Take the Blame

         It is crazy to me that we are almost done with Eicha. We are already in Perek 4, and although the Megillah is not that long, I have already seen some major development throughout the Megillah. In class we constantly talk about the stages a person faces after they experience trauma. Although I am not going to go into each stage they go through after a hardship, the general idea is that at first they are usually stuck and as time goes on they learn how to cope, but before they learn to do so, they go through anger, blame, sorrow, etc. Once they are done with all of that, then they continue to develop. The reason why I am talking about this is because the characters of Eicha experience each step and I have seen them develop so far.
    In this perek, unclear who the speaker is, either the Mekonen or Yerushalayim starts to develop a little further. In perek daled passuk vuv, we see the development take place. 
ו. וַיִּגְדַּל עֲוֹן בַּת עַמִּי מֵחַטַּאת סְדֹם הַהֲפוּכָה כְמוֹ רָגַע וְלֹא חָלוּ בָהּ יָדָיִם
" The iniquity of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom, which was overthrown as in a moment, and no hands fell on her." 
This shows the change of thought in the speaker. They start to see that the destruction was brought because the sins of the people. The people's sins were bigger than the sins of the people in Sidom.
In Perek bet G-d is blamed for the destruction, but two perekim later, we see that the viewpoint has changed. Not holding G-d responsible for the suffering, he or she sees it is the people's fault.
To me, I see the sense of transformation in the character. I think it really relates to the stages one faces after they experience trauma like I talked about in the beginning of my blogpost. I also see this as a sense of growing up and maturing.
The beginning of the perek speaks to me personally. When I was younger, and I still do now sometimes but I am trying to work on it, when certain situations would happen I would not stand up and take the blame. Maybe I was too scared or maybe I did not think I was responsible for it. As I get older, I am seeing that it is important to take responsibility for your actions and to see the bigger picture. As an example, let's say I get grounded. Instead of blaming my mother for grounding me and being cruel, I realize that I need to own up to my mistakes and realize that it is my responsibility. (This is a fake example.) What I am trying to explain is that just like I have seen the speaker developing, as we are getting older, many of us are learning how to cope with situations on our own too with different veiwpoints. Starting off Eicha, G-d was blamed for the destruction. As time moved on, and the speaker developed, and did not just blame G-d. To wrap up, I thought this quote was very fitting in regard to how a person acts after trauma and how they start to take responsibility for their actions after they mature. 
" Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself."

Joseph Campbell