Pigs Can't Fly

Pigs Can't Fly

"Why?" Amma said. "Because the sky is so high and pigs can't fly, that's why." --From "Pigs Can't Fly"

The "why" and "because" of life is often best captured by children, for they, as the relatively less socialized individuals in society, will often innocently question the social myths we, the adults, always take for granted and as the truth. Hence, adults are usually at a loss as to the "because" when children ask in that "cruelly direct way" why certain things happen, or why certain things are the way they are in society. Many adults simply brush off the children's disturbing questions, either telling the children to leave well alone or replying with an answer that has absolutely no relation to the original question, as Arjie's mother does in "Pigs Can't Fly". However, question though they may, children do not have the ability to comprehend the complex societal boundaries they transgress. Intelligent criticism of what we assume as our social reality must come from adult minds. Very often though, a literary text is able to dexterously blend both the poignancy of childhood and the sharp perspective of a mature consciousness to better question the social myths we assume to be truth and reality. "Pigs Can't Fly" is such a text, and it achieves its blend of childhood poignancy and adult maturity through the literary devices of narrator and narratee.

The narrator in "Pigs Can't Fly" is a young child of seven, and the whole story is related to us through his childish perspective, except for a brief moment when we get a sense of an older Arjie, who tells us that "the remembered innocence of childhood" is now lost to him forever. The narratee, the person whom the author assumes the story is to be told to, is howe...

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...s a criticism of the social myths we wrap comfortably around ourselves as reality, my reading requires a narratee who has a certain background in social criticism and who may be interested in reading the story in this way. However, many readings may be derived from "Pigs Can't Fly," and hence I feel it is enough to simply understand that the story is essentially about the alienation and loneliness one feels at not being what society expects, and empathy with such a person, instead of bristling self righteousness will better serve towards peace and tolerance in our societies, than all the wealth or knowledge we can ever garner.

Bibliography

Chatman, Seymour. "Narration: Narrator and Narratee." Reading Narrative Fiction. Ed. Seymour Chatman. New York: Macmillan, 1993. 130-141.

Selvadurai, Shyam. "Pigs Can't Fly." Funny Boy. New York: Vintage, 1995. 1-40.