The novel "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" written by - opens with a prologue that introduces the audience to Abdul, a garbage sorter in the Mumbai slums of Annawadi. Here Abdul is hiding in his family's garbage shed, hiding from the authorities in fear of being arrested for being falsely accused of setting his neighbor Fatima on fire. Abdul has tried his whole life to stay out of trouble and provide a well-off life for his family things seem to be falling apart. The novel then rewinds to January 2008, seven months before the burning of Fatima. Abdul, who is the Husain family's oldest son (sixteen or seventeen years old), he collects recyclables to sell to plants, which helps support his family of thirteen and his parents Zehrunisa …show more content…
and Karam. As a result of Abdul working so hard, his younger brother Mirchi can continue his education. Mirchi hopes of earning a good and clean job working as a waiter in some hotel, even though he knows Muslims just like him are still currently facing discrimination which could limit his opportunities. Next, we find other characters Asha, her daughter Manju, a young boy Sunil, Kalu, and Meena (Manju's best friend).
Asha is a slum resident who dreams of making it "big", big being the first female slumlord of Annawadi, to fix issues for the Shiv Sena party and take advantage of government anti-poverty programs in order to make money. With nothing but profit in mind, Asha sends her daughter Manju to university so that she will get a leg up in life and improve the family's situation even greater. Even though Manju disagrees with her mother's corrupt ways, there's not much she can do about it because Asha sees the corruption as the only means for the poor people of India to get ahead in life. We are then introduced to Sunil a young boy who knows all too well how limited of options there are for the poor. He scavenges trash to sell to Abdul along a concrete wall that was built to hide the slums from the eyes of the wealthy passengers of the airport. Plastered along the wall are ceramic tiles that will essentially stay "Beautiful forever". This is where the title comes from "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" being the slums and devastation hiding behind this wall from the eyes of …show more content…
others. Due to Urbanization of this area of India the conglomerate the owns the land that Annawadi resides on is constantly threatening to demolish the slum to make more room to expand the airport and make the area more Urban, kicking out the poor for that area.
The Mumbai city officials agree to the plan, in hopes to show that the slums are a thing of India's past. The poor like Abdul and Sunil know that they are hated within the community, and are just trying to get by. This is also due to global inequality, India having been occupied by Europe for so long, still struggling to better itself even after being sovereign for so long, struggling with the poor and the slums and the lack of work. That even though the people of India are free, they're still struggling and many are unequal to others in not only their own country but to the rest of the
world. In this aspect and later seeing Abdul turn himself in and be tortured for something he didn't do and it only gets harsher with Fatima's death, one can only assume this is so severe because he is considered poor and lower class. Being beaten, starved, and deprived, then meeting his peacful teacher who leads Abdul to aspire to be a virtuous resident. A glimmer of hope perhaps for Abdul, but very little for the people of the slum. I only see it getting worse, the people being misplaced by destruction of the town and loss of revenue and income because of the global crisis, and cruel and greedy hearts of those in power.
I’ve been reading Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly. For our first book meeting I was absent, but our group decided on reading through Chapter 4, which was about 64 pages. The book follows three main characters; Herta, a German doctor; Caroline, an ex-Broadway actress; and Kasia, a Catholic teenager living in Poland. Each chapter switches the perspective to one of these characters and tells part of their story. The structure of this book really helps me keep reading because every chapter is different. If you are bored with the chapter you are on, you know the next chapter will be breath of fresh air. It’s hard to fully capture the personality from only one or two chapters, but I’m not in love with all of the characters. Caroline, who works as
The Hollow Hope examines the following research question: when can judicial processes be used to produce social change? (Rosenberg 1). Rosenberg starts out the book by describing the two different theories of the courts. The first theory, the Dynamic Court view, views the court as being powerful, vigorous, and potent proponents of change (Rosenberg 1). The second theory, the Constrained Court view, views the court in the complete opposite way. With this view the court is seen as weak, ineffective, and powerless (Rosenberg 3). In this view there are three different constraints that restrict the courts from producing effective political and social change. These constraints include: limited nature of constitutional rights, lack of judicial independence, and the lack of tools the courts need (Rosenberg 35). Even though there are constraints on the court there are conditions where the court is able to overcome the constraints.
The book “ Tomorrow Girls Behind The Gates” is written by Eva Gray, it can both be read by use children and adults. The main message in the third three chapters is that there will always be different groups of friends or people throughout your life that you will meet. For example, sporty groups, smart groups, nerdy groups and cool groups. I believe that Eva Gray’s main message for this week is think of who you are as a person before choosing a group you should think if you will fit into the group. The middle of the chapters seven to ten begins with Evelyn entering the school’s buffet to grab some breakfast, she saw Louisa and Maddie sitting down at a table so she took the plate and went to go sit
The play, These Shining Lives by Melanie Marnich can be summed up just as the main character, Catherine entails. It is “not a fairy tale, though it starts like one, and it is not a tragedy, though it ends like one” (Scene 1, p. 9). Truly, this is an accurate depiction of what the author intended to convey to her audience. It is remarkable how the author was able to twist and spins the words to form the messages she desired. Be that as it may, not everything is splayed across the ink bound pages as precisely as the stars littering the night sky.
Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a novel of historical fiction, therefore, following Wharton’s logic, there is an illuminating incident. To truly understand what Wharton means by “illuminating incident”, one must define it in the context of the novel itself. The definition that seems to fit best, in this case, is the following: an illuminating incident is an ultimate realization or act that causes a character to think or behave differently. It can also cause characters around them to think and behave differently in response to them. The illuminating incident then gives the author a chance to reveal a deeper meaning or undercurrent within the novel.
