Some thoughts on writing a paper

I still have not got going in earnest on my term paper which is concerning but I can really write quite fast. A problem I am having is that in popular 20th century literature I often feel like there isn't a lot going on worth discussing. In the case of this course it is really difficult to find an overwhelming theme that I care about. It almost seems like the historic cultural exchange between Asia and the Middle East would in some way be better since that is covered in Peony, In an Antique Land, and Midnight's Children.

It seems like if I make the thesis of the paper about the role of home in these novels it should not be that hard, since the characters are struggling to know what home is. I've been reading Daughter of Fortune really quickly and can easily finish it tomorrow but it will not be useful in the way that I thought it would. It is probably going to be significantly easier if I just write it in sections about each book and kind of put the essays together then I can at least maintain a coherent order without getting bogged down in what I am doing.

Well ok, here's what I'm thinking now. If I frame this in the sense of exile, i.e. "Can you find a home in exile?" Then Peony, Wide Sargasso Sea, Things Fall Apart. and Midnight's Children can all work together being as all of those themes deal with that pretty heavily. Depending on where Daughter of Fortune goes in the next 100 pages the Chinese character would be useful for this also.



Something like "Exiled: Social and Physical Displacement." This would really work for these books being as in Peony the Jews are arguably at home but are displaced from their ancestral lands, in Things Fall Apart and Wide Sargasso Sea the power structures change, and in Midnights Children they primarily move for religious reasons not unlike Jews.

I'm just concerned cause I feel like I don't have a lot to say about this. I can easily pull something out but I'm trying to think of what a worthwhile thing to write about would actually be.

This could also be arranged as like types of displacement. For example, an intro then sections titled things like

Social Displacement
Political Displacement
Physical Displacement
Emotional Displacement


that might actually work because it would bring everything together and then I could prewrite by categorizing quotes. Most of those come up in most of the texts and can be compared in interesting ways, for example the Mom in Peony longing to go to Israel vs Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea just needing to be where she feels at home.

Muslims and Hindus in Antique Lands

When Amitav Ghosh visited Egypt he received surprising and ostensibly offensive questions about Hindus and India. Ghosh receives this well being as he is visiting for anthropological purposes, is not a practicing Hindu, and knows the rural Egyptians had not been exposed to Hinduism. Where in Midnight's Children it seems that Muslims and Hindus should have had at least some cultural understanding in India living so close together, the antagonism seems natural being as they are competing groups in the Indian subcontinent. The experience of a Hindu in rural Egypt provides an example of two religions meeting for the first time with an easily understandable power structure.

Since the people of rural Egypt had never met a Hindu before they only had what they thought must be myths about Hindus. With Egypt being an equally ancient land which had transitioned from polytheism to monotheism almost two millenia before, the lack of progress must have been astonishing. For example, the Egyptians are obsessed with the idea that in India cows are worshiped, though Ghosh tries to explained they are revered for the way they improve human life. He once trips in front of a cow and it becacomes the news of the town that he is actively worshiping cows (170-171). For Ghosh, not being religious or nationalistic, this is primarily interesting as a social study.

Another obsessive question that Ghosh is asked by Egyptians is related to the burning of the dead. There is apparently no word for "cremate" in Arabic which differentiates it from simply being burned. The Muslims, unfamiliar with these customs, believe that the intention is to mutilate the body to avoid judgment day. After this conversation Ghosh is giving a piece of advice which would have great upset a practicing Hindu or Indian nationalist, "You should try to civilize your people. You tell them to stop praying to cows and burning their dead" (126). Something interesting in these scenes is that the Muslims don't seem to think Hinduism is something a thinking person would embrace, and Ghosh does nothing to change this.

When looking at initial reactions from Muslims upon meeting a Hindu it is easy to understand why the two groups would struggle to get along. With such divergent religions existing side by side the claim that Muslims worship the one true God could cause any number of problems. Further, to Muslims Hindus are pagans who they would not want to live next to. While Muslims and Hindus appear to have lived peacefull together in Mangalore and Ghosh gets along with the Egyptians. It seems that as long as one community is clearly in the minority and is not creating a challenge for the other community they will generally live by side without a problem.

A Land Older Than Time: Narrative Pace in Midnight's Children

In the British sitcom "Peep Show" the main character, Mark, says to his girlfriend over the phone, "And don't worry about Midnight's Children Sophie, no one has ever actually read it." While this comment is amusing it also exposes a serious issue with the aesthetics and narrative pace of the novel. While it is pleasant and interesting to read, Rushdie is careful to place the story's action as not starting until about half way through the book. Indeed, a harsh editor could have cut incredible amounts from the book without it being complete. This begs the question of why Rushdie chose to include so much background information. The reason seems to be that he is showing the reader that India is a land where history means everything and must be understood to move into the future; a land where things have always moved slowly and area really just starting.

