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THE GRASS IS SINGING

- DORIS LESSING
Brief Biography of Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing was born in Iran to British parents; her father, Captain Alfred Tayler, was a clerk
at the Imperial Bank of Persia. Shortly after her birth the family moved to Southern Rhodesia
(now Zimbabwe), where Lessing’s father hoped to become wealthy through farming. However,
he failed to succeed in this endeavour and the family remained poor. Lessing left school at 13
and home at 15, moving to the capital of Southern Rhodesia, Salisbury (now Harare), where
she worked as a telephone operator, got married, and had two children. Lessing divorced her
first husband and married again, having another child and then a second divorce. In 1949
moved to London with her youngest son, armed with only £20 and the manuscript of her first
novel, The Grass is Singing. Here, Lessing became active in communist, anti-racist, and anti-
nuclear activism. As a result, she was placed under surveillance by the British Intelligence
Services for 20 years. The Grass is Singing was published in 1950. She went on to publish over
50 more novels, some under the pseudonym Jane Somers. Lessing declined an OBE and a
Damehood due to their association with the British Empire. In 2007, she was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Literature. She died at home in 2013, at the age of 94.
Historical Context of The Grass is Singing
The Grass is Singing takes place in Zimbabwe, which at the time the novel is set was a British
colony known as Southern Rhodesia. In the pre-colonial era, Zimbabwe existed as a series of
advanced trade states, including the Kingdom of Mapungubwe, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe,
and the Kingdom of Mutapa. The Mutapa Kingdom was destroyed by Portuguese invaders in
the early 17th century, and was succeeded by the Rozwi Empire, which expelled the
Portuguese. In the early 19th century, Dutch farmers began to advance through the region,
seizing land from its black owners, and in the 1880s British settlers arrived with the British
South Africa Company (BSAC). The region was then named after Cecil Rhodes, the notorious
imperialist and founder of the BSAC, which ruled the territory between 1889 and 1923. In
1923, the region was annexed by the United Kingdom, and during the Second World War
Southern Rhodesian military units fought on the British side. Following the war, an economic
boom brought 200,000 white settlers to Southern Rhodesia between 1945-1970, most of whom
were working-class and immigrated directly from the United Kingdom. During the early 1950s,
African colonies’ demand for independence were becoming increasingly powerful, with novels
such as The Grass is Singing helping to advance the case for decolonization. However, the
region would not become independent until 1965, at which point it was subjected to sanctions
imposed by the United Nations at the request of the British.
The Grass is Singing Summary
The Grass is Singing is set in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during the 1940s. Mary
Turner, the wife of Dick Turner, has been murdered, and a “houseboy” has confessed to the
crime. Dick and Mary are poor and do not socialize with the other white settlers in their farming
district. When Mary’s body is discovered, the Turners’ neighbour, Charlie Slatter, sends a
note to the local police sergeant, Sergeant Denham. Denham then sends six native policemen
to the Turners’ farm, and shortly after they arrive the houseboy, Moses, turns himself in.
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Charlie drives to the Turners’ farm to find Moses in handcuffs, and puts Dick in the back of
his car.
Inside the house, Charlie’s assistant Tony Marston explains that he found Mary’s body on
the veranda. Sergeant Denham arrives, and he and Charlie question Tony. However, Tony
begins to feel that they are not actually interested in his testimony, and the interview ends
abruptly. The policemen take Mary’s body to the car, and Tony is left wondering whether he
should insist on telling Charlie and Sergeant Denham his theory about why Mary was killed.
Moses will be hanged no matter what happens, but Tony wonders if by staying silent he is
complicit in a “monstrous injustice.” The next day, Tony packs his things and leaves the
farming district. The trial takes place and it is decided that Moses murdered Mary while drunk
and hoped to steal valuables from her. Tony, meanwhile, briefly takes a job in copper mining,
before reluctantly ending up in an office job.
Chapter 2 begins with a description of the stores that are distributed throughout southern
Africa. They are simple establishments that sell food, clothes, and other necessities, operate as
local post offices, and usually house a bar. Mary’s father, an alcoholic, would spend their
family’s little money on liquor at the store, a fact that always caused arguments between Mary’s
parents. Mary’s older brother and sister died of dysentery when she was a child, and the period
of grief that followed was “the happiest time of her childhood,” when her parents briefly
stopped squabbling. Mary was eventually sent to boarding school and decided to leave home
at 16. Between the ages of 20 and 25, both Mary’s parents died, and she was thrilled to be left
completely alone. She lived in a club for young women and worked as a personal secretary at
an office.
As the years passed, Mary’s friends got married and had children, but Mary herself remained
single, happy, and carefree. She was in denial about aging, and still dressed in “little-girl
fashion.” She felt no desire to get married, but one day overheard some married friends of hers
gossiping cruelly about the fact that she was not married, and was horrified to realize that this
was what people thought of her. After this point, she briefly became engaged to a 55-year-old
widower, but called it off when he tried to have sex with her.
Soon after this, Mary meets Dick briefly at the cinema, during one of Dick’s brief visits to
town. Dick is a poor farmer whose bad luck has led his neighbours to nickname him “Jonah.”
He is resistant to the idea of getting married due to his poverty, but cannot stop thinking of
Mary. He works to the point of exhaustion over the next few months, and eventually appears
at Mary’s door asking to marry her. She agrees, and they marry two weeks later.
When Mary first arrives at Dick’s farm, she finds the house “shut and dark and stuffy,” and is
struck by the evidence of Dick’s intense loneliness. They have tea and engage in a polite but
awkward conversation. They have sex, which is not as terrible as Mary feared it would be,
although she also feels “nothing” during it. In the morning, Dick introduces Mary to his long-
time black house servant, Samson. While Dick clearly feels affection for Samson, Mary is
immediately affronted by Samson’s casual manner. Mary resolves to teach herself “kitchen
kaffir,” the simplified version of the native Shona language that white settlers use to
communicate with their black workers.
Mary uses her savings to purchase fabrics and other items for the house, and spends her days
sewing and painting the house. One day, she comes to believe that Samson stole raisins she
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was saving to make pudding and becomes hysterical; despite Dick’s protests, she insists on
taking the money out of Samson’s wages. Samson quits, which upsets Dick. They hire another
servant, but before long he quits as well. Then they find yet another servant, this time one who
is accustomed to working for white women and obeys Mary’s demands in a “blank, robotic”
manner. However, in a fit of emotion Mary forces the servant to spend hours scrubbing the
(already clean) zinc bathtub, making him work through his lunch break. Charlie and Mrs.
Slatter come over to visit; Mrs. Slatter is friendly to Mary, but Mary rebuffs her coldly. The
servant quits. A few days later, Charlie advises Dick to plant tobacco, but Dick is resistant to
this idea.
One day, on a rare visit to the local train station to pick up groceries, Dick and Mary encounter
a man who addresses Dick as “Jonah”; afterward, Dick bitterly admits that he borrowed money
from the man and still owes him £50. During this period, Dick goes through a series of
obsessions with keeping different animals on the farm; first bees, then pigs, and then turkeys.
All these experiments fail, and cause heated arguments between Dick and Mary. Dick begins
jokingly calling Mary “boss,” which infuriates her.
Dick eventually resolves to open a “kaffir store” on the farm, even though there is a kaffir store
nearby and thus it is unlikely that Dick’s store will make much money. He asks Mary to run
the store; at first Mary says she “would rather die,” but she eventually agrees. Mary finds the
native women who sit outside the store with their children disgusting and hates her time
working there. She begins to fantasize about running away and returning to her old life in the
town. One day, she notices that her old office has placed an ad for a shorthand typist. She packs
a suitcase and leaves the next day, asking Charlie to drive her to the train station.
Back in town, Mary visits the girls’ club where she used to live, but is told that they do not take
married women. At her old office, she is told that the typist position has been filled. Mary
returns to her hotel room and realizes she doesn’t have enough money to pay the bill. At this
moment, Dick arrives, and begs her to come home. Mary agrees.
At first Dick and Mary slip back into their previous routine; however, Dick soon becomes
severely ill with a fever. Charlie brings over a doctor, who rudely instructs Mary that she and
Dick must wire the house for mosquitoes and go on a three-month holiday to be restored back
to health. During this time, Mary begins supervising the farm workers while Dick is bedridden.
She takes a sambok with her, and when Moses (one of the farm workers) insists on getting a
drink of water, she strikes him across the face with it. She also withholds wages from the
workers who arrive late, causing some of them to quit on the spot. Back at the house, Mary
urges Dick to focus on growing tobacco so they will be able to make enough money to leave
the farm. Dick thinks about it for three days, before agreeing to start building tobacco barns.
