Another conceptualization of the death is “giving one’s life to the other person”. This conceptualization has a root in their religious beliefs, saying that the death is not the end of the life but is changing from one form to the other. Altogether, the lifestyle, nature and its phenomena, people’s beliefs toward the death form a conceptual basis for producing cultural conceptualization of the death in Zazomahroo Region.

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This paper is a comparative study of a modern Persian poet, Forugh Farrokhzād (1935-1967), and a Russian film-maker, Andrei Tarkovsky (1932- 1989). The works of two artists, from two different cultures, across time and space, have been chosen to demonstrate their morbid fear of death and their search for immortality. Following the postulates of comparative cultural studies, as developed by Steven Totosy de Zepetnek, the objective of this search is to find interrelations between two different production of art, namely poetry and film, as communicative acts. To quote Totosy in "the New Humanities," this study "is performed in a contextual and relational construction and with a plurality of methods and approaches…" (60).
Benefiting from the main tenets of comparative literature, cultural studies and psychoanalysis, this research show how the concept thanatophobia and the quest for immortality are treated in the artistic works of Forugh Farrokhzād and Andrei Tarkovsky. In Forugh's poetry, the focus would be on her last two collections of poems, Tavalodi Digar [Another Birth] and Imanan Biāvarim be Āghāz Fasle Sard [Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season], in which she illustrates the temporality of life and the urge to be remembered. In Nostalghia, Tarkovsky creates characters like Andrei Gorchakov, the Russian researcher, and Domenicos, the Italian who wants to save the world by sacrificing. Andrei lives his death and joins eternity. This intercultural and interdisciplinary study shows how one can owercom the fear of death by substituting the moral time for the actual time.

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SH-SY5Y is a neuroblastoma cell line which used as a cancer and neurodegenerative disorders model and its neuro-experimental studies. The different diseases cause by a defect in apoptosis pathway. Disruption of apoptotic proteins has an effect on the treatment process and response to drugs. In nerve cells, due to the high expression of apoptosis inhibitory proteins, the efficacy of drugs is low. Combination therapy is one of the developing treatment methods. The aim of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of doxorubicin drug on apoptosis in SH-SY5Y cells under the conditions of high expression of caspase9. Caspase9 is a key enzyme in intrinsic apoptosis. First, cell viability was obtained through MTT assay under the different drug concentrations. Then, caspase9 gene was transfected in cells and affected by the concentration lower than IC50 of drug, and cell energy level and cell death were checked by different methods. ATP assay showed that the expression of caspase9 with drug lead to ATP decreases. Caspase3/7 activity indicated an increase in cell death by drug and caspase. Propidium staining to hoechst showed that the expression of caspase9 in combination with doxorubicin induce more death. To ensure the expression levels of protein that induces cell death, the amount of caspase3 protein was checked by western blotting, which showed a significant increase in combination of caspase9 and drug. Our findings showed that the induction of caspase9 expression intensifies the effect of drug and the combined treatment may be effective on the responsiveness of neuronal diseases.
 

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Study of human being in a literary text based on philosophical is a comparative approach from literature and philosophy that its shortage and necessity is obvious in literal researches.”Self-consciousness” and “Death” are  basic disputes in recognition human being philosophy and subject analysis in a literal text. In this essay the novel  Tarikhe Serrie Bahadorane Forse Ghadim written by Siroos Shamisa from the style of acquiring knowledge point of view, reaching to self-consciousness, the textual condition of appearing such condition and its effect on mind, human being life in the postmodern is analyzed. Theoretical basses of this research is more based on philosophical source and the important aim is analyzing the condition of human being as human not as a story character. So it will be obvious that human being in the condition of postmodern self-consciousness is a subject that its perfection and integrity is impossible but there will be condition which empowered the human objective features and it can be considered as “Death of Subject”. Death of Subject in this sense is not the mystical death in its perfection step, but this death is another path of its perfection.

