Anil's Ghost

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Recommended: Sri lanka conflict social studies

In the novel Anil’s Ghost by Micheal Ondaatje, characters develop deep relationships and unveil dramatic secrets through a series of traumatic events. Anil’s Ghost is set in a time of political conflict in Sri Lanka, revealing unfolding mysteries, murders, and never-ending brutality. Each character uncovers the truth about one another, taking pieces of his or her own life, to reflect upon various hardships.

During the civil war era, the protagonist, Anil Tissera, a high specialized anthropologist is sent to uncover several murders occurring in her country of Sri Lanka. During her various discoveries, she reflects back on her life and uncovers some of her darkest secrets. One of them beginning with Cullis. He is a writer but also a married man. When she was with him, all she could trace are his memories, portrayed in the scene where she films her lover sleeping. She relies on science and the photographs to determine the truth. The less she sees of Cullis, the more longing towards him grew. During Anil’s stay with Cullis in Borrego, she encounters a serious conflict with him in the hotel. Cullis grabs Anil by the hair and threatens her to never lose touch in their perplexing love. Making her feel constricted in his tight grasp. A frightened Anil releases her fury by plunging a small knife into his right arm. She showed no hesitation while committing such an act. Ondaatje quotes the end of their relationship by saying “She looked at his face, his grey eyes (they were always bluer in daylight) and saw the softness he had accepted into his looks during his forties, suddenly go” (Ondaatje 100). The knife has put an end to their complicated relationship. Following the aftermath, Anil reflects further back only to uncove...

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...ut of her predicament was to sacrifice herself to save Gamini from Sarath. Gamini sleeps in the Emergency Room to be close to Sarath’s wife. Interpreting from the scene where Gamini watches her take her last breath in the Emergency Room. Sarath on the other hand does not speak of his dead wife or Gamini due to the embarrassment it would cause. The Sri Lanken conflict is the back drop of the true conflict, a conflict of souls or “ghosts” in Anil’s past.

The characters in Ondaatje’s epic novel Anil’s Ghost are in revolution. From Anil’s secret affair with Cullis, a destroyed marriage and her test of faith in Sarath. Followed by Gamini to uncover secrets of his lost relationship with his brother and love for Sarath’s wife. Anil, Sarath and Gamini’s ghosts are revealed through their personal revolution. They may resolve their revolution while Sri Lanka rages on.

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