Dick builds the tobacco barns, but in January there is a drought and the tobacco dies. Dick
cannot cover the expenses, and is forced to take out a loan in order to avoid declaring
bankruptcy. Mary’s health deteriorates. She begins to beg Dick for a child, but Dick refuses,
saying that they are too poor. Mary sinks further and further into misery, as does Dick, who
takes up chain-smoking. After another house servant leaves, Dick is forced to move Moses
from the field to the house, as no one else will agree to work for Mary. Mary develops a
fascination with Moses, watching him as he completes his work and even one day staring at
him while he washes himself outside. He stops what he is doing and stares back at her until she
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goes away. This infuriates Mary, who forces Moses to do a series of unnecessary tasks. She
asks Dick if they can fire Moses, but Dick angrily refuses.
Months pass, and Mary becomes increasingly depressed. One day, Moses tells her he is
quitting, and she bursts into tears, begging him to stay. Moses gives her a glass of water, tells
her to lie down on the bed, and covers her with her coat. He does not mention leaving again. A
new dynamic then emerges between them; Moses is much more informal and authoritative with
Mary, and Mary now feels completely under his power. During this period, Mary starts having
vivid nightmares, while Dick becomes ill with malaria. She dreams that Dick has died, that
Moses is touching her, and that her father is making sexual advances on her. In one dream,
Moses and her father morph into the same figure, and she wakes up screaming. Moses asks her
why she is afraid of him, and Mary replies in a hysterical voice that she is not afraid.
Meanwhile Dick and Mary’s neighbours have started spreading cruel gossip about them. One
day, Charlie comes over, and urges Dick to sell his farm. Charlie stays for dinner, where he
witnesses Moses and Mary’s familiar, flirtatious relationship. Charlie then takes Dick to one
side and sternly demands that he and Mary leave. Dick reluctantly agrees, and Charlie asks
Tony to start working on Dick’s farm in preparation to take over. While living on the Turners’
farm, Tony comes to believe that Mary has gone mad and needs to be treated by a psychologist.
One day, he catches Moses helping Mary to get dressed, and is stunned by the possibility that
they are having an affair. He decides to tell Dick to fire Moses, but Moses leaves that evening
and does not return.
Two nights before Dick and Mary are due to leave the farm, Mary wakes up suddenly. She
walks around the house in a state of paranoid delusion, swinging wildly between different
emotional states. She looks for Moses, convinced that he will “finish her” that night. Mary is
supposed to spend the next day packing, but accidentally falls asleep and wakes up in the late
afternoon. She suddenly feels compelled to go to the store, and finds Moses in there. She runs
away screaming and bumps into Tony, who gently tells her that he has suggested that Dick take
her to a doctor.
That night, Mary doesn’t eat supper with Tony and Dick. In bed, Dick tells her that she is ill,
and Mary responds that she has always been ill in her heart. After Dick is asleep, Mary gets up
and creeps around the house, convinced that Moses is there. She goes out to the veranda, where
she sees Moses in the distance. He comes toward her, puts a hand over her mouth, and stabs
her to death. Moses briefly considers claiming innocence, before resolving to turn himself in.
He waits outside the house until morning.
Themes
• Intimacy vs. Hatred
All the characters in The Grass is Singing maintain complex and ambivalent relationships to
one another. These relationships are invariably defined by feelings of both intimacy and hatred,
which—rather than cancelling each other out—are shown to exist side by side, creating intense
conflict and turmoil. The most significant example of this can be found in the relationship
between Mary and Moses. Mary has a severely racist, cruel attitude toward all black people,
and treats the black farm employees in a sadistic manner. She is especially antagonistic toward
Moses, constantly insulting him and forcing him to perform an endless series of pointless tasks.
At the same time, Mary is also fascinated by Moses, a fascination that she will not allow herself
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to openly acknowledge. Toward the end of the novel, it is revealed that she has been forcing
Moses to help her with intimate tasks such as getting dressed, leading Tony and Charlie to
believe that Mary and Moses are sleeping together. While Moses’s feelings toward Mary are
not stated explicitly, his hatred is made obvious by his resentful and defiant attitude toward
her. At the same time, he cannot escape the intimacy of the master/servant relationship that
inevitably binds him to her. Eventually, the coexistence of both this intense intimacy and hatred
reaches an explosive climax in which Moses kills Mary. This suggests that while the dynamic
of intimacy and hatred is inevitable in a colonial society, such a dynamic is unsustainable and
will eventually erupt into violence.
The relationship between Mary and Moses is far from the only one defined by intimacy and
hatred. Mary’s relationship to her husband, Dick, is similarly ambivalent, and both mirrors and
contrasts with her relationship with Moses. Like Moses, Dick is deferential to Mary, obeying
her wishes even when they conflict with his own desires. Mary feels more affection and respect
for Dick than she does for Moses, but is repulsed by him sexually and comes to regret marrying
him. The early intimacy in Mary and Dick’s relationship turns to hatred as Mary becomes
increasingly harsh and stubborn, while Dick is weakened due to poverty and illness. Although
Dick survives his illness, Mary has a dream in which he is dead, suggesting that part of her
may wish this were true, and that in some sense their relationship—like Mary’s relationship
with Moses—is too emotionally turbulent to survive. The combination of intimacy and hatred
is again shown to lead to death—first on a symbolic level, and then on a literal one.
It is not only intimacy with Dick that fills Mary with disgust. She seems to hate the idea of any
physical intimacy, and the narrator points out that, up until the point at which Moses pushes
her, Mary has never touched a native African. (Of course, after this point Mary does allow
Moses to touch her, such as when he helps her to get dressed. Mary’s willingness to consent to
touching Moses in these moments is part of the mystery of their relationship.) Mary’s extreme
resistance to physical intimacy is partially explained by moments at which she dreams of being
sexually abused by her father. When Mary dreams that Dick has died, the figure of Moses
comforting her transforms into Mary’s father, “menacing and horrible, who touched her with
desire.” This moment suggests that, due to being abused as a child, Mary cannot differentiate
between affection and violation. She thus comes to hate anyone who comes into intimate
contact with her, and even hates witnessing moments of intimacy between other people, such
as the black mothers and babies.
In a broader sense, the colonial landscape of Southern Rhodesia is also defined by currents of
intimacy and hatred that exist between the white colonizer and black indigenous populations.
Although built on a strict racial hierarchy, colonial societies nonetheless depend on intimate
interactions between the colonizers and the colonized. Examples of these moments of intimacy
include indigenous people serving as white people’s house servants, nannies, and prostitutes,
as well as the high levels of sexual violence perpetrated by the settler population (a
phenomenon that is briefly alluded to in the novel). All of the white characters express racist
hatred to some degree; even Tony, who is the least prejudiced of the white characters, is forced
to assimilate into the racist mindset that governs the lives of white Rhodesians. After coming
to suspect that Mary is having an affair with Moses, Charlie insists that Dick take Mary away
in order to separate her from Moses. Although Mary is not Charlie’s wife, he feels it is his
personal responsibility to prevent intimacy between the races, and in doing so protect the
colonial racial order.
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• Hierarchy and Authority

The Grass is Singing takes place in Zimbabwe (formerly known as Southern Rhodesia) during
the time of British colonial rule, and one of the most important themes of the novel is the way
in which society is organized according to hierarchies. During the time the novel is set, the
British socioeconomic class system remains extremely rigid, making it impossible for most
people living in the United Kingdom to move up the social ladder. However, in Rhodesia and
other colonies, even the poorest whites are still further up this ladder than the entire black
population. (The narrator also notes that English-speaking white Rhodesians are placed above
poor Dutch-descended Afrikaners: “‘Poor whites’ were Afrikaners, never British.”)
Living in the colonies also gave white Brits the chance to make money through exploiting
natural resources and the labour of the oppressed indigenous population. Every white person
in the novel is to some extent fixated on the desire to increase their standing in the
socioeconomic hierarchy. When this plan fails for Dick and he and Mary end up living in
poverty, he is left miserable, ashamed, and crippled by illness.
The overarching racial and socioeconomic hierarchy is not a simple system, but rather one
made up of an intricate web of smaller hierarchies that determine how much authority each
person is accorded and how they are supposed to behave in relation to one another. As a
woman, Mary is subservient to her husband, yet as a white person, she has authority over the
black workers employed on her land (and indeed over all black people). While Mary
enthusiastically wields and abuses the power she has over the black population, she often fails
to honour her inferior position to Dick.
Indeed, while every character in the novel is inescapably aware of the hierarchies that organize
society and of their place within these hierarchies, the characters also violate these hierarchies.
This happens when Mary attempts to run away from Dick in order to regain her independence,
and also when Moses continues to drink water after Mary orders him to go back to work.
