E 316 N Spring 2015 – Flashcards
– Summary:
Santosh is working for a government official. Afraid of dismissal he presses his employer to take him to the US. He is unaccustomed to US norms and regrets going. He soon has experiences that lead him to become aware of his own identity. He regarded himself as part of his employer’s “presence”. This changes when he looks at himself in a mirror (after realizing the hubshi maid finds him attractive) and sees himself as handsome. His earnings are small. He sells weed to make extra cash (hiding his activities from his boss) and buys a green suit and a hat. He has an intimate encounter with a black maid. He feels a loss of honor from this due to his old Bombay beliefs.
In his misery and desire to escape and be free, to be his own person, he comes across Priya who lures him in with philosophical talk to work in his new restaurant. He makes magnitudes greater money and has his own room to stay in. He is unaccustomed to this lifestyle and reverts back, beginning by calling Priya his sahib. The word is servile unlike with his old employer. He again looses his recently found freedom. Priya convinces him to marry the hubshi woman to gain citizenship. His desolation becomes absolute. He “closes his mind and his heart” to the new world, alone forever.
– Key Ideas/ Themes/ Points:
–Defend culture or adapt to western society
—alienation
– Born in Trinidad
– Home in England
– Father minor journalist
– Unhappily married
– Kind of a dick
– anti-religious views (very anti-islam)
Summary: Saleem Sinai was born August 15th 1947 at midnight. He is 31 and feels he must tell all his stories before he dies.
Saleem’s grandfather, Aadam Aziz, a doctor, falls in love with a girl one body part at a time. Kind of weird. He loves her twisted ankle and injured knee.
The story begins with Aadam, recently returned from medical school, bumping his (PROMINENT) nose while praying and blood drops fall. He vows to never bow before man or god again, and consequently a “hole” is opened up inside him. A boatman, Tai, tells him the daughter of Ghani (Naseem) is ill. For modesty’s sake, Aadam is only allowed to examine the girl through a 7-in diameter hole in a sheet.
He is haunted by the isolated parts of Naseem’s body. Aadam falls in love though a hole in a sheet and the love filled in the hole left be his renunciation of faith. Naseem has numerous ailments but never any of the head. Finally when their eyes meet Naseem comments on his large nose and they laugh and smile.
Analysis/Keypoints/Themes:
– Faith
– Love
– Adam and Eve
– Tai alludes to the importance of the nose
-great events in world history correspond to personal events (ex ww1 ends the day Aadam sees her face)
-humans rely on individual experiences to make sense of huge, abstract historical events.
– born
-Summary / Reading notes:
–Intro notes:
— Depicts rural life of West Bengal (c.1975). and addresses effects of social organization, cultural practices, and economic problems on an illiterate vulnerable young girl, Giribala.
— Arranged marriages full of deceit and abuse. Giribala is married to Aulchand under false pretenses that he was financially stable.
— Giribala adjusts to the harsh life, mothers 3 girls, 1 boy. Then loses eldest daughter(how?) sold to prostitution. Extremely upset, she responds without regard to consequence
-eventually leaves husband
—- based closely on everyday life in Bengal (1970s)-(DOCUMENTARY STYLE REALISM)
-Lecture:
– important Bengali writer
– high caste family, daughter of writers
– educated at institution established by Rabindranath Tagore
– lived in poverty after marriage and childbirth (later divorced)
– documents lives of the powerless ” real history is made by ordinary people” (writing is variety of realism)
–
– set shortly after the division of India, the story is of the lives of patients in a mental institution. The India and Pakistan have decided to make an exchange of mental health patients. The patients confunsed a
-Author
– LAhore 1947 before india and pakistan become independent.
– Main characters are young girl Lenni, a Parsee, and her nanny Shanta. She slowly falls in love with Hassan, a muslim. She likes but does not love Dil ” ice candy man”. When a train of Muslims arrives at the train station all murdered, the city lights up with conflict and bloodshed.
Quiz Questiong:
-lenni is afraid of Sher’s lion at the zoo.
– will allah grant them a son
– kites
-bumlickers – parsees are like chameleons. they do not stand out. “we are invisible”
– car messed up in riot
– old small man.
-everyone dead
– gold coins
– recite holy prayer and see his dick.
–Intro notes:
— Set in small a village, main characters are:
Buddhu (tr. fool), a sheppard and
Jhingur(tr. cockroach), a farmer
( both types rather than individuals)
—Buddhu allows his sheep to graze and destroy Jhingur’s feild.
—In retaliation Jhingur attacks a sheep. Starting a cycle of revenge
—commentary on ingrained culture of feuding and revenge in traditional agrarian society.
