Divided in four parts "The Year of Our Loves and Friendships", "The Year of Her Passion", "The Years of Betrayal", and "Homecoming- The In-Between World of Vikram Lall is a bold attempt at telling the epic of Asian people in Africa. It is a novel concerning themes of love, passion, commitment and more importantly, identity. The narrator, Vikram Lall, is a Kenyan born Indian who grows up in an era where rebellion, confusion, and disruption were all prevalent. In this journal, you will learn about the characters, themes, and settings in the first half of this book.
Part One: The Year of Our Loves and Friendships
In the first section we are introduced to the Lall family, who are residents of Kenya. At once the reader is introduced to
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Bloodshed was not an uncommon tactic for they resorted to it quite often. In fact, in the novel, Annie and Billy's family are murdered by the Mau Mau for they were of British decent. Annie's Death marked the moment where Vikram lost his love. He had given his heart to Annie and when she died she took his heart with her. This made me question the characters believability because going to Tanzania, I can say that even presently races don not co-mingle. It is rare to see blacks hanging out with Indians or whites, for segregation is still common. On the other hand, Vassanji did an impressive job of developing these relationship and used outside figures, such as Vic's mom, to depict the un-accepting aspect of their friendships. These children were clearly ignoring racial barriers that were in place in that time but their bonds and love for one another was real and truly genuine for the relationships which are formed in the beginning of the novel are intact throughout the entire of the story.
Part Two: The Year of her Passion
Vic tells his story in small snippets of recollection. For example, his encounter with Seema at the library creates some curiosity for what had occurred in East Africa that opened him to migrate to Canada. It is obvious that Vikram has committed some sort of crime which forced him to flee, but were not told much more beyong that. This technique at times can be frustrating but more often than not
Lindhout begins her book with a prolog. The Prolog starts in Somalia, where Lindhout explains the houses her captors kept them. The initial chapters encompassed her
Hawthorne did not view women as unimportant or threatening to his works, but as men’s vital, emotional, intellectual, and sacred partners. As many famous biographers have established, women have often played crucial roles in Hawthorne’s novels and short stories. For example, female roles in his fiction were based on relationships who affected his professional life, including Elizabeth Peabody and Margaret Fuller. Throughout his short stories and romances, Hawthorne describes myriad characteristics of female roles. His impeccable design of having women depicted as principle roles instead of supporting or victim characters contributes to
As she tries to readapt to the ways of her Native American roots, she realizes that she feels foreign in her own home. Her story of “Four Strange Summers” depicts her emotional turmoil for her self-conflict towards her own culture. “Even nature seemed to have no place for me. I was neither a wee girl nor a tall one; neither a wild Indian nor a tame one. This deplorable situation was the effect of my brief course in the East…” The turning point in her decision to return to boarding school is when her cousin refuses to take her along to a civilized party. “That moonlight night, I cried in my mother's presence when I heard the jolly young people pass by our cottage.” 15 year old Zitkala-Sa is devastated and doesn’t understand why her cousin won’t let her join him. Her mother weeps for Zitkala-Sa’s pain and it is then that the thoughts of running away come to her mind. And she leaves “A few more moons of such a turmoil drove me away to the Eastern school.” Her time on the reservation taught her that she is not the same person as she was before. Zitkala-Sa wants succeed in the White
Forming a new identity in a foreign country is not an easy task. Immigrants usually face challenges to identify themselves. Identity formation is the development of one’s distinctive personality due to particular reasons such as new environment, new culture and conflicts. During the process, some characters from Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake either create or deny the bond with their own culture; some undergo conflicts among generations. Those processes reflect significantly in Ashima and Gogol throughout the book. The degree of assimilations determines to what extent the characters have formed the new identity in the new culture.
In “The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie tells the authors story, represented by the main character Junior. The main character is referred to by many names throughout the book. The author focuses on how extremely poor, and the strict line between the “whites” and the “indians”. Most struggle with finding their “identity”. A concept that Junior faces throughout the book. There is a lot of loss, and death throughout the book, yet it is categorized as a story full of joy and hope.
