Analysis Of The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born

The city of Mumbai has seen much growth in the past years. A string of elegant hotels have been set up for travelers and high-class business men. An ever growing, top of the line airport has been built for those coming in and out of the country. From the outside, Mumbai seems to have taken a liking to being internationally integrated with the rest of world, otherwise known as globalization. This is not the case, however; as seen in Katherine Boo’s novel Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. This novel is set in a slum right next to the Mumbai International Airport called

In Abina and the Important Men, lies a portrayal of daily life and operations of the area of Asante and its relations with British jurisdiction, on the Gold Coast of West Africa in 1876. Specifically, it is a story about a girl from Asante named Asina who is sold into slavery at a very young age and her journey to achieve justice. While Abina’s story was not well documented and well known, it’s brief mention in archived stories arose attention for the powerless and the silenced. Through Abina’s narrative and her fight for justice, and the contextual history of African and British relations, the depiction of “important men” their roles and how they impact her life and people like her are displayed.

In this paper, I will explore the notion of irony in Achebe's "Girls at War and Other Stories". My choice of Achebe’s collection of short stories is due to the scarcity of the critics written about it. All the focus and attention went to Achebe’s novels leaving out his short stories which are interesting to study especially that they represent different points of time in Achebe’s life as a writer. I will be specifically studying three of his short stories dealing with the Biafran war and their relationship to my main topic war and identity production. These stories are “Girls at War”, “Civil Peace”, and “Sugar Baby”. As far as the rest of the collection goes, I will be studying the use of irony as an important tool that Achebe utilizes to

In the book Behind the Beautiful Forevers, author Katherine Boo sheds light on the topic of corruption. Corruption is something that is seen everywhere, but varies in depth. She chooses to focus on India, because she is fascinated with how so many people are impoverished while others prosper. Boo is able to convey both the benefits and downfalls of corruption within a community by deciding to only focus on a sliver of people from a single slum. She chooses to focus on the citizens from a slum called Annawadi due to sense of possibility in the community. Boo decides to watch this community for several years to see who gets ahead, who doesn’t,

Chinua Achebe was educated in the West, though he hails from an African tribe. His exposure to both African and Western thinking gives him a unique perspective on the colonization of Africa, which is argued to be barbaric by some, but beneficial and necessary by others. In “Things Fall Apart,” Achebe perspective comes through as he masterfully describes a pre-colonization African tribe, and how colonization percolated through it. His authentic accounts of the positives and negatives of both tribal society and colonization leave the reader to answer the question of whether imperialism was morally justifiable or not.

Howells' short story sheds light on the unreasonable outlook of the literal world from a perception fueled by standards of romanticism. Personified through Editha Balcom, a shallow, impersonal, perfection-seeking young woman, the influence of the ideal is emphasized through her self-centered demeanor, lofty expectations, and naive character. Early on, It is evident that Editha lives in a world of her own, unaware of wrong from right, rather, she only acknowledges whether an act is heroic or not. She looks at her fiancé, George Gearson, a humble, rational, peaceful young man, with this exact sentiment upon his weary announcement of the beginning of war. As expected, she calls the otherwise brutal act of war "glorious!" (Howells 168) in a frenzy of emotion. Editha seeks a perfect man who should return from war having done "something worthy to have won her" in other words, somebody to "be a hero, her hero" (169). As Editha prepares herself to relinquish George to war, the reader witnesses the true debilitating forces of one who is congenial with the ideal. Through dramatic and emotional outpourings to George by letter, her writing evinces to be the quintessence of unrealistic virtues; one in particular filled with fluffy, over

It is always interesting to me to see what types of roles women play in popular books or novels of western history. The role of women in Things fall apart is more of a background story but their significance is deeply rooted in this book. Women play fundamental roles in education, religion and the social balance according to Achebe. In this paper, I am going to detail these roles giving references from Achebe’s Things Fall Apart Novel to show how significant they actually are. You will be surprised to learn that they are very significant indeed even in a traditional African culture which at the time was being polluted by colonialism and other western influences of demoralization and demonization through missionary works.