However, arguably the most important violation of any hierarchy of power comes when Moses
kills Mary. In taking the life of a white woman, Moses commits the worst possible act in the
eyes of white colonizers. At the same time, when Mary’s murder is discussed at the beginning
of the book, the narrator notes that white people are not surprised by Moses’s act. Within the
white colonial mindset, black people are placed at the bottom of the social hierarchy and are
expected to behave in a “savage,” immoral manner. Regardless of how black people actually
behave, white people will treat them as if they are brutal and violent. This fact in itself invites
violence against white oppressors, and is thus one of the central (and tragic) paradoxes of
colonial society.
• Brutality vs. Civilization
he most common justification for colonialism is the argument that the colonizers are bringing
“civilization” to a primitive, brutal, and savage population. In today’s world, most people
acknowledge that at best this kind of thinking is naïve and patronizing, and at worst it is a
thinly-veiled disguise for the colonizers’ desire to abuse native people while gaining wealth
and power for themselves. It is certainly difficult to see how the white characters in the novel
are bringing “civilization” to the black population. While some white characters claim that they
are bettering native people by forcing them to work, this is not a particularly convincing excuse
for the harsh labour conditions to which they subject black workers.
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There is also evidence that the white characters are actually disturbed by black people who
assimilate into white culture and behave in a “civilized” manner. When Charlie is saluted by
two black policemen, he feels uncomfortable, and the narrator notes that he “could not bear the
half-civilized native.” Similarly, the narrator describes the self-assured satisfaction with which
white people greet the news that Moses killed Mary. These examples suggest that even though
colonizers claim that they seek to “civilize” the native population, in reality they do not truly
wish to welcome native people into their vision of civilization. Instead, they would rather that
natives continued to live up to the stereotype of brutality projected onto them by white people.
The white characters have different reasons for treating black people badly; for example,
while Dick is motivated by paternalistic feelings, Mary is more power-hungry and sadistic.
However, none of them seems to really be bringing “civilization” to the black population, even
while some of them—such as Dick—are convinced that they are doing so. In fact, the white
characters in the novel behave in a far more brutal manner than any of the black characters.
Even Moses’s murder of Mary is arguably not an act of brutality, but rather a reasonable
response to the experience of colonial oppression. The question of whether all violence is
immoral or whether some forms of violence can in fact be justified is not given a clear answer
within the novel. The reader is encouraged to feel at least some sympathy for Moses,
particularly after Mary ferociously injures him by whipping him across the face. Even if his
murder of Mary is judged to be immoral, there can be no denying that Moses’s act of brutality
is a response to the brutality to which he is subjected as a native person living under colonial
rule.
At the same time, the murder of Mary plays into the pre-established narrative that “white
civilization” is under threat in Southern Rhodesia (and the rest of the world). Many of the white
characters—and in particular Charlie—justify their actions as a way of defending white
civilization from the “brutality” of the natural landscape and indigenous population. Note that
at the time the novel was written, the British Empire was in the latter stage of disintegration, a
fact that caused great distress among white Brits living in colonized countries whose fates were
thrown into question. When Tony first arrives in Southern Rhodesia—before he has become
accustomed to the severe racism of the white Rhodesians—he notices that figures like Charlie
insistently deny that a white person can have a “human relationship” with a black person, and
that this denial is vital to ensuring the racial order keeping the colonizers in power. In this
sense, “white civilization” is not under threat from any external brutality, but rather from the
lie at the center of its colonial “civilizing” project.
• Independence, Isolation, and Exile
Life for white colonizers is defined by a certain kind of independence, isolation, and self-
imposed exile. The area in which Dick and Mary live is described as “a farming district, where
those isolated white families met only very occasionally, hungry for contact with their own
kind.” Even within this sparse community, the Turners are discussed “in the hard, careless
voices reserved for misfits, outlaws and the self-exiled.” The narrator explains that the reason
for this prejudice is simply that the Turners “kept to themselves.” The farming district in which
the Turners live is already isolated in the sense that the families living there are spread far apart
from one another; it is also isolated from the nearby town and, in a broader sense, from the
Turners’ homeland of England. It is thus remarkable that in this position, the Turners choose
to further isolate themselves by declining to interact with their neighbours. Furthermore, not
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only do they not socialize with other white people, but—like all colonizers—they eschew the
native population, treating their employees and other local black people with cruel disdain.
There is no doubt about the fact that, at least to some degree, both Dick and Mary enjoy their
isolation. Dick’s antisocial tendencies mean that he hates going to the cinema, where the
proximity to other audiences’ members makes him “uneasy.” Mary has a more ambivalent
relationship to isolation. At times it seems that she enjoys socializing with others and misses
interactions with other white people after marrying Dick, but she also harbours an antisocial
attitude that at times rivals her husband’s. While Dick is on friendly terms with several of the
black farm workers, Mary behaves with extreme, senseless cruelty to all black people, making
it almost impossible to form a connection to most people around her. Her increasing resentment
of Dick makes her wish she had never married, and she even goes so far as deciding to leave
him in order to return to her state of premarital independence. Somewhat paradoxically, it was
in this state of independence that Mary had a far more fulfilling social life. As a married
woman, she is cut off from her previous friendships and forbidden from returning to her old
job. For both Dick and Mary, marriage is lonely, and exacerbates their existing isolation as
white colonizers in Southern Rhodesia.
The exile that Dick and Mary experience in relation to their white neighbours is a microcosm
of the broader experience of exile that is inherent within the colonizer’s experience. The theme
of exiling yourself from your homeland is explored through the narrator’s reflections on Mary’s
sense of home: “For Mary, the word “Home,” spoken nostalgically, meant England, although
both her parents were South Africans and had never been to England.” While some characters,
such as Tony, move from England to Southern Rhodesia in their adult lives, other characters
like Mary are descendants of multiple generations of colonizers whose connection to their
“home” country is solely emotional, abstract, and symbolic. Mary has never even been to
England, and thus the country cannot really be “home” to her; at the same time, the narrator
notes elsewhere that “she had never become used to the bush, never felt at home in it.” In order
to maintain their superior position within the racial hierarchy of colonial society, white people
such as Mary must continue to insist on their disconnection from the country in which they live
and cling to the fantasy of attachment to the distant “home” of England. Yet in actuality this
does nothing but increase Mary and other white characters’ feeling of isolation, as they are left
with a sense of having no home at all.
• Femininity, Sexuality, and Maternity
While most of the novel’s major themes relate to issues of race and class in the colonial
environment, gender and sexuality also play an important role. Lessing’s exploration of gender
mostly centers around Mary, and the way in which (white) femininity becomes a source of
conflict in the world of the novel. Before marrying Dick, Mary epitomizes a modern,
cosmopolitan form of femininity; she is independent, sociable, and pretty, and is described by
the narrator as “one of the girls.” Indeed, in this stage of her life Mary is shown to be girlish
and even rather infantile; the narrator notes that “she still wore her hair little-girl fashion on
her shoulders, and wore little-girl frocks in pastel colors.” Her childishness is also shown by
the fact that she is resistant to marriage, a disposition that only changes when she overhears
friends gossiping in a disapproving manner about the fact that she is not married. This event
highlights the way in which femininity is policed in society. While in her youth Mary lives a
relatively free and independent existence, it is not considered appropriate for this state of
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freedom to last, and eventually she is coerced into getting married despite the fact that her
impression of marriage is “poisoned” by her parents’ unhappy marriage, Mary’s father’s
alcoholism, and his sexual abuse of Mary when she was a child.
Mary’s marriage to Dick turns to disaster for a number of reasons. She feels disgusted by
having sex with him, while he is resistant to having a child on account of their poverty.
However, arguably the biggest issue lies in the fact that Mary does not wish to conform to the
obedient, subservient role of a wife that was expected in this era. She is more authoritative and
stubborn than Dick, who feels emasculated by the financial failures of the farm and by his
series of illnesses. Moreover, while overseeing the black farm workers Mary is far more severe
and sadistic than Dick. Mary’s cruelty might emerge from the fact that she fails to live up to
feminine ideals of gentleness and nurture—but on the other hand, her cruelty could also be
seen as coherent with the ideal of white femininity, and white colonial femininity in particular.
White women occupy a perverse position of power and powerlessness within racist society.
While they are oppressed on account of their gender, they are oppressors within the racial order
(and particularly because racist thought puts such an emphasis on protecting white femininity
from “brutal” black masculinity). The narrator makes it clear that Mary takes out her feelings
of powerlessness and frustration on the black workers around her, especially Moses. In this
sense, white femininity can become even more vicious than white masculinity within the
context of colonial society.