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Objective: Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women. Cisplatin is a traditional cancer drug commonly used in chemotherapy for killing cancer cells. Modulation at the mRNA levels of apoptotic related genes often correlate with the sensitivity of various types of cancer cells to chemotherapeutic agents. Nanoparticulate drug delivery systems are being developed to effectively deliver smaller doses of chemotherapeutic agents and control drug distribution in the body. In this study, we evaluate the expressions of BCL2 and BAX genes in T47D treated with cisplatin and cisplatin nanoparticles, which can result in a new approach to breast cancer therapy. Methods: In this study, we treated T47D cells with different concentrations of cisplatin and cisplatin nanoparticles at 48 h. The IC50 was determined. We extracted RNA by using RNX solution, after which cDNA was synthesized. The precise primers for the BCL2, BAX and TBP genes were designed by specific software. The quantity of BCL2 and BAX gene expression compared to TBP gene (reference gene) was analyzed using real-time PCR.  Results: BCL2 and BAX gene expression levels in T47D cells treated by cisplatin were 0.7 (BCL2) and 1.48 (BAX); in T47D cells treated with cisplatin-loaded nanoparticles, the gene expressions were 0.03 (BCL2) and 2.41 (BAX). Conclusion: In this study, the results have shown that cisplatin-loaded nanoparticles are effective anticancer agents. Cisplatin nanoparticles induce apoptosis in human breast cancer cell lines. We have shown that cisplatin nanoparticles strongly increased cytotoxicity in comparison to the free drug in the T47D cell line.

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Objective: The anti-cancer properties of curcumin, a poliphenol extract from the rhizome of curry, has been confirmed by many investigators. However, low levels of uptake, tissue distribution and rapid metabolism has limited its application as an anti-cancer drug. This study is aimed at increasing curcumin's water solubility due to a biodegradable, neutral and non-toxic micellar nano-carrier called dendrosome. This study intends to evaluate the role of dendrosomal-curcumin (DNC) in bladder cancer cell growth. Methods: We performed the MTT assay, flow cytometry and Annexin V-FLUOS (as an apoptosis detection kit) to evaluate cell death. The genetic mechanism of DNC-induced apoptosis was accomplished by a study of the relative expressions of OCT4A, OCT4B1, SOX-2 and Nanog using real-time PCR. Results: DNC-induced cell death complied with a time and dose-dependent paradigm in the 5637 cell line. Cell cycle analysis revealed that the number of cells increased in pre-G1 and gradually decreased in G1 and S phases. This showed the inhibitory property of dendrosomal-curcumin on DNA synthesis. Data from real-time PCR determined that expressions of OCT4A, OCT4B1, SOX-2 and Nanog could be related to 5637 cancer cell growth. Dendrosomal-curcumin significantly suppressed mRNA expression of the above mentioned genes (pConclusion: The data showed that DNC induced apoptosis by suppression of pluripotency genes in 5637 bladder cancer cells, which confirmed the useful characteristic of nano-drug in bladder cancer therapy

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Existentialism is one of the most important contemporary philosophical currents, widely reflected in literature; situation, Boundary Situations and death are major existential concepts. In this paper, the reflection of the above concepts in the poems of Shams Langeroodi was surveyed. The results and numerous examples show that firstly, these concepts were reflected to a great extent in the studied poems; secondly, these concepts were reflected through artistic logic and poetic arrangements; and thirdly, some approaches and subdivisions can be seen among the results. Four existentialist approaches to death can be seen among the poems, which are, in order of frequency, as follows: 1. Death as a phenomenon that causes decay, ending, and termination 2. Death as a fact and as a boundary situation. 3. Death and anxiety 4. Death and absurdity and futility. Among Boundary situations, suffering is the most significant. The poet has reflected on the concepts from a variety of perspectives, and therefore the existentialist approach of the poems cannot be fully traced back to a particular thinker.
Extended Abstract
Introduction
The philosophy of existentialism is a philosophy of life and deals with serious and decisive, not abstract and distant issues. As a result, these concepts have found wide acceptance in art, literature, and poetry. Concepts such as situation, boundary situations, and death are found primarily in the works of thinkers from this field. The attention to objective themes may be one of the reasons for the popularity and popularity of this movement. It seems that contemporary literary works, which are called successful works, contain these concepts in some parts. And in contemporary Iranian literature and poetry, a considerable number of creative works had (and have) significant existentialist concerns, and under certain conditions, one can see the reflection of existential considerations in their works. Existentialism in Shams Langeroodi's poems and, of course, existential death, situation and boundary situations in his poems have not been studied yet.
Theoretical Framework and Methodology
The purpose of this article was to examine the reflections of the above existential concepts in the poems of Shams Langeroodi. Therefore, the concepts of death, situation and boundary situations in the works of the most important thinkers of the philosophy of existentialism were first examined, and then the presence of these concepts in the above poems and the poet's main approaches to this concept were studied through examples. It seems that these concepts are among the most common existentialist concepts of the aforementioned poets and show considerable diversity. Due to the attention that thinkers such as Heidegger, Sartre, and Jaspers paid to the mentioned concepts, their works were examined in order to establish a framework for the analysis of the poems.
Findings, Discussion and Conclusion
The results show that all these three existential concepts are frequent in Shams Langeroodi's poems. The concept of death has been reflected in detail in four existential approaches: 1. dissolving, terminating and annihilating death 2. death, a reality and a boundry situation 3. death and sorrow 4. death, futility and despair. As for the number of poems, there are relatively many examples of terminating and annihilating death. As for the boundry situations, besides death, the boundry situation of suffering is reflected most often. The diversity of the poet's existential approaches to these three concepts is one of the obvious findings of this study. His poems reflect the many existential tendencies to which he is exposed, and, of course, he has always kept in mind that he is a poet and that his work is different from philosophizing; therefore, his poetry contains a number of existentialist theories in which the concepts of the main existentialist thinkers are reflected. Therefore, his poetry cannot be completely attributed to a particular philosopher, and, of course, the poet's emphasis in the poems under study is on "being a poem".
 