The protagonist and narrator begins the novel by giving detailed issues of his Grandpa's life, as if his grandpa were the main character in the novel. This in depth explanation allows the author to demonstrate the differences between traditional culture and the modern world in India, specifically as it relates to doctors returning from Europe. This same theme is later brought up when Saleem goes to school with European girls. Since the novel is primarily about issues facing India upon new independence this is used to guage the social temperature of the Indian subcontinent and show the ancient culture mixing with the modern.

This narrative structure mirrors the presumed course of India. The idea being that in India there is so much history, a land where things move slow, and all of the sudden changes will be coming at a rapid pace. This is best explained in the lead up to independence, "Because a nation which had never previously existed was about to win its freedom, catapulting us into a world which, although it had five thousand years of history...was nevertheless quite imaginary; a into a mythical land...India, the new myth--a collective fiction in with anything is possible" (129-130). In the story, while India is seen as being a land of mystery and mysticism, the fantastical elements of the book do not begin until independence. When the Midnight's Children are born they possess unheard of powers: the new India is a land where anything is possible.

Saleem's development is supposed to mirror the development of this new India even before his powers are realized. A politician writes a letter to Saleem's family at the time of his birth saying, "You are the newest bearer of that ancient face of India which is also eternally young. We shall be watching over your life with the closest attention; it will be, in a sense, the mirror of our own" (143). By saying this the politician is demonstrating the hope that a new breed of modern and self-sufficient Indians will arise in the independent country to speed up the success and progress of the world. As Saleem grows in all of the wrong places and finds life confusing and difficult in his childhood the ancient land of India does the same thing as a new nation.

Saleem's story in the novel is the story of India. While this is made explicit, it is also amazing the subtle ways which Rushdie has interwoven this into his novel. His lack of concern for accessibility can be understood as commentary on the difficulty of becoming part of a culture as ancient and complex as India. Instead of trying to make the reader understand India he tries to make the reader understand one boy and his family and in doing so understand what they were going through as a newly independent people.

End Days: A Post-Modern Production

Note: This wasn't a planned part of the course but I happened to see this play and it is unbelievably post-modern so seems relevant.

WSU's theater department recently put on a performance of Deborah Laufer's play "End Days." The play takes place one year after September 11th, featuring a family which has been torn apart by the trauma of the attacks. The family used to live in New York where the dad worked in the Twin Towers, and was the only survivor of the attack. Following this, the dad is depressed to the point of disability, the formerly atheist Jew mother finds Jesus, and the daughter is a detached goth who has been emotionally tortured by her parents. Essentially, the family is struggling to find meaning in a world which has been torn apart by violent trauma which the mother has done by believing that the rapture is coming on Wednesday.

One of the most interesting aspects of this play were the aesthetics of the set design. The set was inexplicably raised at an angle (it looked quite unsafe) and is made up of circular platforms. Behind the circular platforms are mechanical glass platforms which are normally obscured from the audience but which can be turned to expose the scene to the audience. The play used no curtain and made any changes of scene with the mechanical platforms. It is difficult to determine how specific the set instructions for the play were, but the aesthetics have a sort of amazing feel being as the family's entire life is off balance and they literally do not have a stable floor beneath their feet. This set design deconstructs traditional notions of set design by not attempting to suspend the audience's disbelief; that is to say, the set makes no attempt at appearing realistic and instead amuses the audience by looking like a piece of installation art.

The family's search for meaning in their literally slanted home mirrors the nation's quest to find meaning in the face of extraordinary violence. By putting the audience in the position of a family that personally experienced the attacks the play is able to give the audience an insight into trauma. Americans seem unable or unwilling to understand the effects that large scale violence can have on a society- at least on another society. What was not brought up in mainstream dialogue surrounding the attacks was the idea that people in country's under attack go through this all the time. It is easy to criticize a nation's people for an inability to put a society back together, but it is difficult to know what the dad in "End Days" would have done if he was forced to go back to work prematurely.

As the family waits for the rapture they are forced to examine their beliefs. No one believes the mother, but she is so persistent that they stay with her just to calm her down. The nerdy and strange neighbor is also waiting for them, and has introduced the daughter to the work of Stephen Hawking. As the daughter is excited by the possibility of fully explaining the nature of the universe, the mother is trying to force repentance out of her family. The dad meanwhile, is a secular Jew who is being forced to accept not only religion but a different one from his own.

