Some authors have a certain purpose or purposes in their writing. These purposes usually deal with what that specific author believes in and is usually demonstrated somewhere in their lives. This specific belief is something they develop overtime just as anyone else does. Sometimes it’s not all specific about their beliefs but rather something they’ve learned about and would like to get out to people in a creative way such as writing short stories. At times an author has a purpose for writing a specific story or poem and doesn’t completely and clearly get their point across within the writing. Yet when the author is specific about what they would like to get across that’s usually their main focus. In A Devoted Son by Anita Desai, Anita Desai works to get some of her beliefs such as expressing the duality of human nature and that nothing is quite as simple as it seems. In A Devoted Son Anita Desai does follow through with her original plan for the story for the following reasons.
To begin, Anita Desai states that he would like to capture the duality of human life which is presented in her short story A Devoted Son. Anita Desai does a great job of showing how there is a double in each person’s life. It can even be argued that in every aspect of a person’s life there is duality. In a personality there can be several sides to the way a person acts for example around certain people, a setting, and expectations and so on. In this short story the duality of the young man named Rakesh’s life is demonstrated in a certain setting and time in his life. In the beginning of the story the young man is very respectful to his father named Varma he does everything his father asks him to do in life and will not disrespect his father even if it w...
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...olate as a cell, and take the evening air out in the garden” page 1425. Rakesh now has his turn to take care of his father and his father is also described as an old man who can barely walk now as compared to what he had been a young proud man of Rakesh.
In the end, Anita Desai did a great job of expressing what she wanted to express in her writing. Through her idea of duality in life and human nature being described in the middle of the story of Rakesh and his new confidence and loss of respect for his father and rather a duty to him. To the way Varma resists his son trying to take care of him and the complexity of what the way his son is treating him really means to him. Then finally advancing to how the roles in life change for the father and son as life goes on and how that also has to do with the duality in life.
Works Cited
A Devoted Son by Anita Desai
A child’s upbringing can severely affect who they are later in life. In particular, their transition into adulthood and the way they are initiated into this new stage of their lives is essential to their adult personalities. In “The Demoness Kali”, Shyam Selvadurai writes a story in which formal features of initiation are placed upon its main character, Shivan to demonstrate his coming of age. Through separation, mentors, and tests, Shivan is able to initiate into adulthood.
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