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         Infanticide is an old phenomenon, which is prevalent in various forms within the human societies. In the past, infants were buried alive because of marriage and feeding costs, and some other reasons. Today, it occurs in several forms as asphyxiating/strangulation, drowning, and withdrawal of food and water. It is often committed at homes or by persons who are familiar with the infants. There is an overlap between infanticide and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Infanticide has many causes, including when husband casts doubt upon the belonging of infant to himself. Some countries (as England) have an Infanticide Act, but other countries (including Iran) apply the provisions of murder to infanticide cases. In addition to above issues and according to a comparative perspective, the present article explores the approach of other countries, which provides special provisions on infanticide. It also concludes that harmonization of Iranian legal provisions to the comparative standards relating to protection of infants (particularly by criminalizing infanticide) seems to be necessary.                
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In the play Death of Yazdgerd, Bahram Beyzai challenges the correction of historical narratives about the death of Yazdgerd. The characters improvise im/plausible micronarratives about the king’s murder. The play, investigates on one hand, the grand narrative in which the divine power bestows the king the right to rule people and on the other hand the micronarratives which dispute the logic of this absolutist monarchy. The research also demonstrates Beyzai’s techniques to deconstruct the grand narrative and lower it to the level of micronarratives.

 

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One of the motives of the love poems is "Death of Lovers". In these texts, the poet uses his art to describe the death of the hero as a memorable event. This descriptive-analytical study answers the questions of how the basis of the death of lovers in Persian love poems can be classified and what role does each of its subspecies play in the narration of the story? For this purpose, the book "One Hundred Persian Love Poems" (Zolfaghari, 1394) was the basis of the work and it was concluded that three types of death (natural, suicide and murder) with subtypes and causes, have occurred for lovers.

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The emergence of epistemological relativism in the form of social anomies and issues such as emotional and identity abnormities and crises, psychological fluctuations and disappointments are derived from the current of modernity and the governance of the positivist paradigm. Examples of these cases as vital issues of human life are seen in the “Tuesdays with Murrie” and “Masnavi Molavi”. The novel of “Tuesdays with Murrie, one of the most remarkable Western works, emphasises humanity's permanent problem in materialism and neglects the self-knowledge trap (love and affection, death, spirituality and consciousness, etc.). These subjects have been emphasised in other ways in the collection of Molavi’s works, specifically, the Masnavi Ma’navi. With an analytical-comparative method, the present study aimed to analyse the content of these two works, based on the American school, and provide desirable solutions to get out of the governing situation on human life. The results indicated that the dominant aspect of both works is proposing the crisis of human problems in the material world trap. The distinction between them is in Molavi’s emphasis on going beyond material factors and relying on the ontology of Islamic mysticism.
 

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Although Ferdowsi's Shahnameh contains many narrations of Iranian myths, there are myths, that Ferdowsi did not address for some reason. One of the most controversial myths that are not present in the Shahnameh is the myth of Arash Kamangir. Some scholars believe that Ferdowsi did not intentionally refer to this myth, and others believe that this myth was not in Ferdowsi's sources. However, this research tries to look at this issue from the perspective of "paradigm analysis" And show that in the Shahnameh paradigm, the natural and obvious act is choosing life over death and the act of consciously and intentionally choosing death has never occurred by the heroes. In other words, the choice of deliberate death or martyrdom is an issue that is outside the Shahnameh paradigm. And Arash's myth could not have a place in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh because it is a story in praise of martyrdom. This is the result of comparing the paradigms that govern the Shahnameh and the myth of Arash, while the deliberate choice of death is absent in the paradigm of the Shahnameh, it is emphasized and praised in the paradigm of the myth of Arash. Hence, the paradigmatic contradiction between the two texts has prevented the presence of such a myth in the Shahnameh.

