The Nightmare
Dreams are often visions of the conscience that hold the most truth. In the novel, Cracking India, by Bapsi Sidhwa, the narrator Lenny, has a reoccurring nightmare that contains much truth about the state of India. In Lenny’s nightmare,
Children lie in a warehouse. Mother and Ayah move about solicitously. The atmosphere is businesslike and relaxed.
Godmother sits by my bed smiling indulgently as men in uniforms quietly slice off a child’s arm here, a leg there.
She strokes my head as they dismember me. I feel no pain.
Only an abysmal sense of loss- and a chilling horror that no one is concerned by what’s happening (Sidhwa 31).
Lenny’s childhood nightmare is symbolic of the condition of India prior to
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The Indians’ adoption of the British culture enables the British to remain in India and this submissiveness is shown through the metaphor of the warehouse in Lenny’s dream. Gandhi also suggests that “we keep the English in India for our base interest. We like their commerce; they please us by their subtle methods and get what they want from us” (Gandhi 216). Their subtle methods and efficient ways are described in Lenny’s nightmare as the businesslike and relaxed atmosphere. Gandhi’s point is proven in Cracking India when Colonel Bharucha suggests to a group of people that they should stop buying British salt. Dr. Manek Mody, an upper-class citizen, immediately objects because he prospers from the British presence in India and sees no reason to stop buying their salt. Dr. Mody’s failure to look past his personal profit is precisely the chilling lack of concern about the holistic well-being of India that Lenny is referring to in the description of her nightmare. Gandhi suggests that the solution to the problem of achieving Home Rule lies in getting to the root of the matter. He proposes that “if an excess of food has caused me indigestion, I shall certainly not avoid it by blaming water” (Gandhi 215). In Lenny’s nightmare, the description of the British officers dismembering the children’s limbs is obviously disturbing. However, the underlying image of the children helplessly lying there while their supposed
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“The Inconvenient Indian” speaks to a general audience and particularly to US and Canada. The book is organized into chapters and each chapter refers to a variety of themes. Some of these themes are history, culture, politics, and laws. By incorporating all these themes,
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The best part of a long, hard-working day is when you finally get to lay in your bed, close your eyes and let your imagination run free. As you sleep your mind takes you to another place far away from the real world. You begin to dream. Over the night, you may have several dreams. In the morning, you may wake up and wonder what your dreams were suppose to mean for you and your life. By analyzing your dream, it "gives a true picture of the 'subjective state'-how we really feel about ourselves-which the conscious mind cannot or will not give" (Wietz 289). In order to find the meaning of a dream, you have to pick out the most important symbols and define them. But you may be wondering what exactly is a symbol?
The dominant idiom of Indian writing today is firmly entrenched in pain, anxiety of displacement, nostalgia, yearning to belong to roots, and so on. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss are two such novels that explore the tragedy of man on several levels using different perspectives. Both the novels are about averted culture-clash tragedies, homogeneity vs. heterogeneity, and about Indian sensibilities.
One of the greatest examples of Imperialism with the tense relationship between Britain and India. It’s a strong showcase that compares both pros and cons of Imperialism. The colonization of India started with the development of the East India Company. First of all the dominion and influence over India allowed many economic growths, which included a strong trade system thanks to India’s very promising amount of raw materials, British could export back to themselves raise money to develop new companies “India became an agricultural colony of Industrial England, supplying raw materials and providing marks for England’s industrial goods.” (Nehru). Since they had a surplus amount of materials they could sell it for very cheap, therefore changing the economy, and the market trends. India became the best sources for raw materials, production, and allowed companies to develop in Britain. The main reason why the manufactured goods were able to be sold at a cheap price was because of the law set in India that allowed foreign goods free entry without having to pay “The East India Company held a monopoly on the export of Indian goods and British goods had free entry into India” (Nehru). This was mainly allowed because of the British ideological views on Indian people, how they are below them. The Indian crafters were being taxed a lot of money when they are leaving the country. The British government made sure to set a tariffs on the Indian textiles. This
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In this chapter Gandhi is at the house of an important sporter of the Indian independence. In this scene Gandhi points out the hypocrisy of his friend having an Indian slave and yet they are all Indians themselves. The Indian servant bring in a tray of tea and cups. Gandhi then walks over to the tray a serves himself. This shocks all of the other men. He is doing this while saying “we will embarrass all those who treat us as slaves”. This is his attempt of telling them that they need to stop treating Indians like salves before they can stop the British. And then he says “we will change their minds, not kill them” meaning that we can’t kill people for making the same mistakes that we do.
Trauma is something about 70% of Americans experience in their lifetime. How does it change the way our dreams structure themselves, or the intensity of images we see? Trauma can directly affect dreams, but how exactly it does affect dreams is what I’ll be exploring today. The purpose of this essay is to embark on a journey learning about trauma, dreams, and other things relating to it. Trauma can be seen to have a direct relationship dreams, and discovering that is the purpose of this paper.
My first job was to dress him then to feed John. Then I put him into
In conclusion The irony shown in this book about corruption, oppression of the poor, reality of India vs. the images foreigners have of India help portray our understanding of this novel. The corruption shown in the book is the teacher stealing the student’s money and the school inspector getting a question that he asked wrong. The reality of India vs. the images foreigners have of India is shown in the book there was framing involved and no doctors in government hospitals. last but not least is the oppression of the poor is
Before the Partition of India, in 1947, India was considered a country with a reasonably peaceful history. However, during and after the Partition, sexual violence, both towards men and women, escalated, resulting in the rape and abduction of over 80,000 women. Cracking India, by Bapsi Sidhwa, tells a story that highlights these violent acts by both Muslims and Hindus, through the eyes of a disabled young Parsi girl named Lenny, who witnesses first hand the violence of Partition when she mistakenly participates in the abduction of her ayah, Shanta. Throughout Cracking India, Lenny observes as the religions involved in Partition become increasingly violent towards both men and women, within their own religions and against others.
E.M. Forster’s classic novel “A Passage to India” tells the story of a young doctor, Dr. Aziz, and his interactions with the British citizens who are residing in India during the time of the British Raj. Throughout the novel, the reader gets many different viewpoints on the people and the culture of India during this point in history. The reader sees through the eyes of the Indian people primarily through the character of Dr. Aziz, and the perceptions of the British through the characters of Mr. Fielding, Adela Quested, and Mrs. Moore. Through the different characters, and their differing viewpoints, the reader can see that Forster was creating a work that expressed a criticism that he held of the behavior of the British towards their Indian subjects.