Being subjected through sets of dramatic circumstances, both Shukumar and Lee attempt to strive forward to keep what is left of their relationships close, yet their unforgiving fates drive their determination toward their very limits. Throughout my readings in “A temporary Matter” by Jhumpa Lahiri and “Coming Home Again” by Chang-Rae Lee, the authors of both novels foretell that unresolved conflicts and despondent settings are very detrimental to the development of human character.
In the novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part time Indian”, author Sherman Alexie shares a compelling story representing racial issues among communities and families in cultural areas today, and a boy’s journey to find who he truly is, while being torn between two cultures. In this novel the main character, young Junior finds himself truly understanding that he is more than just an indian. In order to know more about the plot behind the novel, author Alexie takes the reader into Junior’s perspective to bring the story to life and let the reader understand how racial issues along with family problems make a play into today’s society. The novel shows a countless number of situations Junior encounters that impact his life throughout the novel.
When the novel begins, Amari is a happy teenager, engaged to the most handsome and well known man in her African village, and admired by her parents. When the white men enter her village for the first time, the people of Africa welcome them with open arms, but little did they know that the men came only for violence. The white o men kill most of Amari's village before setting it to flames. They shackle the healthy youth and pack them tightly into a slave ship
Ultimately, the four sections of the novel helped develop Laila and Mariam’s character because each section represented a different time in their lives. It also helps provide the reader with a clear contrast between their characters as one is a “city girl” whereas the other was a “village girl”, but it did not matter where they came from because at the end of the novel they were both shown in a positive light for their own reasons. The theme of education brings the characters and the style of the novel
Each piece of diaspora literature is laced with several underlying themes that make themselves visible in unique ways. Memory and family are two of these themes that seem to take root in several pieces. These themes enable the author to add dynamics and depth to anything that they write. A prime example of these dynamics can be found in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Third and Final Continent. Lahiri flawlessly uses both of these themes to bring her writing to the next level. In fact, the relationships, both familial and otherwise, formed in The Third and Final Continent are based heavily on shared memory and routine. Lahiri proves that shared memories play a huge part in
Plot is one of the most important aspects of any story or novel. Without plot, there is no point to the story being told. If there are characters walking through the woods the reader needs to know why they are walking through the woods and where they are going. In “Indian Education” there is a clear and concise plot that follows a logical sequence of events. For example, when Victor is shown to be in second grade he narrates that his teacher “…sent a letter home with me that told my parents to either cut my braids or keep me home from class.” This causes feelings of outrage in not only Victor, but his parents too. Later, as an act of defiance towards his oppressors, Victor tells the reader that his graduation cap does not fit because of his extremely long hair. With each event that happens, the reader can connect it to another event or the story as a whole without confusion or difficulty.
Chinua Achebe chose to write his novels in English to reveal a deep response of his people to colonisation and to make that response understood to people all over the world. Things Fall Apart was written in English to teach people worldwide of the struggles he faced and the people of Nigeria faced growing up. Many authors and critics have written about Achebe’s ‘Things fall apart’ adding their valued opinion on what he was trying to say and his decision to write in English. In the following essay I will be discussing why Achebe wrote the novel Things Fall apart in English and what messages he was trying to reveal, through the help of critics and secondary sources.
Donald Trump in a nutshell would be described as a well-known, pompous, egotistical hotelier and billionaire. He boasts the title of a chatty real estate mogul whose seal has been placed on apartment buildings grandiose hotels, clothing and other apparel.
“They wept together, for the things they now knew.”(104) The last sentence of the first story in Interpreter of Maladies, reveals the cruelty of the elapsed romance in a marriage. In the two collections, A Temporary Matter and The Third and Final Continent, Jhumpa Lahiri demonstrates that a marriage can be either uplifting or discouraging depends on the mindset held by the couple and the strength of human bonding. Lahiri emphasizes the significance of mindset and human bondings through the ending of the two stories. The endings of the two stories are polar opposite : In A Temporary Matter, Shukumar and Shobha weeps for the termination of their relationship; The Third and Final Continent, by contrast, the protagonist(MIT) enjoys a fairytale-like
The plot in the short story “Hindus” demonstrates how a certain sequence of events can help people better understand themselves. Leela meets many different and unique people on her journey throughout