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Modern-minded man, as the modern time necessities, believes in the concrete world, and if does not deny metaphysics, he finds it unperceivable and unreachable and hence, ignores some of his potential and spiritual abilities.       Metaphysics form man’s spiritual life, absence of which results in mental nervousness and leads to nihilism, and thus death, men’s inevitable final destiny, appears like a monster. To be away from which and forget it, man requires engaging himself in the concrete, and not reflecting upon death at all.    This paper attempts to investigate the questions as: How does Molavi perceive metaphysics? How does he engage himself with it? And while he follows his religious and spiritual way of thinking, how the face of death is displayed in Molavi’s thoughts?      Molavi’s works represent a human’s perception and experience gained from the Prophets’ teachings which were put into practice in Molavi’s own life. One can find lots of Molavi's couplets dealing with the same, pondering upon which can smooth the harshness of the concrete world in the light of the spiritual world, and generate yet another type of world

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Aims: The present study aimed to evaluate the developmental rate of ovarian follicles and the incidence of cell death in grafted immature mouse ovarian tissue encapsulated and non-capsulated in sodium alginate.
Materials and Methods: Female (NMRI) mice (n=50) were divided into 3 groups as follows: Group A; the right ovary was removed and encapsulated in sodium alginate then transplanted under kidney capsule, Group B; the right ovary was removed and without encapsulation transplanted under kidney capsule, in both transplanted groups the left ovary was intact. Group C; control group, both ovaries were intact. After transplantation, in the first and fourth estrous cycles at proestrus phase. The morphology of the grafted ovaries, and the percentage of normal follicles were evaluated using hematoxylin and eosin staining. The incidence of apoptosis cell death was evaluated by anti-BAX immunohistochemical staining.
Findings: At first and fourth estrous cycle, almost 99.5% of follicles had normal morphology and no significant difference was observed between the groups. The follicular development and growth rate in the two grafted groups, was significantly higher than the control group, moreover, these rates were higher in the capsulated group than non-capsulated once (p<0.05). In spite of the presence of some BAX positive cells in the preantral and antral follicles, there was no remarkable reaction for BAX antibody in the primordial and primary follicles in studied groups.
Conclusion: Despite the high developmental rat and premature ovarian reserve depletion in grafted groups that can affect the longevity of transplanted tissue, while sodium alginate has a positive effect on the follicular development in grafted tissue.
 

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The present study concerns a comparative sociolinguistic study of similarities and differences between gravestone inscriptions in the two holy cities of Qom in Iran, and Najaf in Iraq. This descriptive-analytical study has been conducted based on studying 1,000 gravestone inscriptions of the commoners, half of which belong to Najaf, and the rest to Qom. The research findings indicate that the Najaf inscriptions render merely a brief report, replete with Islamic religious advice, all devoid of any hint regarding the deceased persons’ social status. In this regard, the Najaf inscriptions make just a reminiscent of former classic and heritage-based Islamic evidence. In contrast, those of Qom imply the grief and bereavement of the dependants of the deceased, all indicative of their profound sorrow for their loved ones. Here, the religious traces are fainted by far compared with those of the former category, although not entirely without any such hint.
 

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In this article, it will be shown that philosophers/theoreticians of justice, such as John Rawls, are engaged in a kind of performative contradiction, since despite their implicit call for justice, their mere academic activities in developing a theory of justice, does not really help the cause of justice in society. Then by referring to thoughts of Heidegger, Levinas, and Nietzsche, among others, it will be shown that although the struggle to achieve social justice is necessary and has the highest priority, it is an impossible task; and yet human beings are existentially obliged to engage in this unavoidable task.  Finally, it will be shown as why this "task of social justice" will be best achieved as, what could be called, "authentic development" or horizontal development at the bottom, and playing chess with the powers that be.  In defining "authentic development," it will be compared with what Denis Goulet calls by the same name; where he defines the desired development with its results, rather than its process.

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The present paper examines Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist (1974) in order to present a postcolonial reading of it in light of Homi K. Bhabha's ideas. It firstly discusses the significance of this novel and its narrative style, along with its context (Apartheid and the Zulu culture). Then it examines the central characters (Mehring and Jacobus) with the help of Bhabha's key concepts of hybridity and mimicry. The paper analyzes the relationship between the foreign white master, Mehring, and his native black servants, and underlines that the displaced colonial subjects (such as Jacobus) can, through mimicry, defy the oppression of imperial hegemony from within. In the text of Gordimer’s novel we can witness the formation of new cultural hybrids. It is characteristic of Gordimer’s fiction to reflect upon interactions between European and indigenous cultures. It is also argued that the funeral at the very end of the novel is in fact a transformation; for one, it brings about a change of focus and the readers shall end the novel bearing the memory of the black man in their minds.