Boo’s story begins in Annawadi, a trash-strewn slum located by the Mumbai International Airport. This “sumpy plug of slum” had a population of three thousand people living within 335 huts (Boo, 2011, xi). The land owned by the Airport Authority of India and was surrounded by five hotels that Abdul’s younger brother described as “roses” versus their slum, “the shit in between” (Boo, 2011, xi). Abdul is a Muslim teenage who buys garbage of the rich and sells it to recyclers to support his family. Abdul’s family, Muslim, is a religious minority in the slum of Hindus; in fact a major element of tension within the book can be distilled to these Hindu-Muslim tensions. This difference in religion makes Abdul fearful of his neighbors for two reasons: (1) they would attempt to steal the family’s wealth, and (2) if Abdul were caught, he would not be able to support his family. The other major character was Fatima, a woman who burned herself by attempting suicide through self-immolation. She accused Abdul, his father, and sister of beating and threatening her; in India, it is against the law to convince someone else to kill him or herself. With a corruption-ridden legal sys...
In “Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit”, Silko uses several techniques in her writing to make clear her viewpoints on beauty, harmony, and the differences between modern and Pueblo societies. She writes about recollections of lessons taught to her in the past such as teachings and stories from her grandmother and aunts. Silko uses flashbacks of impacting events to make the reader fully realize the large difference between modern and Pueblo society. The stories of Yellow Woman offer Silko a unique means of educating the reader about the Pueblo’s views on harmony and the beauty of others.
The novel tells the story of, Amir. Amir is portrayed as the protagonist; the novel revolves around his recollection of past events 26 years ago as a young boy in Afghanistan. Amir is adventures and brave. Hassan is Amir’s closets friend and servant to his house and is portrayed as a subservient male, often supporting and accepting blame for Amir’s actions. Assef, Wali and Kamal are the “ bad guys” within the novel; Wali and Kamal hold down Hassan and Assef rapes him purely for ethnicity differences, as Hassan is a Hazara. Afghanistan boys are supposed to be athletic and true to Islam .The leaving of Soraya Hassan mother with another man gives the notion that women lack morality leaving behind there children .The Taliban laws are followed closely within Afghanistan and women are treated without any rights, beatings, stoning and execution become the reality for women who violate the laws. Culturally Afghanistan women are portrayed to be subservient to there husband only live and breath to provide children, cook food and clean their
The passage I chose to explicate is from Anzia Yezierska’s, The Lost Beautifulness. The passage is located on pg. 1254 of the Norton Anthology of American Literature 1912-1945. I believe this passage represents the main character’s and author’s view of the Depression-era individual vs. society. It reads as follows:
This is necessary as the vast majority of individuals migrating from rural to urban centers has been steadily increasing with the level of economic growth seen within the past twenty years as mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, this situation has further shown the structural issues and inequalities of cities, as most migrants end up having a poor quality of life living in informal settlements as highlight substantially by Boo. As a means of tackling this, however, the Indian government has turned its focus on investing rural regions, developing the agricultural sector. Specifically, Boo mentions that “the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had come down from Delhi to express his concern for the farmers’ hardships, and the central government’s determination to relieve it” (p. 138). While this is definitely important funds are not being divided justly. For starters, between rural and urban areas almost all investments are being targeting towards rural regions, which is only addressing issues of inequality in one section of the country. Furthermore, across rural areas inequalities of investment are quite often overlooked. Although, “one of the governments hopes was to stop villagers from abandoning their farms and further inundating cities like Mumbai, but Asha’s relatives knew nothing of these celebrated relief programs” (p. 138). Therefore, even though
For all Annawadians except Asha, corruption ingrained in society prevents the impoverished citizens of a Mumbai slum from being able to become successful in life. Despite working hard, saving money, and only wanting to better the life of their family, the Husains’s story is demonstrative of the fact that an unintentional entanglement in the “great web of corruption” “in which the most wretched tried to punish the slightly less wretched” could easily lead to near ruin (Boo 115). Over the course of her narrative, Boo shows that Annawadians recognize the issues of corruption present in their society, and the fact that they lack the power to change the system. For Annawadians, the courage and aspiration to become more successful in life meant taking a gamble, and Boo shows that their gamble could only be made in a system where the odds were forced against their
The story “Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit” by Leslie Marmon Silko stimulates thoughts in the reader's head about the world around them. In the story Silko contrasts the views of beauty between the old time Pueblo world and Western Civilization. Silko believed that Western views of beauty are superficial, artificial, incomplete, and codes for determining social status. In contrast, Silko said the old Pueblo world determined beauty by the interactions people had with other and the world around them. These two views of beauty invoked another quality of life that is determined by similar factors; happiness. Happiness cannot be determined by social status or superficial qualities, but only by the relationships we hold with others and the
In Search of Fatima (2002) is a powerful story of family and belonging told from the perspective of the author, Ghada Karmi. Ghada was born near the beginning of the conflict in Palestine, which eventually forced her family to move to Syria and then to England. Even before the violence begins, Ghada’s childhood is not easy—due to her frequently absent mother, she often turns to her family’s servant, Fatima, for stability and guidance. As Ghada describes her, Fatima is, during her Palestinian years, like a rock in her family’s life. The conflict, however, quickly turns their beloved home into an unrecognizable place, and for safety reasons, they must flee.
This book so very much reminded me of Beauty and the Beast that I only want to say one copied the other. It has very similar characters that share very similar personalities and dilemmas. They have an odd triangle of romance and jealousy and many other negative feelings. The only difference Lucy Gayheart is the ending. Lucy Gayheart ends on a much sadder note. However, it does have a sort if bitter sweet epilogue.
point of view bring realism to the poem and to the mood of the poem