Anil’s Ghost
Amid today’s contemporary era, the virtues of texts are often overlooked. The different texts available possess the potential to animate qualities that will evoke emotion and agitate cognition. Texts have the power to move and challenge the audience. The novel Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje is an excellent epitome of this statement. The morals, themes and values illustrated in Anil’s Ghost such as fact verses fiction, power verses law and past verses present are significant as they ever-present and universal.
The novel is written in a post-colonial, elliptical style, focusing on the history, identity and the social and political groups of Sri Lanka. The delivery of these ideas is achieved through a non-linear narrative structure. Ondaatje’s fragmented style proves to be an analogy to war and its effects, both the novel and war being scattered and lacking clarity. This style is also analogous to memories, which are frequently disordered and skewed. Due to this unique style of writing, it leaves it up to the reader to piece together the threads of the string to establish the larger picture. This is similar to how Anil must solve the mystery of Sailor, provided limited clues. The consistent shift of perspective from the past, present to future provides the audience with brief details of Sri Lanka’s past, an insight into the history of the civil war and a sense of surrealism.
Events and notions are gradually entwined together - Anil’s memory of her father links to Dr Perera, Leaf’s postcard links America to Sri Lanka. Throughout the novel, significant events resonate with minor events, often subtly foreshadowing the future. The private war between Sarath and Gamini mirrors the public war between the Sri Lankan revolut...
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...to behave as an outsider, her only goal being to uncover the truth of her investigation of Sailor. It is hinted that for Sarath, Anil is no different to an outsider who has no sentiment for her native country. Due to this subtle conflict of views, the question of truth is raised. The tension between fact verses fiction and appearance verses reality is raised. This engages the audience, who have a sketchy concept of the truth, albeit never having the knowledge of the genuine truth. This reflects the reality of the war in Sri Lanka, which is uncertain and questions the truth of activity.
The symbols present in Anil’s Ghost add dimension, pushing the reader to interact with the novel in a different aspect. ‘Sailor’, the skeleton under Anil’s investigation is a significant example of symbolisation. Sailor represents all the unidentified victims of Sri Lankan civil war.
Over the years, writing has been used as an art form, allowing people to write their thoughts. Though, the most torrential puzzle of writing is the reasoning behind the words on a page. The logic behind any piece of literature falls into categories of wants and needs. There are three essays to which these categories are explained in further detail with more depth. Firstly, “Not So Deadly Sin” which focuses on the act of lying and exaggeration.
In King Leopold`s Ghost, the author Adam Hochschild conveys many attempts to challenge the actions of King Leopold`s control in the Congo. This was to reach an international audience at the time of the 20th century. Protestors depended on a variety of writing techniques to make their case successful. For example the use of direct letters to officials, published “open letters”, articles in newspapers, and public speeches. These protesters were George Washington Williams, William Sheppard, Edmund Dene Morel, and Roger Casement. These protesters became aware of the situation in the Congo in different ways. They also had diversity in how they protested through their writing. Although Edmund Dene Morel and Roger Casement share a comparative approach.
Michael Ondaatje is very much like the narrator of his novel. Both share similar aspects of their lives beginning with the fact they share the same name: Michael. It is perhaps because Ondaatje himself experienced the same voyage as eleven year old Michael that the novel seems so very realistic. Both are born in Colombo, Sri Lanka and each, at age eleven take the voyage of a lifetime by boat from Sri Lanka to England. It seems appropriate that as the narrator of the book recalls his past as a journalist deep in adulthood, the same may be said of the novels true real author. Only Ondaatje himself knows how connected the two journeys are and this blend of truth and fiction are married perfectly to create a dreamlike quality to young Michael’s story.
There are innumerable conspiracies regarding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but according to the film “Oswald’s Ghost”, after forty years none of the theories have panned out. Certainly, it is human nature to find solutions, to solve the mystery, and to have the answer pan out. That is why countless people have tried to solve the mystery by delving into the past of Lee Harvey Oswald to find out if he was the perfect assassin or if he the perfect patsy.
This novel and film commentary analysis or interpretation will be first summarised and then critiqued. The summary will be divided into twenty- four episodes. While summarising it is well to remember that the film was made out of the book.