The novel also portrays sexuality and maternity not as natural, pleasurable aspects of life, but
as fraught experiences that create anxiety and conflict within the lives of the characters. As
stated above, Dick is resistant to having a child, and views the prospect of becoming a parent
as an additional economic burden that he cannot afford to bear. Meanwhile, Mary’s desire to
have a baby takes on a strange form. She hopes that having a child will give her a sense of
purpose and fill the void of uselessness and meaninglessness that characterizes her life on the
farm. However, she is disgusted by the lived reality of maternity, particularly when she
witnesses the maternal attachment between black mothers and their children. The sight of black
women nursing their babies makes her “blood boil,” and she compares these babies to
“leeches.” Mary’s extreme sense of disgust at breastfeeding is closely related to her racist
detachment from the native people living around her. This in turn suggests that the experience
of being a colonizer is so unnatural and toxic that it distorts people’s relationship to their own
humanity.
Repulsed by sexuality, maternity, and socialization in general, Mary becomes increasingly
mentally unstable. The nightmares in which she experiences both desire for Moses and the
terrifying memory of her father’s sexual abuse point to the way in which she has been forced
to suppress her feelings in order to conform to the ideal of white femininity. This repression
ultimately cannot hold, and causes Mary both to treat people around her with extreme cruelty
and to lose her grip on reality. In this sense, white femininity is presented as being a potentially
poisonous and dangerous ideal.
Major Characters
• Mary Turner
The novel begins with Mary Turner’s death, and the plot largely revolves around her character.
The daughter of white South African-born parents, Mary’s childhood is blighted by her father’s
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alcoholism and her mother’s endless misery. (There is also a strong suggestion that Mary’s
father sexually abused her, although this is never stated explicitly; however, it is made clear
that events from her childhood leave her repulsed by sex.) Once Mary’s parents die, she
embarks on a joyful and fulfilling life in an unnamed town, working as a secretary, living in a
club for single women, and attending social events every night. Mary marries Dick Turner as
a result of social pressure, and it is clear almost immediately that she is ill-suited to Dick’s rural
life. She is a strong-willed, independent, and remarkably feminist woman who resents having
to live on someone else’s terms. However, the biggest source of conflict in Mary’s life comes
from her treatment of native people. For reasons that are never made entirely clear, Mary’s
racism is unusually intense and sadistic, even for a white South African. At the same time, she
harbours a perverse fascination with native people, and particularly Moses, a farm worker she
strikes with a sambok and with whom, two years later, she develops an intimate, possibly
sexual relationship. Mary suffers several nervous breakdowns over the course of the novel and
by the final chapter is severely mentally incapacitated. Despite (or perhaps because of) this,
she accurately predicts the fact that Moses will murder her.
• Dick Turner
Dick Turner is Mary’s husband. Born in the suburbs of Johannesburg, Dick trains as a vet in
his youth before using a government grant to buy a small farm. Dick is kind and principled,
and described by Mary as “a good man.” However, he is an extraordinarily unsuccessful
farmer. Many people—including Dick himself—interpret his failures as the result of bad luck,
and several of Dick’s neighbours nickname him “Jonah,” the name sailors give for someone
who brings bad luck to a ship (after the Biblical character Jonah, who was swallowed by a
whale). Over the course of the novel, however, it becomes clear that much of Dick’s “bad luck”
is in fact the result of irrational fantasies and poor decisions he makes about his farm. Toward
the end of the novel, Dick becomes weak and is often sick, a physical manifestation of his weak
will. After Mary is murdered, Dick goes mad.
• Moses
Moses is a native man educated in a missionary school. He has a large, muscular physique and
is employed by Dick as a farm worker. During Dick’s first illness, when Mary takes over as
overseer of the farm workers, she strikes Moses across the face with a sambok for what she
perceives as rudeness. Although Moses is not actually rude in reality, he is not afraid of Mary
and refuses to abide by the social conventions governing relationships between native people
and white settlers. We learn fairly little about Moses’s inner life, but it seems that, perhaps due
to his education, he is especially aware of the injustices of colonialism and willing to stand up
to white people. The relationship he develops with Mary toward the end of the novel appears
somewhat affectionate, however it is never made clear why Moses behaves so kindly to
someone who has treated him so badly. At the end of the novel, he approaches Mary on
the veranda and stabs her to death. He waits under a nearby tree until morning, when he turns
himself in; although we never learn his final fate, the other characters suggest that it is almost
certain he will be hanged.
• Charlie Slatter
Charlie Slatter is a neighbour of the Turners, and thinks of himself as Dick’s “mentor.” A
working-class Englishman who previously worked as a grocer in London, he made a fortune
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through tobacco farming in Southern Rhodesia. He is at times a good friend to Dick, and seems
to genuinely have Dick’s interests at heart. However, he is also self-interested and strategic,
and much of his support for Dick is secretly rooted in the fact that he wants to take over Dick’s
farm to increase his own profits. Furthermore, Charlie is exceptionally invested in maintaining
the racial hierarchy of Southern Rhodesia, which leads him to force Dick and Mary to leave
the farm after he comes to believe Mary is having an affair with Moses. After Mary is
murdered, Charlie conspires with Sergeant Denham to cover up Mary’s relationship with
Moses in order to protect the reputation of the white race.
• Tony Marston
Tony Marston is a young, well-educated Englishman who has recently moved to Southern
Rhodesia after being inspired by his cousin’s success in tobacco farming. Tony holds the
racially “progressive” ideas that are popular in England, and is more sensitive than the other
characters in the novel. At the same time, he is also keen to conform to the norms of the society
around him, and his progressive ideas are shown to be rather flimsy, particularly after he comes
to believe that Mary and Moses are having an affair. After Mary’s murder, Tony abruptly
leaves the farm and ends up working in an office, precisely the kind of work he moved to
Southern Rhodesia to avoid.
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THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME

-MARK HADDON
Plot Overview
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time takes place in the year 1998 in and around
the town of Swindon, England. The fifteen-year-old narrator of the story, Christopher John
Francis Boone, discovers the slain body of his neighbour’s poodle, Wellington, on the
neighbour’s front lawn one evening and sets out to uncover the murderer. His investigation is
at times aided, and at other times hampered, by the mild form of autism he lives with. After
Christopher hits a policeman in a misunderstanding at the scene of the crime, the police take
Christopher into custody. They release Christopher with only a stern warning, under the
condition that he promises to them and to his father not to look into the murder any further.
Christopher chronicles his investigation in a book—the book we are reading—as part of a
school assignment. Ignoring repeated warnings from his father, Christopher investigates the
crime scene and conducts interviews with the residents of his block. He uncovers a more
tangled plot than was first apparent when he discovers that his father and the owner of the slain
dog, Mrs. Shears, had a romantic affair. He subsequently learns that their affair began in
reaction to another relationship, one carried on between Mr. Shears and Christopher’s mother,
before she disappeared from Christopher’s life.
At school, Christopher prepares for an A-level math exam that will enable him to attend a
university, a feat no other child at his school has managed. He also continues to work on his
book. Upon returning home one afternoon, Christopher accidentally leaves his book in plain
view on the kitchen table. His father reads it, becomes angry, and confiscates it. Later,
Christopher searches for the book and uncovers a series of letters, hidden in a shirt box in his
father’s closet, addressed to him from his supposedly dead mother. The letters chronicle a life
that his mother has continued to lead with Mr. Shears in London and contain repeated requests
for Christopher to respond. In shock, Christopher passes out in his bedroom surrounded by the
evidence of his father’s deception. When Father comes home and realizes what has happened,
he breaks down in tears. He apologizes for his lies, explaining that he acted out of a desire to
protect Christopher from the knowledge of his mother’s abandonment of the family.
Christopher’s father also admits to killing Wellington after an argument with Mrs. Shears, his
lover.
Christopher, now terrified of his father and feeling he can no longer trust him, sneaks out of
the house and travels to London to live with his mother. During a harrowing journey, he copes
with and overcomes the social fears and limitations of his condition, dodges police, and almost
gets hit by a train. His arrival at his mother’s flat comes as a total surprise to her, as she had no
idea that Christopher’s father had been withholding her letters. Christopher settles in for a time
at his mother and Mr. Shears’s flat, but friction caused by his presence shortly results in his
mother’s decision to leave Mr. Shears to return to Swindon. Christopher moves into a new
apartment with his mother and begins to receive regular visits from his father. When
Christopher’s pet rat Toby dies, Christopher’s father gives Christopher a puppy. At school,
Christopher sits for his A-level math exam and receives an A grade, the best possible score.
The novel ends with Christopher planning to take more A-level exams in physics and further
math, and then attend a university in another town. He knows that he can do all of this because
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he solved the mystery of Wellington’s murder, was brave enough to find his mother, and wrote
the book that we have read.