While it may be easier to persuade yourself that Boo’s published stories are works of fiction, her writings of the slums that surround the luxury hotels of Mumbai’s airport are very, very real. Katherine Boo’s book “Behind the Beautiful Forevers – Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity” does not attempt to solve problems or be an expert on social policy; instead, Boo provides the reader with an objective window into the battles between extremities of wealth and poverty. “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” then, exposes the paucity and corruption prevalent within India.

Women are often thought of as the weaker, more vulnerable of the two sexes. Thus, women’s roles in literature are often subdued and subordinate. In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, women are repressed by an entrenched structure of the social repression. Women suffer great losses in this novel but, also in certain circumstances, hold tremendous power. Achebe provides progressively changing attitudes towards women’s role. At first glance, the women in Things Fall Apart may seem to be an oppressed group with little power and this characterization is true to some extent. However, this characterization of Igbo women reveals itself to be prematurely simplistic as well as limiting, once

What he seems to be saying in this extraordinary novel is not only that the 1911 revolution has come to a dead end, but also (and more important) that, given man’s nature, Marxist solutions are facing the same blank wall. He proposes an existentialist way out, but his sense of courage is greater than his suggested submission to man’s apparent destiny. (Adams)

In “Dead Man’s Path,” Chinua Achebe uses character, diction, and setting to illustrate how unwillingness to change never results in a positive outcome. The characters of Obi and Ani are very stubborn in their ways refuse to give in to each other’s beliefs. The stubbornness displayed by each character intensifies the tension between the traditional village and the contemporary school. The conflict in this story highlights a problem that is still deeply rooted in society today, resistance to

Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor and critic. He is mainly known for his trilogy that investigates, using fiction, the history of Nigeria. The trilogy begins with Things Fall Apart, followed by No Longer at Ease and ended with Arrow of God. Furthermore, in this critically analytical essay, through a feminist perspective, a chapter of his second novel, No Longer at Ease, published in 1960, will be discussed. The setting of the novel is Lagos, Nigeria and Umuofia, Nigeria during the 1950s, before Nigeria attained independence from Great Britain. The novel, No Longer at Ease begins with Obi Okonkwo on trial, charged for accepting a bribe. However, using flashback, the author takes us back to the point before Obi’s departure

Suleiman, the protagonist of Hisham Matar’s In the Country of Men is placed in an ethical paradox. With the novel taking place in Tripoli, Libya 1979, Suleiman’s loyalty is contradictory, having to choose between the principles of his family and the Gaddafi regime. The bombardment of propaganda and the arrests of ‘traitors’ along with the love of his family causes Suleiman to be in constant conflict with his moral sense of self. His loyalties are tied with his actions, often following with regret on whether he has betrayed the people he trusts. Between the constant sense of authority and his family, Suleiman finds his loyal actions to become a casualty for the

The short film entitled “The Most Beautiful Thing” is about a smart and lonely boy in high school who falls for a girl who is also lonely and has special needs. This film came out in 2012 and Cameron Covell is the director, writer, and producer of the film. It is only about 11 minutes long, but it conveys a very powerful message about love. This short film is a great movie to watch because many people can relate to the struggles of the boy (Brandon), it is amazing to see who he falls in love with (Emily) and how she changes his world, and the courage displayed by both Brandon and Emily at the end of the film is astounding and encouraging.

More than those of any other African writer, Chinua Achebe’s writings have helped to develop what is known as African literature today. And the single book which has helped him to launch his "revolution" is the classic, Things Fall Apart.  The focus of this essay includes: 1) Achebe's portraiture of women in his fictional universe, the existing sociocultural situation of the period he is depicting, and the factors in it that condition male attitudes towards women; 2) the consequences of the absence of a moderating female principle in his fictions; 3) Achebe's progressively changing attitude towards women s roles; and 4) feminist prospects for African women. In the context of this study, the Igbo people whom Achebe describes will