Danticat's Krik? Krak!, are a collection of short stories about Haiti and Haitian-Americans before democracy and the horrible conditions that they lived in. Although it is a mistake to call the stories autobiographical, Krik? Krak! embodies some of Danticat's experiences as a child. While the collection of stories draw on the oral tradition in Haitian society, it is also part of the literature of diaspora, the great, involuntary migration of Africans from their homeland to other parts of the world; thus, the work speaks of loss and assimilation and resistance. The stories all seem to share similar themes, that one story could be in some way linked to the others. Each story had to deal with relationships, either with a person or a possession, and in these relationships something is either lost or regained. Another point that was shared throughout the short stories was the focus on the struggles of the women in Haiti. Lastly they all seem to weave together the overarching theme of memory. It's through memory and the retelling of old stories and legends that the Haitians in Danticat's tales achieve immortality, and extension to lives that were too often short and brutal.
Searing the mind with stunning images while seducing with radiant prose, this brilliant first novel is a story of damaged lives and the indestructibility of the human spirit. It speaks about loss, about the urgency, pain and ultimate healing power of memory, andabout the redemptive power of love. Its characters come to understand the
...d issues of post-colonialism in Crossing the Mangrove. It is clear that Conde favors multiplicity when it comes to ideas of language, narrative, culture, and identity. The notion that anything can be understood through one, objective lens is destroyed through her practice of intertextuality, her crafting of one character's story through multiple perspectives, and her use of the motif of trees and roots. In the end, everything – the literary canon, Creole identity, narrative – is jumbled, chaotic, and rhizomic; in general, any attempts at decryption require the employment of multiple (aforementioned) methodologies.
Like all the best ghost stories, this begins with the most innocuous of introductions: “…life is complicated”, a quote by Patricia Williams that Gordon will remind us repeatedly is “the most important theoretical statement of our time” (3). What obscures, obfuscates, thwarts and yes, haunts us and our work, she argues, is not what is seen but what isn’t, the notable absences out of the corner of our trained eye, those ghosts who may be invisible (especially to the discourse) yet still exact attention from their hidden presence. Perhaps anticipating the confusion of my book’s previous reader, Gordon patiently (and poetically) expands on her conceptualization – ghosts are those whom, through the “complicated relationship between reality and its mode of production” (11) have been relegated to that void between the s...
This part is divided into two sub-topics. The first sub-topic offers a summary of the book and contains spoilers. The second sub-topic summarizes the film. Both summaries incorporate key events in both form...
The main thing I saw in this book that brought me back to historical events, was the control of people for corrupt and selfish purposes. At the end of World War ² Japan began to capture areas in Asia and the Pacific that had valuable materials such as coconut copra, rubber and quartz. The inhabitants of captured territories where more or less given the status of slaves. I saw the same events taking place in 1984; wars were being fought in disputed areas which contain valuable goods, but the main reason for war was for cheap slave labor. When Winston and Julia are in Mr. Charrington’s room Julia brings out a surprise “It’s real tea. Not blackberry leaves.” “There’s been a lot of tea about lately. They’ve captured India, or something,” (1) Oceania is a world where quantity is more important than quality and quality goods are hard to get a hold of because it is reserve for greedy inner party members.
Ondaatje aims to transform the reader from the rigid realm of factual certainty to the realm of subjective and imaginative perception. He intends to capture the reader within his own thoughts and ideas; and forces the reader to look at truth from Ondaatje’s eyes. He captures the reader within a chaotic thought process. He uses a variety of random incomplete stories. Ondaatje encourages the reader to not question “what actually happened” but rather question the method by which the author thought it happened. The author’s perception and thought are the main construction of his character; therefore, it is the core of the autho...
the novel as you will read further I will relate some issues of the novel, as
The setting for this novel was a constantly shifting one. Taking place during what seems to be the Late Industrial Revolution and the high of the British Empire, the era is portrayed amongst influential Englishmen, the value of the pound, the presence of steamers, railroads, ferries, and a European globe.
A determination is a driving force that helps people through rough times in their lives. Without determination, people would no longer strive for their goals. Throughout the short story, ‘Then Later, His Ghost,’ Sarah Hall shows how strength and determination can get you through these tough times. This theme is made clear through the severe setting the characters are faced with and her use of symbolism.