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
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
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readers a dose of reality and human experience. People read literature and end up learning
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into the reader’s head without them knowing their ingesting something deep and true. The ups
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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...
Hanes, William Travis, and Frank Sanello. Opium Wars: the Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another. Naperville, IL: Source, 2002. Print.
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from sympathy to fear within the readers. However, out of all the notions and events that
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