—Is the desire for revenge, no matter how justifiable, ultimately futile?
—causes and consequences of poverty
—reaches resolution when they have nothing left to lose
Jhingur beats Buddhu’s sheep when he heards them across Jhingur’s land. They destroy some of his crop. Feeling pressure to apologize, Jhingur sets off to Buddhu’s only to discover his cane feild burning. Nothing is salvageable. Everyone knows Buddhu did it but it doesn’t matter. The life of the town is gone along with the cane. Buddhu’s profits grow as Jhingur falls into poverty. A false friendship is formed. Jhingur uses a housewarming party as a chance to plant a poisoned calf in Buddhu’s flock. Buddhu is charged with cow slaughter and forced to sell his flock and his livelihood. Now both poor they end up working on the same construction site. Buddhu offers to prepare food for Jhingar to cook so they may eat together. The admit to their transgressions where each only responds with ” i know”. They have nothing left to lose and have found peace in their cycle of vengeance.
Where cooperation would lead to a much higher standard of living, competition and greed reighns. Protagonists reduced to backbreaking subsistence labor by the end. Men with most material success blamed.
-Dhanpat Rai Srivastava
-Second to highest caste, born to postal clerk father, and invalid mother
COMMITMENT TO JUSTICE
-arranged marriage young, later disintegrated. remarried which was socially taboo.
– censored by the brits “seditious content”
-commentary on poverty and causes and consequences. Addresses justice in revenge.
Book.
– Muni losses all sheep for some reason ( brother in law). He has two goats left. He is unable to get credit from the store so he goes off to graze his goats at his favorite spot with a hourse statue. An American drives up with car troubles. Neither understand each other. The man wants to buy the statue, but Muni misunderstands this and thinks the man wants to buy his goats. He agrees and runs off thinking the sale is final. The american leaves with his statue. When muni presents the money to his wife she thinks it stolen. A knock on the door, its the goats.
–
set 1892
-theme: administration of justice
–what constitutes justice?
-influenced by romanticism
-concentrates on bengalli women and helplessness of lower castes.
Some romanticism with emotional ties to nature.
Characters: Dukhiram Rui Chidam Rui, Chandara, Radha.
How can truth be assertained without material evidence.
Dukhiram kills wife. brother tries to protect. Puts wife on hot seat and offers her a way to protect herself. she confesses.
– famous family
-founded school attended by Mahasweta Devi (
– INDIAN REALISM and ASTHETIC MODERMNISM
-reformist activist
–
Historical notes:
– Colonial history of france in algeria. everything controlled by them = charged atmosphere
– Camus was a pied-noir
– Theme of morality and ethics in work.
-emphasis on french education
-burden of freedom
– Daru avoids taking a stand, but choice is inevitable
Story:
Daru is posed with the task of taking in a prisoner and “ordered” to escort him to a nearby city to a police station. He shows the prisoner hospitality which ironically leads the prisoner to his death.
Daru is an existential hero
-alone
-chooses to do good by his own free will
-becomes an advocate of choice above all else.
How is he not free?
— burdened by bureaucracy
— internal struggle of choices
— his is forced to make a choice.
–does not have freedom to abstain from choice making.
–forced choice is to be hospitable
–inability to stay neutral in a land where war erupts.
!Existentialism!!!
–rejects prepacked ideology
–you are in control of your existence, help greater good
— ” free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.”
!The absurd!!!
–“The discrepancy between our desire for meaning and the actual non-sense of material reality.”
–making sense of a world with no discernable sense
!Revolt!!!
— ethics
–shared humanity
!Engagement!!!
“devotion to liberty and justice “as if” the world made sense.”
-born when france colonized algeria.
-poor family, father died WW1, mother illiterate
-athlete until tuberculosis hit.
-communist party, left though
– moved to france, after refused work permit in Algeria(political commentary)
– bitter end to freindship with Jean-Paul-Sarte
– slavary themes
-surealism
imigary of darkness
– brit interfears with the death of the kings horseman
– the son dies, lots of conflict. clash of culture and ideas
– sentenced to death in nigeria
– lives in us and nigeria now
“Girls at War”
“Girls at War”
The Waste Land, parts I and II
The Waste Land, parts I and II (541-50)
“The World is Too Much with Us”
“The World is Too Much with Us” (E/ 351-54, 359).
“Ode to a Nightingale” (410-13).
1. add complexity, replace propaganda, didactism(instructional/informative)
2. comparative literature. multiple perspectives on a problem
New criticism – celebrate universal elements
Rejection of new criticism. Literature in context. history. social culture . Time and life of author. All enhance reading of text.