Plot Analysis
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time tells the story of Christopher Boone’s
investigation that leads him to uncover a variety of family secrets and eventually struggle
against the personal, developmental limitations on his independence. In the novel’s opening
scene, Christopher finds the body of Mrs. Shears’ poodle, Wellington, with a garden fork stuck
through its body. This gruesome discovery becomes the plot’s inciting incident, as Christopher
makes it his mission to discover who murdered Wellington. Christopher’s father staunchly
opposes his investigation, insisting that Christopher stay out of other people’s business. At first,
this command seems like natural, parental advice, as Christopher lacks the social skills
necessary to navigate difficult situations, especially with people who are not aware of his
special needs. When the police officer grabs Christopher, for example, Christopher strikes the
officer and spends a few hours in jail. The officer lets him off with a warning, but a similar
episode in the future could have more devastating consequences. Other adults in Christopher’s
life, such as his teacher Siobhan, seem to agree that Christopher should refrain from
investigating Wellington’s murder.
Against the advice of his father, Christopher continues with the investigation because he is
deeply concerned with the truth, a fixation that is not so much moral as it is an intense need for
structure and security. Facts that are verifiably true, like mathematical proofs, are a comfort to
Christopher. Things that are untrue or more nebulous in meaning—like imagination,
metaphors, and interpersonal relationships—distress Christopher to the point of debilitation.
Christopher’s motivations are at dramatic odds with his father’s, as his father has been lying to
Christopher for a very long time. Not only did Christopher’s father kill Wellington, but he also
told Christopher that his mother is dead, when she has really been living in London with Mr.
Shears the last two years. Christopher’s father is naturally terrified that his highly intelligent
son will uncover the long chain of deception that led to murdering Wellington. When his father
discovers Christopher’s book, finding that Christopher was growing closer to the truth, his
father becomes unhinged, throws the book in the garbage, curses at Christopher, and strikes
him.
Christopher’s relentless, obsessive nature and the extent of his father’s deceit come to a head
when Christopher searches for the book in his father’s room, and finds it hidden in a box that
also contains recent letters from his mother. Reading these letters, Christopher discovers that
she left their family because she believed she was not a good mother, and she lives in London
with Mr. Shears. The information is too much for Christopher to process, and he vomits all
over himself and passes out in the middle of his father’s bedroom. When his father discovers
Christopher with the letters and realizes that he can no longer hide the truth from his son, he
confesses to killing Wellington, and apologizes for all the years of deception. However,
because truth, structure, and rules are so important to Christopher, their relationship is
irreparably altered. Believing he is in danger with his father, Christopher decides he has no
choice but to go live with his mother in London, and leaves to find her.
This search turns into a harrowing journey for Christopher, who is terrified of strangers and
finds unknown places overwhelming. After many hours of wrong turns, turbulent interactions
with strangers, and overwhelming sights and sounds, the climax of the novel occurs when
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Christopher overcomes his personal limitations and arrives at his mother and Mr. Shears’ flat.
His arrival upsets both parties, as Mr. Shears has no patience for Christopher’s needs, and his
mother had no idea that Christopher thought she was dead. Soon after, Christopher and his
mother return to live in Swindon, and Christopher completes his A-level mathematics exam, a
goal he relentlessly fixated upon, despite the inconvenience the exam caused his mother.
Emboldened by the success of his investigation, his courageous solo trip to London, and his
exemplary grade on the exam, Christopher feels confident about his future and his capacity for
more independence. Although Christopher’s version of the conclusion is uplifting, the wide
gap between his intellectual and emotional capacities and his demonstrated inability to
accurately interpret situations leave the reader feeling uncertain about Christopher’s new life
in Swindon with two impulsive parents who despise each other.
Themes
• Social Disorder
Christopher’s condition affects the way he connects and communicates with others. Although
his IQ appears above average, Christopher’s experiences and interactions are very limited by
his developmental disorder. In the first half of the novel, the majority of Christopher’s
interactions are with people who know Christopher very well and understand his unique needs.
Although Christopher’s father becomes easily angry, he builds his entire life around
accommodating Christopher’s disorder and obviously has an inexhaustible supply of love for
his son. Siobhan, Christopher’s teacher, is specially trained to help Christopher navigate the
demands of life. Even Christopher’s neighbour, Mrs. Alexander—who does not play a major
role in his life—seems to know him well enough to exhibit patience and adjust her expectations
according to his condition. For the most part, Christopher does not socialize beyond this small
handful of adults, and any exceptions tend to be catastrophic, such as when he is arrested for
striking a police officer who touches him. Christopher’s social circle is extremely restricted for
a fifteen-year-old boy, and these social limitations offer a glimpse into the limited opportunities
he will likely face as an adult, despite his many talents, as the bulk of the population is ill-
equipped to understand and accommodate Christopher.
The range of Christopher’s interactions expands when he travels to London by himself, and
this journey underground offers a more vivid glimpse into just how harrowing the world can
be to someone like Christopher, and how much the world misunderstands him. For example,
Christopher has an extreme aversion to physical touch. At school and home, people accept
Christopher’s aversion and know to keep their distance. Christopher and his father even
develop a special “hug,” which involves holding up their palms and touching fingertips, like a
secret handshake to show affection in a way that doesn’t upset Christopher. In public with
strangers, Christopher resorts to barking like a dog to keep people away from him. When he
rocks, groans, or hides on a luggage rack for hours at a time, people mock or yell at him.
Although Christopher has loving parents and a highly trained, compassionate teacher, his
journey to London demonstrates the obstacles he will face as he grows into an adult and seeks
his independence.
• Logic
Because Christopher struggles to understand his emotions and the emotional worlds of others,
his worldview and means of expression rely almost entirely on logic. Christopher’s logic-based
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perspective both helps and hinders him in his murder investigation, as well as in his life. In the
context of the investigation, logic helps Christopher analyse his observations and draw
reasonable conclusions, like the fact that Wellington was probably killed by someone who
knew him, and whoever killed Wellington had a personal grievance with Mrs. Shears, which
turns out to be incredibly true. Furthermore, Christopher is gifted in mathematics and physics,
and he believes these proficiencies will create opportunities for him in the future, such as
attending university and becoming a scientist.
The challenges that come with Christopher’s extreme dependence on logic are evident when
he processes difficult information. For instance, when his father tells Christopher that his
mother died of a heart attack, the only emotion Christopher reports is surprise. He’s surprised
because “Mother was only 38 years old and heart attacks usually happen to older people,” so
he asks his father what kind of heart attack she had. In this extremely logical response, there
exists a noticeable lack of what society would consider “normal” emotional reactions, such as
sadness and anger, and the effect is eerie and disconcerting to the reader, as well as to
Christopher’s father, who simply remarks it is not “the moment to be asking questions like
that.” Nevertheless, Christopher’s logical approach to life also provides an interesting contrast
to his parents, who often behave impulsively and irrationally, according to whichever emotion
they experience in the moment. Although Christopher did not have the “appropriate” response
to the news of his mother’s death, he would also never become so angry at someone that he
would stab their dog with a garden fork. The contrast between Christopher’s and his father’s
use of emotion and logic prompts the reader to rethink society’s expectations for our
behaviours.
• The Struggle to Become Independent
Christopher’s goal in the novel resembles that of many teenage protagonists in coming-of-age
stories: to become independent and find his role in the world. Because of his condition,
Christopher cannot be as independent as he would like. Since he has trouble understanding
other people, dealing with new environments, and making decisions when confronted with an
overload of new information, for instance, he has difficulty going places by himself. When he
feels frightened or overwhelmed, he has a tendency to essentially shut down, curling himself
into a ball and trying to block out the world around him. Christopher, however, still has the
typical teenage desire to do what he wants and take care of himself without anyone else telling
him what to do. As a result, we see him rebelling against his father in the novel by lying and
disobeying his father’s orders. We also see this desire for independence in Christopher’s dream
of being one of the few people left on Earth, in which no authority figures are present, and in
his planning for college, where he wants to live by himself.
Christopher’s struggle to become independent primarily involves him gaining the self-
confidence needed to do things on his own and moving beyond his very rigidly defined comfort
zone. Solving Wellington’s murder figures into his efforts to be independent in that it forces
Christopher to speak with a number of people he doesn’t know, which he finds uncomfortable,
and it gives him confidence in his ability to solve problems on his own. The A-level math test
also represents an avenue to independence for Christopher. By doing well on the test,
Christopher can use the test to eventually get into college, allowing him to live on his own.
Finally, Christopher’s harrowing trip to London serves as his greatest step toward
independence. The trip epitomizes everything Christopher finds distressing about the world,
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such as dealing with social interactions, navigating new environments, and feeling overloaded
with information. By overcoming these obstacles, he gains confidence in his ability to face any
challenge on his own.
