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- Feb 2018
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www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
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This fusion of tool and weapon cropped up again and again during my childhood. In the third grade, I encountered a word in a Hardy Boy’s book, Footprints Under the Window, which I’d never seen before: machete. I quickly realized from the descriptions that a machete was essentially the same thing as a “corn knife.” Much of the book’s action takes place on a fictional Spanish-speaking island called “Baredo.”
It amazing to think that a simple farming tool used for corn can become the embodiment for killing and terror. The machete is not the only " tool" this is happened to. The ever so famous ninjas of Japan were actually simple farming tools before the iconized as weapon for Asia most notorious assassins. Small katana were used for slicing crops but have become a trademark weapon for the group. And even scythes that were used for cutting down wheat plants has become culturally a symbol of death held by the grim reaper to rip the souls out of the living. It just goes to show that an object can have two polar ideas based on culture and significance.
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