A journey can be defined as going from one place to another. Michael, in Andre Alexi’s “Kuala Lumpur”, goes on a journey though his father’s wake to find understanding and acceptance of the death. Sarosh, in Rohinton Mistry’s “Squatter”, goes on a journey to assimilate into Canadian society by trying to overcome the need for squatting on the toilet. Both experience a progressive sense of exile which manifests in a physical manner amongst peers and in a mental manner in the form of personal conflict. The exile felt by both of the characters can be defined by the ways in which ethnic isolation, confusion of identity, and the use of the carnivalesque are implemented in the formation of the journeys they take.
The theme of ethnic isolation gives
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The exile felt between him and his father is rooted in his lack of understanding for his father. He describes his father as “loving, kind, cruel, mean, head strong, unloving, playful, gentle, and on until all adjectives were exhausted”. It is in the journey through the wake that Michael realizes the lack of clarity and pursues a path of personal isolation in order to properly contemplate such matter. This lack of clarity also is compounded with Michaels’s lack of understanding of his own feelings. Throughout the story Michael describes his feelings as a “confusion of emotions”. He states that “he felt no sorrow and was somewhat even “relieved by the father’s death”. The root of the confusion can be ascribed to be the disconnect felt during the wake itself with it being described as “more upsetting then his father’s death”. As Michael progresses along his journey to clarity, he realizes that increasingly carnivalesque nature of the wake becomes the barrier in which he must escape to gain understanding in his …show more content…
At first the hurdles he faces are realist, such as dealing with his family’s perceptions on immigration and adapting to his new environment. Throughout the story, Sarosh is faced with the internal conflict of whether he had made the right decision and therefore uses his oath to his mother as justification of his move. Sarosh transforms into his absurd version of the idealized Canadian, also known as Sid. Despite his efforts, Sarosh still feels sense of exile from the community, which humorously manifests in his inability to use a western toilet properly and has to “remain dependant on old ways”. As he still feels a sense of exile before the ten-year deadline of his oath, the toilet problem becomes an increasingly invasive aspect of life. He is eventually referred to an immigrant aid society, where he was regaled with tales of immigrant who were cured of problems involving eating bread or drinking water. Such problems were apparently cured with absurd remedies such as eating cake to get used to flour or drinking coca cola to get used to the “different mineral content” of Canadian water. The irony in the use of the absurd to cure the absurd reveals the mental manner in which exile is originates in the immigrant. This is farther explained in the recommended treatment for Sarosh, the Crappus Non Interuptus, which cures the problem but takes away his ability to
Throughout all texts discussed, there is a pervasive and unmistakable sense of journey in its unmeasurable and intangible form. The journeys undertaken, are not physically transformative ones but are journeys which usher in an emotional and spiritual alteration. They are all life changing anomaly’s that alter the course and outlook each individual has on their life. Indeed, through the exploitation of knowledge in both a positive and negative context, the canvassed texts accommodate the notion that journeys bear the greatest magnitude when they change your life in some fashion.
Michael is lonely and sad. his parents died and his Aunt Esther has to take him in (74). Cause of Michael’s parents being dead he is lonely. aunt Esther and Michael do not get along. That causes them to be even more lonely.
...his father had acted the way he did, which caused him to be committed. He was facing the same experiences and the same side-effects his father once felt. However, faced with this dilemma between acceptance and equal power, Baldwin looks to the only man he can trust to help him, his father. He trusts his father because he knows that his father went through the same dilemma he is going through, he has seen the same affects in his father’s rage and hate. However, his father already passed away, and what help that could have been gathered from his father is gone; Baldwin can only piece together his memories of his father’s character and life and compare it to his own to see how the two are really alike.
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” - Laozi. In Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, Tayo’s journey is being told. The reader travels in time with Tayo to experience pre and post war living, and to an extent, the role Native Americans play during that era. Through Tayo’s life, we see the importance of storytelling, and how without it, a culture is lost. Silko uses Tayo’s perception as a template to explain how storytelling guides a person mentally, strengthens a person physically, and supports a person emotionally. Without the cultural aspect of tradition and storytelling, there would be no journey because Tayo wouldn’t have known how to take that first step.
Baldwin's mind seems to be saturated with anger towards his father; there is a cluster of gloomy and heartbreaking memories of his father in his mind. Baldwin confesses that "I could see him, sitting at the window, locked up in his terrors; hating and fearing every living soul including his children who had betrayed him" (223). Baldwin's father felt let down by his children, who wanted to be a part of that white world, which had once rejected him. Baldwin had no hope in his relationship with his father. He barely recalls the pleasurable time he spent with his father and points out, "I had forgotten, in the rage of my growing up, how proud my father had been of me when I was little" (234). The cloud of anger in Baldwin's mind scarcely lets him accept the fact that his father was not always the cold and distant person that he perceived him to be. It is as if Baldwin has for...
