This paper briefly looks at the structure of imbalance in hallucinogenic narratives, mainly Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil. Skirting an aspect of thematic analysis in terms of the characters and the setting, the paper seeks to open the question for a linearity in logic for stories and its necessary implication to the reader. By employing a closer gaze at the allegory of the hyperreal in Narcopolis, the construction of identity for both the characters and the novel itself, becomes the central focus for this paper, in its addressing of notions such as addiction and intoxication.
Key terms: Construction of the self; inchoate narrative devices; hyperreal allegories; hallucinogenic narratives; structural imbalance.
To the mind of a reader expecting
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Ranging from a writer who is deported to Bombay after getting into a fight with a New York cop in a hallucinogenic stupor, ironically send to Bombay to get straight and to come clean, his life is enmeshed in the ever famous opium den of Shuklaji Street wherein other voices emerge into the narrative. There is the transexual prostitute who tends to the making of the pipe and also who works at the brothel next door, Dimple by name, an avid reader of whatever books that she could lay hold of and compassionate listener to everyone's grief. A parallel narrative emerges through her story through which the reader is whisked away into the war torn Nation of Communist China where we encounter Mr. Lee, a Chinese immigrant soldier who fled to India and opened one of the first opium dens of Bombay. He uses opium as an aphrodisiac to bring down pain, thereby achieving in public the status of a doctor, the main reason why Dimple goes to him. Later in the story, Dimple is gifted the very pipes that was employed by Mr. Lee and these pipes become inchoate narrative devices as well. It is important to acknowledge this factor that the opium pipe becomes a character in Narcopolis, for it is as the main narrator emphasizes, the story of the pipe leading inadvertently to the story of …show more content…
The characters in Narcopolis suffer this tribulation of imbalance. They exist in a liminal space, a life guided by rituals of arriving at Rashid's khana in the morning and departing after they have been filled to their brim with the satisfaction of opium. Almost all classes of people partake in this ritual, the interior of the khana becomes like a sacred space, where people converse in hushed tones, detached from a structural conversation. The point here is that the prose of Narcopolis follows a similar pattern, it lacks a concrete structure. There is a logic to the progression of the chapters, however in considering the story as a whole, the events that they portray almost attain the status of visual fragments that form a distant memory, an event in the past. This event is
The protagonist, Matt, is a young boy around the age of 6. The setting of the story is in Opium, in the future. Matt lives with his caretaker, Celia, who watches over him as mother-like figure but doesn’t like to be called mother. Celia works daily and leaves Matt to stay at home alone mourning for her absence. When Matt gets bored he would play with his toys and stare out the window into the vast poppy fields which surrounded his house. Matt wanted to play with three children that he surprisingly saw outside of his house, so he took a pot and smashed his window to get to them. By doing that Matt scraped his foot on the window and the three children carry him over to the “Big House”. There, Matt is taken care of where the nurse notices that on Matt’s foot it says, “Property of Alacrán Estate”. That is when they found out Matt was a clone. After they found out that Matt was a clone, they started treating him like a tool and locking him up in cells. Once the head honcho, El Patrón, came home to his Big House, everything changed. El Patrón was the head of large organization of the drug, opium. Matt was treated like a royal under El Patrón. El Patrón gave Matt special treatment because Matt was El Patrón’s clone. El Patrón needed Matt to be safe and healthy so that when the time came, El Patrón can steal Matt’s organs and prolong his own life. As that day grew closer, Matt not knowing that he is a tool for El Patrón lives his life as like he was one of El Patrón’s. When the day came, El Patrón’s personal doctor ordered for Matt immediately. When Matt entered the room Celia was there talking to El P...
from sympathy to fear within the readers. However, out of all the notions and events that
Drugs are known to be the shortcut to nefarious and decadent life. Jesus’ Son is a collection of stories containing vivid narrative about life as a drug addict. These stories are all told in first person narrative, which is perhaps one person who is suffering from poverty and drug addiction. They are seemingly disconnected but are all about the experience of drug addiction, working together under the theme of drug addiction and how it fragments people mentally and physically. “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” and “Work” both convey this theme by using abrupt tone and unique figurative language. However, “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” characterizes the protagonist more directly to reveal the fall of protagonist because of drug.
