Hopping in a careful, calculated manner across four generations of a rich and demented Indian family, Salman Rushdie's cynical novel The Moor's Last Sigh laughs mischievously at the world and shivers from its evils. Weaving a tale of murder and suicide, of atheism and asceticism, of affection and adultery, Rushdie's exquisitely crafted storytelling explains the "fall from grace of a high-born crossbreed," namely our narrator Moraes Zogoiby, also known as "Moor."
At the centerpiece of this odd and captivating tale stand the embers of Moor's family: a complex web including a ridiculed political activist, a shrew, a homosexual husband, an artist, and a Jewish underworld gangster, among others. Moor's sisters lead lives as abnormal and doomed as their family history would predispose them towards: Ina, a washed-up model, dies in the throes of insanity; Minnie takes holy orders, predicting a great plague washing over Bombay and envisioning talking rats; Mynah, a lesbian, hopelessly infatuated with Moor's lover, dies in an industrial "accident" that m y~be~her~ father's doing. Such is ...
The theme that has been attached to this story is directly relevant to it as depicted by the anonymous letters which the main character is busy writing secretly based on gossip and distributing them to the different houses. Considering that people have an impression of her being a good woman who is quiet and peaceful, it becomes completely unbecoming that she instead engages in very abnormal behavior. What makes it even more terrible is the fact that she uses gossip as the premise for her to propagate her hate messages not only in a single household but across the many different households in the estate where she stays.
James Joyce's use of religious imagery and religious symbols in "Araby" is compelling. That the story is concerned somehow with religion is obvious, but the particulars are vague, and its message becomes all the more interesting when Joyce begins to mingle romantic attraction with divine love. "Araby" is a story about both wordly love and religious devotion, and its weird mix of symbols and images details the relationship--sometimes peaceful, sometimes tumultuos--between the two. In this essay, I will examine a few key moments in the story and argue that Joyce's narrator is ultimately unable to resolve the differences between them.
Huitt, W. (2007),Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University, (http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/regsys/maslow.html), [Accessed 29 December 2013].
In the novel, action speaks louder than characters. Each character in the novel represents the dark reality of the society. Locution and the composition of provocative verses leave gaps, which should be filled up by the readers. The character of Lakshmi is the epitome for many unknown and unnoticed Lakshmies, who are the victims of Trafficking and Sexual Slavery world-wide. Through Lakshmi’s stream of Consciousness the readers get conscious about the atrocities done to poor children and women for the sake of money.
Rushdie, Salman. Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Delhi: Penguin, 1990. Second paperback edition 1996.
“The Harem Within” is a life story that portrays Mernissi’s childhood experiences while growing up in her family house in Fez, Morocco. Fatema Mernissi was a daughter of wealthy landowners and agriculturalists family. Even though she was raised in indulging and a privileged neighborhood, detached from the poverty most Moroccans experienced, her childhood was spent in the limits of her household shape. Mernissi was raised in a “classical domestic harem”, which abides of extended family and was designed to keep the women sheltered from men outside of the family and the public in general. Occasionally, this exceedingly limitation nurtured feelings of frustrating separation and isolation. Mernissi’s upbringing in this habitat influenced her progress as a scholar and writer.
What the parodies do to the figure of Geraldine is of particular interest. There are many answers to who and what she is. Some, following the conventions of Gothic romance suggest a "fairy tale" resolution which re-establishes the hetero-sexual order (Christabel marries her far away lover) and the supernatural and mysterious Geraldine is expelled.
The characters provide a contrast for the readers, by presenting the powerlessness of women through Esme’s fate in the institution after her refusal to conform to married life, and the subplot of Iris being a contemporary version of Esme. Esme’s suffering foreshadows the events of Iris’ life. Through the use of narrative voice, symbols and foreshadowing, O’Farrell reveals that all aspects of Esme’s life are determined by society’s expectations to create the essence of the harsh effects of patriarchy for the reader to
Kane, Jean M. “The Migrant Intellectual and the Body of History: Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children.’” Contemporary Literature 37.1 (1996): 94-118. JSTOR. Web. 29 Nov. 2011.
Though scarcely the “barbarian” (1.3.353) he is called, the Moor is emphatically black, probably rough, even fearsome, in appearance, and a foreign mercenary from Mauritania in refined Venice. Though of royal blood, since the age of seven he had a restrictive, painful life, being sold into slavery and spending most of his life in “the tented field” (1.3.85).
The action of the play revolves round the bringing of the sick fifth woman by Sakharam and his friend Dawood to the hospital; her consequent demise and her last Hindu rites by Sakharam at the persistent cajoling of Dawood. In the course of this description, the dramatist has unraveled the actual position of women in the mind of men–folk, who go on changing female company like their clothes. Sakharam treats the fifth woman as a source of his physical gratification without any emotional attachment. At her death, he only thinks of the sixth woman who has to come to take her place. The reality is also ironically highlighted in the words of the crow which is supposed to belong to the next world. Here the man is found bemoaning at the loss of his source of virility which differentiates him from the female. Tendulkar’s art of handling of a serious subject with an uncompromising comical strain enables him to enjoy respect with
Salman Rushdie tries to break the binary by using a very different kind of narrative, a mixture of an oral narrative style with all the colloquialisms typical of that style, on the one hand, and a very formal style typical of written language on the other. In addition to this other ‘Englishes’ like Pidgin English are used. These elements serve to place the novel outside the Western tradition, even though it uses a language, English, and a format, the novel, which are central to the Western literary canon. I will analyse the style and genre of the novel to show how Rushdie accomplishes all this. Next I will try to show that the n...
In his short story, “The Prophet’s Hair,” Salman Rushdie make use of magic realism, symbolization and situational irony to comment on class, religion, and the fragility of human life. The story is brimming with ironic outcomes that add to the lighthearted and slightly fantastic tone. Rushdie’s use of the genre magic realism capitalizes on the absurdity of each situation but makes the events relevant to readers’ lives. In addition, the irony in the story serves as a way to further deepen Rushdie’s commentary on class and religion. Finally, his use of symbolization focuses on the concept of glass, and just how easily it can be broken.
Unfortunately, especially in the inner city, it is unrealistic to expect all middle school students to come to school ready to learn. This is because so many of them are stuck in a low level of Maslow’s hierarchy. The...
...lagiarism has led at least a few educators to contemplate high-tech solutions. Two employees of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Ned Feder and Walter Stewart, have designed a computer program to scan text and recognize word-for-word similarities as short as 32 characters long. Still, the programs have their limits, and, in the end, it's a losing battle. The whole point of the Internet is to share information. To get the benefits of online technology, universities have to cope with the costs. The only real solution to cyberplagiarism, then, is old-fashioned vigilance. Having spent millions of dollars wiring their students to the Internet, universities may have to invest in smaller classes and a better teacher-to- student ratio. A return to some good old analog, face-to-face teaching may be the only way to keep online plagiarism at the fringes, where it belongs.