Response to Reading Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance
I chose to read Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance, a story about four very different people living in India during a period of great civil unrest known as The State of Emergency. I found this book incredibly easy to get into because of the way Mistry writes. He seems to create the story around you, placing you in the setting as a viewer, involving you in the lives of the characters. Mistry clearly outlines the political and economic situation of India at the time, further emphasizing the plight of the main characters.
The first thing I noticed about Mistry’s writing style is his incredible ability to make you feel like you’ve actually shifted to another country, another continent even. His descriptive ability allowed me to imagine so many little details in the book, the smell of the street, the loud, boisterous vendors screaming their slogans as pedestrians walk by. You really get to feel as if you are witnessing the events as they unfold. The first part of the book explained the story but then it promptly switched to brief histories of each of the main characters before introducing them to the main plot. Mistry gives you the diverse backgrounds of all the main characters, using his beautifully descriptive language to make even simple things brilliant. The story takes place in an “unnamed City by the Sea” somewhere in India, exploring the lives of four very different people. Mistry creates characters that come from a very different world than I’m used to, making the story all the more interesting for me. Mistry included many cultural references in the story that I looked up so that I knew a little more about the basis of the story. Before I had read this novel I had no knowledge of the State of Emergency (having been born after it took place) so I found reading about it from the perspective of a person experiencing it, very informative.
This first section of the novel displays the interaction of the characters quite differently form the interaction they eventually have. All the characters are stiff and formal with each other. It is not until the next section of the book that they start to warm up to each other.
Reading Response Journal #2
The beginning of this section marks a change in the book as all the main characters are now living under one roof and their attitude...
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...of writing impressive and elegant without being over the top. He takes you on a roller coaster of emotions throughout the novel, leading you from happiness to depression in the blink of an eye. This book taught me something I had already vaguely known, that the world can be a very cruel place. The problem was I had never truly imagined it this cruel and abusive. It broke my heart and completely re-enforced my plans as to what I’m doing after I finish university. I plan on working for th UN in underdeveloped countries, focussing on social interactions and medical services. The way Mistry wrote this book affected me deeply. I think the theme of this book was about the power of human perseverance and the ability of the downtrodden to always look for ward to the next day with optimism. The four characters in this novel face tremendous ordeals and yet they still manage to maintain a small amount of control over their lives. Mistry writes in such a way that you can see their vulnerability, but you can also see how mentally and physically strong they are. They find comfort in the small things we take for granted, and as such they truly show their faith in a society that is failing them.
of how politics and the quest for personal power interact with a major natural disaster on one of the worlds's major rivers was quite rivetting. Once started, I found the book hard to put down.
In the first chapter of the book we are introduced to one of the main
Capote transitions next into a reflective and somewhat didactic tone in the second chapter. The author begins to give the reader a more in-depth understanding of every character's situation and opinion. This chapter has a sequence of interviews with the townspeople which better illustrates the public ...
The student may find it useful to begin the paper with the following quote from the novel:
Can something as positive as peace, sadly, turn negative? Throughout the book Peace like a River by Leif Enger, a negative mood, surprisingly, is established. When the story itself does maintain a positive influence, it’s almost as if the negativity takes a higher dominance. In this novel, narrated by the middle child, Reuben, who has severe asthma, the reader is introduced to the very unique Land family. Jeremiah, the father and main provider of this family has three children, two boys and a girl; Reuben and Davy are both older than their sister Swede. However, Helen, the wife of Jeremiah and the mother of the three kids, left the family when Jeremiah turned his career path around to become a school janitor. The Land family, however, is plagued by trouble, inducing the negativity of the novel. It all started when Jeremiah was cleaning the boys locker-room after a football game; later, he heard screaming coming from the girls locker-room. When Jeremiah arrived at the scene, he witnessed a brutal sight; Davy's girlfriend Dolly was being abused by Israel Finch and Tommy Basca, two of the town bullies. In an act of resolution, Jeremiah beat the boys up, but the high school dropouts swore revenge. To get away from the brutal scene, the Land family then takes a trip to where Jeremiah grew up, North Dakota. Jeremiah's good friend August Schultz rented the family a farmhouse for a couple of days, helping the Lands in a time of need. Nonetheless, upon arrival back to their house, the Lands found their front door tarred, unquestionably the work of Finch and Basca. More sadness induces when the two bullies kidnap Swede on her birthday, although she was returned, Swede is later seen with bruises and doesn't seem quite the...
Following from the hierarchal system of 1984, Orwell also included ideologies of complete control. He created one dictator, Big Brother and a wide...
Overall, this was a great book because I finished it in two days. It was filled with suspense, action, valuable themes, and it made me feel a wide variety of emotions. The book explored the value of family, the corruption of government, and the fundamental question of “Should one follow the order if it’s immoral to one?”
...ution of slavery in America began with the European colonialists who established their colonies in various parts of America. The Europeans then starting exploring on a number of farming activities that required labor. This gave rise to slave trade through which the Europeans could obtain cheap slaves from Africa, then transport them to America. The slaves resisted being sold into slavery but most of them ended up suffering as a result of it.The history of slavery of America has undergone a number of shifts characterized by a number of abolitionist movements that played a key role in liberating slaves and their future generations.
Slavery or slave labor was an event that began in the soon-to-be new land of the United States of America in 1619, when the first English colony received their first shipment of African people that they were forced to become their servants.
Slavery has been a part of human history since the beginning of time. It predates any known written records of Ancient civilization. The oldest civilizations know to enforce and allow slavers are, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient China, along with a few less old ones, The Roman Empire and the American Colonies to name a few.
Howe, Irving, and George Orwell. 1984 Revisited Totalitarianism in Our Century. New York: Harper & Row, 1983.
It is easier to grasp a meaning of this line further along in the book.
As the boys witness death and mutilation all around them, any preconceived notion about the indoctrination, "the enemy" and the "rights and wrongs" of the conflict disappear, leaving them angry and perplexed. The story is not about heroism but about toil and futility and the divide between the idea of war and the real life and its values. The selected passages are full of violence and death and loss and a kind of perpetual suffering and terror that most of us have never and hopefully will never experience. Both authors ability to place the reader right there on the front line with the main character so vividly, not just in terms of what he physically experienced and witnessed All the complicated, intense and often completely numbed emotions that came along...
Slavery is the practise of treating people as human cargo and selling, buying and forcing them to work without a compensation for their service. Chattel slavery or traditional slavery is when a person is treated as the property of another. Slaves are inherited from parents or given as gifts. Forced labour is when people are forced to work for another without compensation for their services. Slavery was found 4000 years before the Christian era in Egypt to build pyramids and in Greece (mainly Athens and Sparta). In the instance of slavery at the Cape, slaves contributed greatly to the building up of the colony and to the economic state of the slave owners and their country of origin.
Rohinton Mistry’s “Such A Long Journey” is the story of turbulent life of Gustad Noble and his family, who lives in Khodadad Building north of Bombay. The story portrays the series of events such as his son Sohrab’s refusal to attend Indian Institution of Technology, hardships faced by his friends and family, political turmoil and chaos caused by the war between India and Pakistan. Gustad transforms from a stubborn, materialistic and awful person to an open-minded and more adaptive to circumstantial changes in his life. Ultimately, Gustad Noble journeys to a greater understanding of his role as a father, friend and citizen of India.