• Subjectivity
Christopher’s condition causes him to see the world in an uncommon way, and much of the
novel allows the reader to share Christopher’s unique perspective. For instance, although the
novel is a murder mystery, roughly half the chapters in the book digress from this main plot to
give us Christopher’s thoughts or feelings on a particular subject, such as physics or the
supernatural. To take one example, he tells us about the trouble he has recognizing facial
expressions and the difficulty he had as a child understanding how other people respond to a
given situation, explaining his preference for being alone that we see throughout the novel. As
the story progresses, the book gradually departs from the murder-mystery plot and focuses
more on Christopher’s character, specifically his reaction to the revelation that his mother never
died but rather left the family to live with another man while his father lied about the situation.
Throughout these events, the reader typically understands more about Christopher’s situation
than Christopher does. When Christopher discovers the letters from his mother hidden in his
father’s closet, for example, Christopher invents different reasons to explain why a letter from
his mother would be dated after her supposed death. The reader, on the other hand, may
recognize immediately that his mother never died and Christopher’s father has been lying to
him.
Although the reader recognizes that Christopher has an uncommon perspective of the world,
the novel suggests that everyone, in fact, has a subjective point of view. By giving detailed
explanations of Christopher’s thoughts, the novel allows the reader to empathize with
Christopher. Moreover, by pointing out the irrational behaviors of so-called normal people,
such as Christopher’s father’s habit of putting his pants on before his socks, the novel implies
that Christopher’s eccentricities are actually typical to a degree. As a result, the reader is able
to take on Christopher’s perspective as his own and to understand Christopher’s reasons for
behaving as he does. Christopher’s point of view loses its strangeness and seems merely
unique.
• The Disorder of Life
Christopher has an urgent need to see the world as orderly, and he has a very low tolerance for
disorder. He obsesses over schedules, for instance, and even describes the difficulty he had
going on vacation with his parents because they had no routine to follow. Moreover, because
Christopher has such difficulty connecting to people on an emotional level, he relies heavily
on order and logic to understand and navigate the world. The narration, as a result, frequently
veers away from the main storyline to discuss topics, such as physics or even the rate of growth
of a pond’s frog population, that have clearly defined and logical rules. When the narration
moves back to Christopher’s life, the messiness of the social and emotional lives of Christopher
and those around him becomes even more apparent.
Over the course of the novel, Christopher experiences a series of increasingly destabilizing
events, such as learning of Mother’s affair and Father’s deceptions, revealing that Christopher’s
narrow focus on order at the beginning of the novel actually keeps him—and the reader—blind
to the complex tangle of relationships within his family. This disorder grows increasingly
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prominent as the story progresses. When Christopher leaves Swindon to find his mother in
London, he becomes literally paralyzed at times by the disorder of the massive urban landscape
he passes through, which symbolizes the disorder he faces in his family. The novel concludes
with the various characters resolving some of their issues, but with their lives remaining
essentially as untidy as ever.
• Coping with Loss
Each of the major characters endures his share of loss in The Curious Incident of the Dog in
the Night-time. The novel opens with a death: Wellington’s murder, which prompts Christopher
to think back on an earlier moment of loss in his life—the death of his mother. At the time, he
coped with his mother’s death by accepting that his mother was gone and moving on, in spite
of the fact that he could not say goodbye before she passed. Later, he often remembers her in
his writing, sharing detailed memories of her manner of speaking, dress, and temperament.
Father also copes with the loss of his wife, Christopher’s mother, though he does so by breaking
off contact with her and cutting her out of his—and Christopher’s—life, telling Christopher
she is dead. Father’s feelings of loss arise again when Mrs. Shears ends their relationship, and
he works through his loss violently by murdering Wellington, effectively setting the events of
the novel in motion. Ultimately, the book ends as it began, with a death, this time of
Christopher’s pet rat, Toby. Christopher copes by acknowledging that Toby lived a very long
life for a rat, and he rejoices in the arrival of a new puppy, Sandy.
Major Characters
• Christopher John Francis Boone
Christopher’s defining characteristic is his inability to imagine the thoughts and feelings of
other people. In other words, he cannot empathize. Because he cannot imagine what another
person is thinking, he cannot tell when a person speaks sarcastically, or determine a person’s
mood by his facial expression. This inability to empathize is one of the most prominent features
of autism-related disorders, and this characteristic as well as a few others—Christopher’s
difficulty understanding metaphors, his fixation on certain topics, and his computer-like ability
with numbers—strongly suggest that Christopher has a mild form of autism. This condition has
made him extraordinarily gifted in math and science but severely underequipped socially,
leading Christopher to frequently misunderstand other people, especially his father. As a result,
he greatly dislikes social interaction and avoids it when possible.
Although Christopher does not mention autism by name anywhere in the novel, we see that he
recognizes the ways he differs from most people and feels keenly aware of these differences.
He says, for instance, that although most people enjoy chatting, he hates it because he finds it
pointless. He doesn’t see social interaction as an end in itself, thus talking to another person
about an unimportant topic serves no purpose. He lives as an outsider as a result. He has very
few friends and doesn’t trust other people. He feels content to read in his room by himself, and
he even fantasizes about being the only person alive on the planet. Christopher also recognizes
and takes pride in the strengths that result from his condition, such as his talent for math and
his remarkably accurate memory. His memory allows him to recall an entire event in
extraordinary detail, and he uses it to navigate social interactions by memorizing a chart of
facial expressions and the emotions associated with them.
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Christopher shows a growing desire for independence throughout the novel, and through much
of the novel we watch as Christopher gains the confidence to assert himself. He shows his
yearning for independence in a few ways, rebelling against his father by disobeying his orders,
for instance, and fantasizing about doing whatever he likes and taking care of himself in his
recurring dream of being one of the few people left on Earth. He also begins planning to go to
college, and to live on his own there. As Christopher overcomes the various trials he faces, he
gains confidence in his abilities and gradually becomes more self-sufficient. This process
culminates in a difficult journey to London that Christopher undertakes by himself, a feat that
represents a significant triumph for him since he has never traveled by himself. At the end of
the novel, Christopher feels he has overcome his challenges, and he feels ready to be on his
own.
• Christopher’s father (Ed Boone)
Christopher’s father often goes to extremes when demonstrating his emotions, occasionally
blowing up in anger, and he lacks the confidence to work through his problems verbally. When
trying to explain himself he stutters and stops and often has trouble connecting sentences. Like
Christopher, he has very few friends—Rhodri is the only one the novel mentions. He also feels
emotionally devastated by the way his relationship with his wife (Christopher’s mother) ended
two years earlier, and because he has no one to help him cope with his emotions, he bottles
them up until he explodes in anger during stressful situations.
Christopher’s father lovingly and diligently cares for Christopher, yet he also struggles with
the frustration he feels as a result of not always being able to understand Christopher’s
behaviour. He carefully prepares all of Christopher’s meals according to Christopher’s rigid
list of likes and dislikes, but he also becomes angry with Christopher when Christopher
misunderstands him. Notably, he is extremely protective of Christopher. This impulse to
protect Christopher and his desire to punish Christopher’s mother for the way she left leads
him to lie to Christopher about mother’s leaving. As Christopher discovers more and more of
the truth about his mother, Christopher’s father can see his relationship with Christopher
deteriorating. Christopher’s father must work to regain Christopher’s trust, and the novel’s final
chapters focus on his efforts to re-establish a relationship with Christopher.
• Christopher’s mother (Judy Boone)
For the majority of the novel, our only view of Christopher’s mother comes through
Christopher’s memories. He remembers her as loving but impatient, and prone to breakdowns
in the face of his tantrums. She also comes across as a dreamer who is unable to cope with the
harsh realities of Christopher’s condition. But she receives a momentary turn as the narrator—
the only instance in the novel when see a first-person point of view other than Christopher’s—
when Christopher includes in his book a series of her letters in full. In these letters, she exhibits
the patience that she lacked in her face-to-face interactions with him, writing forty-three letters
over the course of two years, despite getting no response. Although she tells Christopher in the
letters that she left him and his father because she thought they would be happier without her,
this explanation is clearly only part of her reasoning. We also see in the letters the intense
frustration she felt with Christopher and her inability to deal with his behaviour, as when
Christopher threw a tantrum in a department store while he and his mother were Christmas
shopping. She felt unable to cope with these fits of Christopher’s, possibly because of her
depression, which Christopher mentions at one point in passing. When we finally meet her in
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person, however, Christopher’s mother turns out to be strong-willed and independent. Even so,
she evidently still finds dealing with Christopher extremely difficult because of his rigid needs
and sometimes inappropriate behaviour. She clearly loves Christopher but also has doubts
about her ability to take care of him.
