Major Works of Anita Desai, the Indian Novelist

The son had loved his father dearly but does not favor his way of life. His interest in school greatly outweighed his interest or desire to work on ‘The Boat’. He still had a love for the sea and in some way felt like he should carry out his family’s tradition. After his uncle had accepted a new job he took his position on the boat and promised his father that we would continue to sail with him for as long as he lived, and when his father passed despite the desires of his mother he followed his dreams and pursued education and all of its wonders. After living his life he finds himself longing for the sea again and isn’t so satisfied with his life.

The story describes the protagonist who is coming of age as torn between the two worlds which he loves equally, represented by his mother and his father. He is now mature and is reflecting on his life and the difficulty of his childhood as a fisherman. Despite

The short story “The Boat” by Alistair MacLeod is narrated by a man who comes from a fishing family. His mother’s side of the family has forever lived and worked by the sea and continues this tradition. The narrator’s father always wanted to be an academic, but worked on the boat to support his family. Through this passage it is evident that the parents’ characters clash in many aspects of their lives and are in constant conflict. MacLeod demonstrates this through the use of repetition, the contrast in other unrelated ideas, and through information that is withheld.

The short story The Boat by Alistair MacLeod is narrated by a man who comes from a fishing family. His mother’s side of the family has forever lived and worked by the sea and continues this tradition. The narrator’s father always wanted to be an academic, but worked by the sea to support his family. The parents’ characters seem to clash in many aspect of their lives and this is very evident in the passage.

Margaret Laurence’s “The Loons”, is a story about an Indian girl who tries to overcome obstacles in her life and discover a place of belonging, but in the end, dies at an early age. She grows up in an environment where she is not happy, and despite her efforts to leave, ends up back in her hometown, which leads to her death. The theme of this story is that everyone is a product of their environment, which is illustrated by Vanessa and Piquette’s lives and the loons on the lake.

The epic journey of “The Old Man and the Sea” describes struggle, discipline and manhood. The main characters relationships exemplify how faith and skill overcome man’s adversity during life on the sea. Santiago’s growing relationship with the boy idealizes his statute as a father figure and develops his integrity and values towards the boy. Hemmingway shows us how an old fisherman’s will to overcome the sea’s obstacles proves his manhood to himself and the young boy. His skills and knowledge of the sea provide a positive influence for the young boy to become a great fisherman someday.

The setting of Alistair Macleod’s short story, The Boat, complements the setting of Alden Nowlan’s poem, Warren Pryor.  Each of these writing pieces contain the element of a smaller town with a tight knit community.  In the short story The Boat, our community is a Nova Scotian community whose primary industry is fishing.  This results in most of the members of the community partaking in the fishing lifestyle.  Another influential location this writing piece takes place in is inside of the house, “which was one of about fifty that marched around the horseshoe of [his] harbour,” (Macleod 263).  Most of the homes in this town are situated close to the water as it is there where most of the men work as fishermen.  Inside the house was his father's room where “magazines and books covered the bureau,” (Macleod 265).  It was in their father’s room where the children discover their love of reading and become more dedicated to their schooling.  Both the short story and the poem contain the setting of a school, which is symbolic as it is their education that allows the characters to be free of their obligations and the way of their town.  Finally, the setting takes place on the Jenny Lynn, “she was what Nova Scotians called a Cape Island boat and was designed for the small inshore fishermen,” (Macleod 262) and it is on this boat where the father and son make their final journey out to sea.  Likewise, the poem Warren Pryor takes place in another resource based community, however, this

Both are small, close-knit fishing communities in the east coast of Canada. Similarly, they revolve around an aspect of tragedy, the looming threat of death, danger, and sadness. In “The Boat”, the father dies suddenly and brutally, which haunts his son for the rest of his life. In “The Lost Salt Gift of Blood”, the young boys mother and stepfather are killed in a car accident and it leaves him (seemingly) with no present parents left. This breaks the grandparents hearts and leaves them feeling broken and lonely, holding onto the young boy who is all they have left. Both fathers’ seem to do what they feel is in the best interest of their sons. One can take the aspect of the father in “The Boat” as committing suicide to release he son from the chains of the small town, just as the father in “The Lost Salt Gift of Blood” finally meets his son and feels the need to leave him in the comfort of his grandparents for the child’s

•The sight of the Atlantic ocean captivates the attention of the boys and, for a little while, allows them to forget their in the middle of a war. The shore is strange to them so they take the time to explore and enjoy it.