"End Days" has a very straightforward message despite the enormous issues being faced by the characters. While waiting for the rapture the family ultimately realizes that they enjoyed spending the whole day together and that meaning can be derived from family and personal relationship and that everything does not have to be explained. The father says directly that he is someone who needs concrete facts in front of him and that he is not that worried with the unknown. The mother struggles the most when coming to grips with the fact that she is a false prophet, but her relationship with her husband improves through the experience and he is willing to work to make her life more fulfilling in the real world so she does not have to resort to conversations with apparitions of Jesus.

This play is very successful at questioning traditional notions of family, religion, and coping with trauma. Instead of telling viewers how to live, it encourages them to live and simply try to enjoy it. This is much different from other artistic movements, which tend to espouse specific and tangible beliefs. The family learns something about how to live, but they are left with no new knowledge about nature of life and the universe.

The BBC's Wide Sargasso Sea (2006) A Brief Review

The BBC's 2006 version of Jean Rhys' novel Wide Sargasso Sea bring impressive accuracy both in plot and mood to the screen. Though the movie does not cover the first part of the book where Antoinette is growing up, but instead focuses on the arrival of Rochester to the West Indies but tell story of Antoinette and Rochester so accurately it is frequently line-for-line with the novel. The movie is also clearly framed with an insane Antoinette leaving the viewer curious about the cause of her insanity.

The most striking feature of the film version of Wide Sargasso Sea is the success with which the director captured the mood of the novel by filming a claustrophobic tropical environment. Since the novel plays with the idea that the hum of insects, heat, humidity, and think vegetation of the tropics can create a sort of claustrophobia which is bad for a person's mental state. This is originally developed with Rochester who forms an immediately negative impression of the tropics after being taken ill and spending time bedridden.

The film is successful at making Antoinette seem particularly sympathetic while bringing Jean Rhys' novel to life in an accurate way. The difficulty of classifying the writing of Jean Rhys has sometimes hinged on the extent to which an understanding of the Caribbean is necessary in order to appreciate her novels. While it is not entirely necessary, the film version demonstrates that the tropical environment is a crucial part of Rhys' prose in the novel which may be pissed by readers unfamiliar with the landscape. It is one thing to complain about the incessant buzzing of insects, but another thing to hear it is a consistent background noise which isn't regularly mentioned.

Two Modern Wars

20th Century civilization was torn apart repeatedly by ferocious wars which were fought with dangerous new weapons and ideologies. When Stephen Crane live through and reported on the Spanish American War, fought- among other things- to build up the nation's masculinity, he saw a war frenzied nation ready to prove itself with a complete disregard for the human cost. While during World War 2 there was a stronger case to be made for a clear and present danger, proponents of war still ignored the cost and destruction of war while fixating on the profit and power that war can bring. By comparing Stephen Crane's "War Is Kind" to George Oppen's "Survival: Infantry" it is possible to look at two very different wars and the difficulty which two poets had viewing a world of carnage and bloodshed.

Stephen Crane begins his poem "War Is Kind" with his usual biting irony and general cynicism for the world around him. When he writes, "Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind. / Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky / And the affrighted steed ran on alone, / Do not weep. / War is kind" (Crane ln 1-5) he is reacting against the contemporary political dialogue praising war as a masculine activity which would keep the men of the country in shape. While women were taught to be proud of their husbands' noble struggle, this sought to remove women's fears about their husbands safety. While people in high positions in the government and media were able to discuss abstract values of war, the rank and file of the country were forced into a meaningless conflict over colonial possessions.

Crane continues his cynicism by demonstrating the regard soldiers were actually held in. He writes, "These men were born to drill and die. / The unexplained glory flies above them, / Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom -- / A field where a thousand corpses lie" (Crane ln 8-11). To Crane, instead of these men moving to a place of glory through their time in combat, they are simply pawns to powerful men who see them as useful for no more than to "drill and die." While the casualty rate in the Spanish-American war was nowhere near as great as wars which would soon follow, soldiers were still being sent to their doom for dubious imperial gains while being told they would receive glory.

The poet George Oppen personally served in combat in World War 2, giving him the ability to accurately position his poetry within the trauma of the war. He opens his poem "Survival: Infantry" with the lines, "And the world changed. / There had been trees and people, / sidewalks and roads" (Oppen ln 1-3). Oppen is viewing the world as having been destroyed by the Second World War, and he would have seen all too much of this carnage up close in the 1940s. After this line there are many about how the world has been destroyed, and then he ends with a poignant call to those who lost loved ones, "And the letters came. People who addressed us thru our lives / They left us gasping. And in tears / In the same mud in the terrible ground" (Opper 10-12). By using the title "Survival: Infantry" but not using specific language relating to combat, Opper is able to bring out the readers existing ideas about the glory of combat and the excitement of survival, only to surprise the reader when there is no glory and nothing survives. This technique allows him to frame his poem without using language which explicitly shows (and thus would have a tendency to accidentally glorify) war.