• Mrs. Shears
Mrs. Shears is one of the first characters introduced in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-Time, as her dog, Wellington, is killed in the opening scene, and his murder serves as the
major dramatic impetus for the novel. Mrs. Shears shrieks when she sees Christopher holding
a bleeding Wellington, and afterward she keeps her distance from the Boone family. This
decision is understandable, as the reader learns over the course of the novel that Mrs. Shears
has a complicated history with Christopher’s parents. Two years before Wellington’s murder,
Mrs. Shears’s husband, Mr. Shears, left her for Christopher’s mother. In the wake of their affair,
Mrs. Shears visited the Boone household often, cooked Christopher and his father meals, and
sometimes spent the night. When Christopher’s father admits to killing Wellington, he
explains, “I thought she might...eventually...want to move in here…we got on really, really
well. I thought we were friends. And I guess I thought wrong.” Readers can infer that
Christopher’s father and Mrs. Shears developed a close relationship—most likely romantic in
nature—that did not progress the way Christopher’s father hoped. However, Christopher
remains unable to piece together the clues and understand that Mrs. Shears broke his father’s
heart, mainly because Christopher doesn’t realize the level of intimacy they shared after his
mother left.
• Siobhan
Out of all the adults in Christopher’s life, Siobhan is the most understanding of Christopher’s
particular needs and strengths. As Christopher’s primary teacher, Siobhan explains appropriate
social behaviour in a way that helps Christopher and respects his intelligence. Throughout the
novel, Christopher often references Siobhan’s advice when navigating difficult situations, and
heavily relies on her help when writing his mystery book. Siobhan also gives Christopher
detailed instructions about his behaviour, which Christopher appreciates, and her specificity
explains why Christopher seems to trust Siobhan and behave better with her than any other
characters. Though Christopher still has outbursts at school, he never reports Siobhan as
becoming overwhelmed or frustrated by his emotional and behavioural problems, presumably
because she is trained to care for children with special needs, and their interactions offer an
insightful contrast to Christopher’s tumultuous relationship with his parents. His parents’
relative lack of success with Christopher suggests a gap in resources and training, and not
necessarily profound character flaws.
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THE LOWLAND
-JHUMPA LAHIRI
Brief Biography of Jhumpa Lahiri
Jhumpa Lahiri, the daughter of Indian immigrants from the state of West Bengal, was born in
London but raised in the United States, where her father worked as a librarian at the University
of Rhode Island. After studying creative writing, comparative literature, and Renaissance
Studies at Boston University, Lahiri began a distinguished record of publication with her debut
short story collection Interpreter of Maladies, which won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Lahiri’s first novel, The Namesake, was published in 2003 and later adapted into a film in 2007.
Lahiri has frequently published stories in the prestigious New Yorker magazine throughout her
career, and, in 2014, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal for her contribution to
American letters. As of 2015, Jhumpa Lahiri writes fiction and nonfiction primarily in Italian—
a language she taught herself after she began feeling “exiled” from the English language.
Historical Context of The Lowland
The turbulence of 1960s and 1970s India is at the forefront of The Lowland—even as the novel
moves temporally past the early days of the Naxalite movement and the splintering of the
Communist Party of India (Marxist) into the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). The
extreme physical and ideological violence of the period resonates throughout the lives of
Subhash, Gauri, and indeed their daughter, Bela, though she is raised in a foreign country,
ostensibly removed from the painful truth of her family’s very personal involvement with the
violence and terrorism of the Naxalites. The movement, which grew out of the CPI(ML)’s
support for the peasants of Naxalbari—sharecroppers who rose up against the unfair and
predatory practices of the upper classes who drove them off their land yet forced them to
continue working it without profit—threatened the city of Calcutta and the state of West Bengal
more widely. Those who supported Maoist ideals of anti-imperialism and the overthrow of
landowners and landlords attempted to spread radical Communist ideology throughout the
territory. Though quelled in the early 1970s, the Naxalite movement has resurfaced throughout
the decades, entering into violent conflict with the Indian government even in 2018.
Summary
Brothers Subhash and Udayan Mitra are growing up in Calcutta in the 1960s. Their
neighbourhood, Tollygunge, is full of refugees whose lives were displaced by the
1947 Partition of India, but the boys themselves live in a modest, middle-class home which
sits on the edge of a stretch of land occupied by two ponds. Between the two ponds there is
a lowland, which floods in the rainy season.
The boys are one year apart in age, and inseparable. The older, more reserved Subhash often
finds himself roped into trouble by his younger, more impulsive brother Udayan. As the boys
enter their collegiate years and attend separate local universities, they begin to drift apart for
the first time in their lives. Udayan falls in with a group of radicals associated with
the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)—a splinter group of the Communist Party of
India with ties to the burgeoning Naxalite movement, a violent uprising originally started by
poor sharecroppers in the West Bengal village of Naxalbari. Amid the violence and unrest,
Udayan devotes his days and nights to CPI(ML) activities, while Subhash decides to pursue a
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Ph.D. in America. Udayan begs Subhash not to leave India, but Subhash feels the distance
between himself and his brother is already too wide to bridge.
In America, Subhash attends university in Rhode Island, at which he is one of the only Indian
students. His feelings of isolation increase when a letter from Udayan arrives saying he has
gone against their parents’ wishes for an arranged marriage and chosen to marry a woman
named Gauri for love. Subhash, who had been proud of himself for taking a bold new step in
moving to America, feels “defeated by Udayan all over again.” Throughout his second year of
graduate school, Subhash fields frequent letters from Udayan asking when Subhash is going to
come home and allow their parents to arrange a marriage for him. The letters almost never
mention Naxalbari or any radical politics at all, and Subhash is relieved that his brother has
settled down. Subhash becomes involved with a young, married white woman named Holly;
though he knows the relationship is not tenable in the long-term, he is heartbroken when Holly
ends their affair. At the end of summer, a letter arrives from Calcutta, telling Subhash that
Udayan has been killed and urging him to come home as soon as he can.
Subhash returns to Calcutta to find it completely changed by the violence of the Naxalites.
Subhash realizes that his brother had never given up his radical politics and was likely killed
by police. Subhash’s parents are so sidelined by their grief that they barely notice Subhash’s
presence, and will not answer any of his questions about Udayan’s death. The only one who
holds the answers Subhash seeks is Udayan’s widow, Gauri—who is pregnant with her late
husband’s child. Gauri is being isolated by Subhash’s parents in a combination of ritual
mourning custom and their desire to edge her out of the house so that they can raise Udayan’s
child alone.
Gauri reveals what happened the night of Udayan’s death: she and her mother-in-law came
back from holiday shopping to find policemen swarming the house. The policemen held Gauri
and her in-laws at gunpoint and directed them to the flooded lowland, where Udayan was
hiding. After coaxing him out by threatening to kill members of his family, the police put
Udayan into a van and let the rest of the Mitras go. The family retreated into the house and,
from their terrace, watched as the police executed Udayan, point-blank, in the middle of the
field beyond the lowland. The police took Udayan’s body and never returned it.
Subhash is so perturbed by both the details of his brother’s death and his parents’ cruel
mistreatment of Gauri that he is unable to sleep for days. After a group of investigators come
to the house to question Gauri about the activities of the local CPI(ML), Subhash realizes that
in order to keep Gauri safe, he must marry her himself and take her back to America. Gauri
reluctantly agrees, though she warns Subhash that Udayan would never have wanted such an
arrangement.
Gauri arrives in Boston, five months pregnant. As she adjusts to life with Subhash, she
struggles with feelings of isolation and a desire to pursue her education. She rips up her saris,
cuts off her hair, and begins attending philosophy lectures at the college. After the birth of
“their” daughter, Bela, Gauri’s feelings of isolation and displacement do not abate. She and
Subhash embark on a sexual relationship, but even this release of tension does not allow Gauri
to feel any peace. Gauri takes a philosophy class and does so well in it that her teacher
recommends she eventually pursue a doctorate. As Gauri becomes more dedicated to her
studies, her relationship with the young Bela grows more and more contentious. When she is
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at last admitted to a doctoral program in Boston, when Bela is in first grade, Subhash becomes
resentful of Gauri’s desire to escape their home, their marriage, and now their child.
Subhash’s father dies, and he takes Bela—now twelve—on a six-week trip to Calcutta.
Subhash’s mother Bijoli, her mind addled by old age, spends her days caring for a cement post
in the lowland that marks the spot where Udayan died. After the trip, Bela and Subhash return
to Providence to find that Gauri has left. She has written Subhash a note in Bengali, informing
him that she has taken a teaching job in California and is leaving Bela to Subhash.
As Subhash and Bela begin adjusting to life without Gauri, Bela becomes withdrawn and loses
weight. When a guidance counselor calls to report that Bela is distracted in school, Subhash
begins taking her to see a therapist. As the months go by, and Bela enters eighth grade, she
begins making friends and participating in school activities. The summer Bela graduates from
high school, Subhash receives a letter telling him that his mother has had a stroke—he returns
to India without Bela, and Bijoli dies.