readers a dose of reality and human experience. People read literature and end up learning
The addicts are on a plane filled with people who can cure their illness while war preparers fit in with those whose disease is incurable and those deemed unfit for society. Both groups of people have elements about themselves that are wrong, but the latter group’s elements are worse. The war preparers cannot be cured to the sickness that racks their brain, and to call them an addict, much like Vonnegut does, undermines the process addicts go through to help themselves. These people who love the so-called “art” of war are no sicker than a
into the reader’s head without them knowing their ingesting something deep and true. The ups
Nic struggles so much attempting to satisfy his need for the drug. This is the most important part of the book where I expected to know how drug users handle their addiction. The book narrates that Nic became a nuisance and a big problem both in the society and the family. Drug addiction erodes the morals of the users. Nic Sheff occasionally steals from everyone in the household.
The first two chapters of the book are about the drugs in general. The chapters explained how drugs have been used in the early history of the peoples for clients welfare, religious rites, but also to produce intoxication and euphoria.
The creation of a stressful psychological state of mind is prevalent in the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as well as, Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Ophelia’s struggles in William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, and the self-inflicted sickness seen in William Blake’s “Mad Song”. All the characters, in these stories and poems, are subjected to external forces that plant the seed of irrationality into their minds; thus, creating an adverse intellectual reaction, that from an outsider’s point of view, could be misconstrued as being in an altered state due to the introduction of a drug, prescribed or otherwise, furthering the percep...
Drugs is one of the themes in this story that shows the impact of both the user and their loved ones. There is no doubt that heroin destroys lives and families, but it offers a momentary escape from the characters ' oppressive environment and serves as a coping mechanism to help deal with the human suffering that is all around him. Suffering is seen as a contributing factor of his drug addiction and the suffering is linked to the narrator’s daughter loss of Grace. The story opens with the narrator feeling ice in his veins when he read about Sonny’s arrest for possession of heroin. The two brothers are able to patch things up and knowing that his younger brother has an addiction.
As we dig deeper into Urinetown, we must take the major themes into consideration. The three most significant themes include the following; corruption of authority, democracy, and class systems. Each of these themes creates the storyline and all relate to one another. A great example of the corruption of authority, is when the poor people are lined up, waiting...
The text was written with reading out loud in mind, that can not be recommended; but it is suggested that the reader attend with his ear to what he takes off the page: for variations of tone, pace, shape, and dynamics are here particularly unavailable to the eye alone, and with their loss, a good deal of meaning escapes. (87)
Hanes, William Travis, and Frank Sanello. Opium Wars: the Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another. Naperville, IL: Source, 2002. Print.
A successful writer is he who is able to transmit ideas, emotions, and wisdom on to his readers. He is cable of stirring emotions and capturing the reader's attention with vivid descriptions and clever dialogues. The writer can even play with the meanings of words and fuse reality with fiction to achieve his goal of taking the reader on a wonderful journey. His tools are but words, yet the art of writing is found in the use of the language to create though-provoking pieces that defy the changing times. Between the lines, voices and images emerge. Not everyone can write effectively and invoke these voices. It is those few who can create certain psychological effects on the reader who can seize him (or her) with inspiring teachings, frightening thoughts, and playful games with the language. These people are true writers…
Throughout David Sheff’s book, he incorporates detailed diction in describing his environment, past, and the people around him as to allow the reader to be able to imagine what he had seen during this course of his life. As the father of a drug addict, Sheff had also had his own experience with drugs, in which he describes this experience with words and phrases such as “I heard cacophonous music like a calliope”, “[The brain’s neurotransmitters flood with dopamine], which spray like bullets from a gangster’s gun” and “I felt