While Stephen Crane and George Oppen may seem like somewhat strange poems to compare, their cynical take on two different wars lets the reader know something about portrayals of war in the 20th Century. While Crane uses relatively explicit irony within the words of his poem (which formally lacks a title) Oppen takes a different course and uses the irony to attach negative thoughts relating to war to a title which one would imagine glorified martial activities. Both of these men saw the world falling to pieces within a country that was enthusiastically endorsing the move into carnage and mayhem. Both men understood what so many are yet to learn: war is never kind.


Crane, Stephen. "War Is Kind." Poet's Corner. Web. 31 Mar. 2010.
Oppen, George. "Survival: IInfantry." The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Ed. Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O'Clair. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003. 835. Print.

The Modern Indian in Midnight's Children

Following the collapse of European empires there was no chance of returning to the pre-European status quo. Newly independent states had been transformed by European culture, technology, and government, leaving new states in a position to enter a modern world shaped by Europe instead of returning to pre-European traditions. While the betel-nut chewers, who represent a chorus in the novel, represent continuity in the Indian subcontinent, they are not representatives of the new India. The idea of creating a coherent Indian identity required an abandonment of traditional tribal culture and strict Muslim ethics. While these changes are welcomed by the European-educated, they represent an uncertain future for traditionalists.

From the very beginning of Midnight's Children the conflict between Aadam Aziz's European education and traditional Kashmiri culture is a central feature of the novel. His emotions are tied to the landscape even before he knows how society will react to his return, "He also felt--inexplicably--as though the old place resented this educated, stethoscoped return" (Rushdie 5). Where Aadam Azis is curious about his place as a modern man in a timeless and ancient valley, the ferryman Tai is hostile to everything representing modernity. The narrator describes that, "to the ferryman, the bag represents Abroad; it is the alien thing, the invader, progress" (16). To the traditional peasantry modernity represented in a threat because they lacked the skills or resources to take advantage of it. While paying someone to manually push a raft across a lake is not efficient in the modern world, it is the only skill which Tai has and he does not want to see that traditional culture leave.

Aadam's foreign notions also complicate his relationship with his very traditional Muslim wife. Aadam ponders the change that traveling abroad has created in many Indians, "the Indians have fought for the British; so many of them have seen the world by now, and been tained by Abroad. They will not easily go back to the old world" (32). This would become one of the defining features of newly independent states forced to make a decision between modernity and tradition. To Naseem these trips abroad create a serious moral problem in the men, "I know you Europe-returned men. You find terrible women and then you try to make us girls be like them" (32). However, her dramatics are put into context by the fact that a large part of her anger is directed at the fact that her husband simply requested her to move during sex. Aadam gives a directive to his wife when he can no longer stand her traditionalism, "Forget about being a good Kashmiri girl. Start thinking about being a modern Indian woman" (33). The problem is that Naseem does not desire to be a "modern Indian woman," were it even possible to define such a thing.

While these changes seem more like personal issues for the characters in the novel, the scale is greatly increased when they are applied to conditions of the entire nation. The very fabric of India was falling around them, such as "the untouchables being touched" (84). While this seems like an obvious step in favor of progress to the modern reader, to traditional Hindus this would have been shocking. Further, there were great difficulties apportioning land previously nationalized by the British, particularly in a society where there had traditionally been such a strong caste system and in a time when Socialism was very fashionable. Joseph D'Costa is skeptical of independence at all, stating, "This independence is for the rich only; the poor are being made to kill each other like flies" (120). It is difficult to know how the average Indian fared under British rule in India; the statistic has been given that in 1900 the life expectancy in India was 20, which is appallingly low. However, one has to imagine that given starvation, disease, and violence that Indians had never enjoyed a particularly long life expectancy.


Midnight's Children is full of characters traveling through an ambivalent new world free of British rule. The problems with this are shown repeatedly, such as illiteracy, ignorance, a resistance to change, and tribal loyalties. Have the characters in the novel advanced to such a point that home rule is desirable? Further, is it even desirable for an area as large as India, full of varying ethnicities and religion, to be a single state? While Indians by-and-large embraced independence it can be difficult to handle something one has nothing had before.

Rushdie, Salman. Midnight's Children. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin, 1991. Print.