One of the motifs of these stories seemed to be aimed at two specific issues: questioning your identity and feeling out of place and oppressive power.
Jean Rhys' The Day They Burned the Books, Hanif Kureishi's My Son the Fanatic, and Kiran Desai's The Sermon in the Guava Tree all have the same problem going on in their families. With The Day They Burned the Books, the trouble was with the parents. Considering the parents came from such different cultures, which often creates struggles when children are involved, the child becomes confused as to where they should feel proud to be from. They may start to feel like they don't belong to either culture, isolating them further.
Although there was one story that didn't fit the motif of the others: Margaret Atwood's Death by Landscape. This felt very similar to Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. While the storyline was completely different, one being more light hearted than the other, the writing style was comparable in the sense of the two characters looking back on their childhoods.
On the more postcolonial side of things, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Eavan Boland's The Dolls Museum in Dublin are also very similar. In The Dolls Museum in Dublin, the dolls sit in their window, watching as passersby walk past them and go on about their day. Broken and wounded from their days, presumedly, as toys, they watch in sadness as other dolls are cradled in the arms of their children. "Laughter and gossip on the terraces. Rumour and alarm at the barracks. The Empire is summoning its officers. The carriages are turning: they are turning back. Past children walking with governesses, Looking down, cossetting their dolls, then looking up as the carriage passes, the shadow chilling them. Twilight falls," (The Dolls Museum in Dublin, 1140-1141). Amid the chaos of what's going on around them, they are desperate, holding on to the comforting memory of what once was; perhaps a better life or dreaming of what could be (being in the arms of children). These dolls are reminiscent of the people of Congo in Heart of Darkness. The main character, Marlow, described seeing some of the people of Congo on the streets where they would go to die. Recalling how they looked, so sickly, to the point of not looking human anymore. They were broken and wounded from how they had been treated, so they lay there, watching people pass by them as they wait to die - just like the dolls.
My Son the Fanatic and The Sermon in the Guava Tree bear the most resemblance. In both stories, the sons, Ali and Sampath, have found their own identity and know how they want to live their life. To their parent's dismay, the children have followed a path that they did not imagine or want for them. In Parvez's case, coming from a place that did not allow the freedoms that England, allowed, he longed for the freedom to choose and enjoy life. He wanted that for his son, as most parents do, yet Ali disagrees. Sampath desires a simple life, one that is, at first, an embarrassment to his family; at least this family had a happy ending.
Jean Rhys' The Day They Burned the Books, Hanif Kureishi's My Son the Fanatic, and Kiran Desai's The Sermon in the Guava Tree all have the same problem going on in their families. With The Day They Burned the Books, the trouble was with the parents. Considering the parents came from such different cultures, which often creates struggles when children are involved, the child becomes confused as to where they should feel proud to be from. They may start to feel like they don't belong to either culture, isolating them further.
Although there was one story that didn't fit the motif of the others: Margaret Atwood's Death by Landscape. This felt very similar to Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. While the storyline was completely different, one being more light hearted than the other, the writing style was comparable in the sense of the two characters looking back on their childhoods.
On the more postcolonial side of things, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Eavan Boland's The Dolls Museum in Dublin are also very similar. In The Dolls Museum in Dublin, the dolls sit in their window, watching as passersby walk past them and go on about their day. Broken and wounded from their days, presumedly, as toys, they watch in sadness as other dolls are cradled in the arms of their children. "Laughter and gossip on the terraces. Rumour and alarm at the barracks. The Empire is summoning its officers. The carriages are turning: they are turning back. Past children walking with governesses, Looking down, cossetting their dolls, then looking up as the carriage passes, the shadow chilling them. Twilight falls," (The Dolls Museum in Dublin, 1140-1141). Amid the chaos of what's going on around them, they are desperate, holding on to the comforting memory of what once was; perhaps a better life or dreaming of what could be (being in the arms of children). These dolls are reminiscent of the people of Congo in Heart of Darkness. The main character, Marlow, described seeing some of the people of Congo on the streets where they would go to die. Recalling how they looked, so sickly, to the point of not looking human anymore. They were broken and wounded from how they had been treated, so they lay there, watching people pass by them as they wait to die - just like the dolls.
My Son the Fanatic and The Sermon in the Guava Tree bear the most resemblance. In both stories, the sons, Ali and Sampath, have found their own identity and know how they want to live their life. To their parent's dismay, the children have followed a path that they did not imagine or want for them. In Parvez's case, coming from a place that did not allow the freedoms that England, allowed, he longed for the freedom to choose and enjoy life. He wanted that for his son, as most parents do, yet Ali disagrees. Sampath desires a simple life, one that is, at first, an embarrassment to his family; at least this family had a happy ending.