In Alistair MacLeod’s The Boat a reoccurring theme appears of whether to follow the fishing tradition or to step away from the familiarity of the sea and create a new life for oneself. The aforementioned passage is a window into the life of a family in which the severity of this topic is unmistakable. In the passage, an argument takes place between a mother and a father regarding the future of their children. The mother is strictly standing for tradition and fears losing her daughters to businessmen and city folk from afar; meanwhile, the father stands up for his daughters as he wants to allow them to leave in order to further their education and make a new life for themselves. The reader sees this altercation unravel from the eyes of the youngest child (who is also the narrator) as he is peaking in through the door. In this passage a tense atmosphere is evident; MacLeod used a creative yet powerful style of writing to magnify the gravity of the situation and to further the rest of his

The setting is also by the sea in “The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World”, but instead of the houses being filled with crabs, they are desert-like. ‘The village was made up of twenty-odd wooden houses that had stone courtyards with no flowers and which were spread about on the end of a desert like cape” There wasn’t much land in their village at all, but after Esteban came they choose to make their houses bigger to honor Esteban and in turn the setting became peaceful and sunny. The similarities lay in the location choices and how each setting changed in some way, but each setting at something different that is wrong with it.

Childhood is a time for making new discoveries, but it is also a time that can lend itself to tragedy. The short story, the lake by Ray Bradbury creates a sombre tone and first-person point of view not only creates a person, but a vivid picture of childhood in general, how it is often hard and misunderstood. The theme of re-discovery is prominent in the story for Harold as when tally is discovered, Harold remembers everything about his past, although when he goes back to his wife Margret, he does not seem to recognise her, “a strange woman named Margret waiting for me”, which reiterates his love for tally. Although life may fly past quickly, memories can come rushing back till you wish you had your time again, there is no telling what events a child may take with them into adulthood. The symbolism of friendship, “I did. I built the rest of it very slowly”, which shows the bond children have is

The book “The Great Wide Sea” is written by M. H. Herlong, this book talks about three young children named Ben, Dylan, Gerry. The three young boys lose their mother on a car accident where their dad had sold the house they lived in and sail in the Bahamas for a whole year. During their sailing, one morning they suddenly lost their father. Starting of the book the three boys start off with their family traveling to the Bahamas sea. Are the boys able to survive on their own?Ben’s dad had decided to travel down to their house next to the Bahamas, but not everything goes as planned during this life. Their mom who was a hard-working woman who would always make fun of their dad for making poems has died in a car accident the first thing they got there. The family’s planned didn’t go as planned as they expected. Their father had pulled the boys, Ben, Dylan, Gerry out of school and make other destination in Florida and live on a boat for a whole year. The boat they lived on was named the Chrysalis, she was a little bit of busted and the boys were unimpressed on what they had to deal with. It was rough sailing on a boat where the boys and the dad wouldn’t get along together. Their dad was being a real pill and everybody else had to have their own space. Fortunately,

The novel Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee is an incredible story about the transformation and life experiences of a Panjabi girl from India. The life of Jyoti is told from her point of view when she is twenty-four years old, and pregnant with the baby of Bud Ripplemeyer, a crippled banker who is more than twice Jyoti’s age. During the span of two months in Iowa, Jyoti narrates her biographical experiences in Punjab and in America as she strives to become independent. Jasmine illustrates that when one’s relationships go through changes, it will impact one’s identity.

Bharati Mukherjee is one of the accomplished diasporic writers. Her writing focuses mainly on women’s suppression, struggle to overcome the problems and attempt to attain identification. Bharati Mukherjee also depicts the cultural conflicts between the East and the West. When a person enters into a new culture from the old one, the conflict arises between the two cultures in the alien land. This paper explores how the female character, Jasmine is portrayed as protagonist in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine. Bharati Mukherjee portrays Indian woman as protagonist in all her novels and the character takes brave decision to emigrate which is the first major step of heroism. The character is portrayed with the capable of facing adventures and creates own happiness and identity, unyielding by conventionality. In Jasmine (1989),