Now, as the family of four travels across the continent, the narrator is able to slough off all the obligations which society has dumped on her. Almost relieved, “we shed our house, the neighborhood, the city, and…our country” (378). On the road, she is no longer forced to hide from the friendly phone calls or household chores. The narrator has been freed on the highway to Ontario, Canada. The Prisoner of War, held under siege in her own home, is liberated to be “hopeful and lighthearted” (378). This trip becomes a break from the life that she’s is currently leading, a life which society thinks should make her content. With this new bit of freedom the narrator is able to form an identity for herself.
The concept of belonging and how it’s conveyed is through the connections to people, places, groups, communities and the wider world. For someone to feel that they belong, they must feel the support of friends and family. Barriers also exist for people not to belong to a group or society and can lead to negative repercussions. This is explored both in Jane Harrison play “Rainbows End” and “The Little Refugee” by Anh Do and Suzanne Do. Both texts explore the stages of a physical connection to a place, while being alienated, from the desire of not being accepted for being different of unalike.
The journey of a clandestine migrant is filled with trials, tribulations, and hardships. Some survive and endure through tragedy only to face border patrols and deportation. Although, fully comprehending the migrant experience without experiencing it firsthand is impossible. Retracing the journey it took for someone to arrive where they are today helps put things into perspective. It makes it easier to show compassion and sympathize with migrants, immigrants, and refugees.
the point of view of Michael. We, as the audience, are being told the story through Michael’s
Historically journeys were seen as the physical movement of a group of people migrating from one place to another. Additionally, journeys were usually only found throughout the history of civilization and religion. Despite this, journeys come in all aspects and are found in a variety of mediums. Specifically, two journeys that are found in the literary works of The Epic of Gilgamesh and Monkey: A Journey to the West are physical and intellectual. These two stories exemplify what a journey consists of by construction the plots around each protagonist participating in both journeys.
A physical journey occurs as a direct result of travelling from one place to another over land, sea or even space. The physical journey can occur individually or collectively, but always involves more than mere movement. Instead physical journeys are accompanied by inner growth and development, catalysed by the experiences and the decisions that impact the outcome of the journey. These journey concepts and the interrelationship between physical and emotional journeys is exemplified in the text; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, the children’s book Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers and the film Stand By Me directed by Rob Reiner.
These timeless tales relate a message that readers throughout the ages can understand and relate to. While each of these tales is not exactly alike, they do share a common core of events. Some event and or character flaw necessitates a journey of some kind, whether it is an actual physical journey or a metaphorical one. The hardships and obstacles encountered on said journey lead to spiritual growth and build character. Rarely does a person find himself unchanged once the journey is over.
The poem is launched by a protracted introduction during which the speaker indulges in descriptions of landscape and local color, deferring until the fifth stanza the substantive statement regarding what is happening to whom: "a bus journeys west." This initial postponement and the leisurely accumulation of apparently trivial but realistic detail contribute to the atmospheric build-up heralding the unique occurrence of the journey. That event will take place as late as the middle of the twenty-second stanza, in the last third of the text. It is only in retrospect that one realizes the full import of that happening, and it is only with the last line of the final stanza that the reader gains the necessary distance to grasp entirely the functional role of the earlier descriptive parts.
As we begin the novel, immediately we learn that Michael was born with a cleft lip. Ever since his birth, this lip has labeled him as an undeveloped human being. He has been mislabeled throughout his entire life as different, as well as a simpleton. These statements are untrue, but it is all he has ever known, so Michael learns to accept it. This disfigurement also affects his speech. Speech is a very important theme within the novel. He is a very clever individual, but his speech problems lead him to be institutionalized by society. Michael began to notice how he was treated because of his lip, and understood where he was placed into the semiotic system. At times, he remains silent and pretends to be dumb in certain situations, because he knew he could get away with it. This is the turning point in the novel when he begins to see the corruption of his society, and that his freedom was just an illusion. This results in Michael fleeing to the mountains.
Michael Henchard’s constant exercise of jealousy, pride, immature actions and overwhelming emotions bring him to his tragic end. Although Henchard might have you think he is a victim, the reader can see that his personality leads to the conclusion of his downfall and that Henchard’s inability to learn from his first mistakes takes him down a path no one wants to face. He might have been able to survive his mistakes had he not been so self-destructive. But because of the combination of his personality traits and the complexity of his character’s mind, he is eventually led to the nothingness that engulfs him.