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Road To Chlifa Analysis

Decent Essays

The Road to Chlifa, novel illustrated by Michele Marineau describes the story about a boy who lives in Beirut Lebanon. The country has been in the civil war for 15 years. The protagonist in the novel is Karim, 17-year-old boy who lost the girl whom he loved a lot during the war. On the other hand, the antagonist is the war going in Lebanon and children in Karim’s school in Montreal. This novel gives a very important message about friendship, and love, about how time makes you responsible before your age. There are many themes in the book such as love, friendship, isolation, courage, discrimination and much more. The main theme which is described is isolation, before talking about isolation what is isolation and how does that affect the reader? Isolation is one of the Canadian themes; it is a state of being alone, complete separation of others. The book revolves around isolation from the Karim family went to Montreal to their grandmother and then his friend left Lebanon and went to Paris. After some time everyone left Karim and he was lonely since Nada died because a building collapsed. On the other hand, isolation is one of the important themes because Karim describes his entire life spent in Lebanon. Karim wanted to live in Lebanon while his family was going, “A few days before the bombing resumed, Karim’s parents together with their youngest sons flew to Montreal in North America.” Karim was alone and decided not to go because he used to think that every cloud has a silver lining, a person is a coward and rather than finding a solution escaping is not the answer.
“The building in front of him is nothing but a smashed skeleton, Blown to pieces, exposing in an obscurely obscene way the Intimate interior of the ravaged apartments” (Marineau 47). This shows that Nada, whom Karim loved a lot was no more with her, she died in the blast because the building collapsed. Karim couldn’t believe what he saw and she was the one for whom he decided to stay in Lebanon. The sad part was that by now Kareem was shattered and was feeling unlucky. However, he tried to overcome his fear and move ahead. Kareem had no other way to move on in his life.
Moreover, the way the theme of isolation is described is just like a cake.

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