Comprehension: Homes – Man’s Fortress of Safety

“Man is born free but he is everywhere in chains”, so goes a popular saying. This is the situation in which the modern man has found himself. He has become a prisoner even in his own house. The modern man unlike his counterpart in the days of old has been forced to recoil more and more into his shell. Why is this so? The reason is not far-fetched, his brothers, who prefer to deprive others of their belongings that had taken years of hard labour to acquire rather than toil to acquire their own have forced this type of life on him. Long ago, at night man could confidently go to his well-deserved sleep after closing his doors and windows. At that time his doors and windows were closed only to prevent the predators and wild animals from intruding into his house rather than thieves or robbers. But soon came the petty thieves who learnt to remove petty items by cleverly opening the unsophisticated doors and windows from outside. Consequently, the modern man devised a means of making his property secure by erecting wooden bars across the doors and fragile steel mesh across the windows. And this kept the petty thieves at bay but it was temporary.

          With desperation, the thieves graduated into robbers. They acquired sophisticated tools with which they removed the simple barriers. They slit their way through steel mesh and a whole door would simply fall off the walls.

          The immediate response of the modern man was to fortify his house with stronger steel doors and install stronger iron bars. Still highly desperate, the robbers graduated into armed robbers who were always armed with sophisticated guns and weapons. On arriving at their area of operation, they would first fire a few shots into the thin air to notify the men inside a house that they (the armed robbers) were around and that the men should of their own accord keep their so-called steel doors ajar.

          What is the next line of action for the modern man? He has responded to this by erecting a very high wall fence around his home. And that is not all. He has also put barbed wire on the fence and sometimes this is electrified, all in an effort to keep his dare-devil brothers off his premisesThe premises of a property consist of the land and buildings on it, usually of a business or organization. More. he doesn’t stop at that. He also employs the services of nightguards to keep vigil over his “prison”. Thus, the modern man is faced with the problem of seeking new devices or ways of protecting himself against ferocious and desperate intruders.