After Subhash returns to Rhode Island, he brings Bela to college in the Midwest. As the years
go by, she follows in Subhash’s footsteps by studying environmental sciences. After
graduation, however, Bela takes up an itinerant existence, travelling across the country and
working on different farms. She returns home only a couple of times a year to visit. Every time
Subhash sees Bela, he is surprised by how politically-minded and, in some ways, radical she
has become, and worries that Udayan has reclaimed Bela from beyond the grave.
Meanwhile, on the West Coast, Gauri lives an isolated but successful life. She has published
three books and has a tenured teaching job at a university in Southern California. She regrets
having betrayed Bela but is too grateful for her freedom to dwell much on what she has done
to her family. Subhash, now a man of sixty, lives a similarly isolated existence. At the funeral
of a friend from graduate school, he meets a woman named Elise Silva—a widow and former
high school teacher of Bela’s who now runs the local historical society. She and Subhash begin
seeing each other.
Bela is in her early thirties, and living in Brooklyn with a cooperative of artists, nomads, and
radicals. She knows that her itinerant life is due to the influence of Gauri’s abandonment, but
shows no signs of wanting to live any other way. One June, Bela returns to Rhode Island for a
visit, and reveals that she is pregnant. She has no relationship with the child’s father, and
instead wants to raise it on her own in Rhode Island, in the house she grew up in. Subhash is
moved to tell Bela, at last, the truth of her parentage. Bela reacts poorly, at first, but after a trip
to the coast to stay with a friend, she returns home and tells Subhash that knowing the truth
does not change the fact that Subhash is her only father. If anything, she says, she loves him
more, knowing now all he has done for her.
Back in California, Gauri reluctantly agrees to be interviewed by a former student for a book
he is writing on the Naxalite movement. The interview brings up painful memories, and the
lingering fear that she will be implicated for her tangential involvement, through Udayan, in
the movement. One day, Gauri receives a letter from Subhash, asking her to sign some papers
finalizing a divorce between them. Rattled, Gauri retreats into her memories of the early 1970s.
Back then, she helped Udayan deliver letters on behalf of the CPI(ML) and was instrumental
in the killing of a prominent policeman—Gauri tracked the man’s schedule and reported back
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to Udayan the times when he was off-duty and unarmed so that Udayan’s group could murder
him. To this day, Gauri is haunted by the things she did.
A few weeks after receiving Subhash’s letter, unable to compose a sufficient written response,
she decides to stop in Providence on the way to a conference in London, to hand Subhash the
papers in person and apologize for her actions. When Gauri rings the doorbell of her old house,
however, it is Bela who answers. Subhash is not home, and so Gauri sits with Bela and her
four-year-old daughter, Meghna, attempting to make small-talk and find out the details of their
lives. Bela is enraged by her mother’s presence and refuses to answer any of her questions. She
berates Gauri for leaving, telling her that she is “nothing.” Gauri leaves and flies to Calcutta
instead of London, determined to confront her past. She visits the lowland, which has been
filled in and built up—condominiums now stand on the site of Udayan’s execution. Gauri
considers committing suicide by throwing herself off the balcony of her room in a local
guesthouse, but ultimately loses her will to die, and returns to California.
Subhash and Elise, now married, go on a honeymoon to Ireland. Visiting a circle of stones in
the countryside, and seeing the flooding all around them, Subhash is reminded of the lowland.
The narrative flashes back to the evening of Udayan’s death, revisiting his last moments from
his own perspective. Udayan struggles to hide from the police underwater in the flooded
lowland but cannot hold his breath long enough. He worries, in his final moments underwater,
that his dedication to the revolution has helped no one, and instead had sown only violence and
discord. As the police march Udayan across the field beyond the lowland, he knows he will
die. He recalls meeting Gauri for a date one afternoon in front of a movie theater, and as the
police’s bullets rip through him, his last thoughts are of the sunlight on her hair.
Themes
• Political and Personal Violence
Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland is, at its heart, an exploration of violence. The 1960s India of
the novel’s opening pages is not even two decades removed from the violence of Partition, the
1947 division of British India into India and Pakistan, and it is against this backdrop that
brothers Subhash and Udayan Mitra grow up. Though nearly inseparable early in life,
Subhash feels a rift deepening between himself and his brother as Udayan’s politics become
increasingly radicalized in response to their homeland’s unrest. Broader strife in India
continues to be mirrored by familial divisions and tragedies throughout the novel—moments
that, in turn, often fuel further unrest. By exploring the ways in which political and personal
violence feed each other, Lahiri suggests the ultimate inseparability of the two; the personal is
always political, and vice versa.
The novel opens in Tollygunge, a neighborhood of the West Bengal city of Calcutta. As
Subhash and Udayan play in the streets of their neighborhood and learn about its history in
school, a portrait of a place already torn asunder by political violence begins to emerge. Less
than twenty years earlier, Partition had created desperate refugee crises as Hindus living in
Pakistan fled over the border to India, and Muslims living in India fled to Pakistan. An act of
political violence—the careless splitting of one nation into two, and the creation of a political
and religious line of demarcation—quickly transformed into countless acts of personal
violence, as Muslims and Hindus murdered one another. Though the boys are, relatively
speaking, sheltered and privileged, and do not witness any acts of such violence in their youth,
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the presence of a refugee crisis and the ubiquitous reminders of the violence of Partition
establishes an atmosphere of volatility, instability, and resentment that will develop as the novel
progresses.
Udayan and Subhash’s paths begin to diverge as they come of age, with their differing
responses to the unrest around them fostering a sense of resentment between the pair. As
Udayan becomes disillusioned by the plight of Indian peasants and subsequently swept up in
the movement emerging around the illegal eviction of sharecroppers in the poor West Bengal
village of Naxalbari, he finds himself in league with the radical, nationalistic Communist
Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), who see violence as a means of resistance and, they hope, of
change. The CPI(ML) takes up the burgeoning peasant revolt against landowners in Naxalbari
as their banner cause, and as Udayan joins his party members on a tour of the countryside, he
witnesses the extreme poverty and injustice plaguing his fellow countrymen. As a result of his
emotional connection to the peasants and sharecroppers he meets, his anarchic, anti-imperialist
politics develop, and he becomes a member of the Naxalite movement—a notoriously vicious
insurgency whose reverberations are still felt throughout India today. Thus, Udayan’s personal
investment in the lives of others drives him toward political violence.
As Udayan’s political involvement becomes more and more radical, his personal life, too,
becomes tinged with violence—not physical, but a kind of emotional violence that will sow its
seeds in the whole of the Mitra family and have reverberations throughout generations. When
Udayan is killed by paramilitary forces who were searching for him in the wake of his
involvement with several acts of violence in Calcutta—the detonation of a pipe bomb and the
murder of a policeman, most prominently—the political violence Udayan engaged in as part of
his pursuit of a revolution is transfigured. Udayan’s death—itself an act of political violence,
as the paramilitary forces are going around the city arresting and executing young men
suspected of involvement in the Naxalite movement—is reflective of the feverish but
ultimately failed rebellion. Udayan’s death occurs when he is in his mid-twenties and cuts him
off in his prime—just as the Naxalite movement was stomped out at the height of its
proliferation throughout West Bengal.
After hearing news of his brother’s death, Subhash returns to Calcutta to find the city
transformed by the violence of the Naxalites. Acts of terror have resulted in widespread loss of
life and a general atmosphere of fear and unease. The political violence that has gripped the
city is rooted in personal resentments—most notably, aggression and anger directed at
wealthier, landowning classes. Subhash has, during his time studying in America, been largely
ignorant of the extent of the unrest in Calcutta, and as he returns home and confronts it at last
he is able to see the intersection of personal and political anger.
While mourning his brother, Subhash comes to realize that Udayan’s widow, Gauri, is
pregnant. After Subhash witnesses Gauri being interrogated by police forces about her
sympathies to Udayan’s cause and her involvement with the CPI(ML), Subhash realizes that
the surest way of keeping Gauri—and her unborn child—safe is to marry her and take her to
America, where hardly anyone has heard of the Naxalites at all. Back in the United States,
Gauri and Subhash uneasily embark upon their marriage. Subhash does not understand the full
extent of how traumatized Gauri is not just by her having witnessed Udayan’s death, but by her
own involvement in the Party actions which resulted in it. As the narrative unfolds, Lahiri
reveals that in the months before Udayan’s death, Gauri was helping him to covertly deliver
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notes and letters around Calcutta—effectively spying on behalf of the party. Udayan had
procured Gauri a job that allowed her to observe the routine of a local policeman Udayan’s
group wanted “out of the way.” After both the policeman and Udayan were killed, Gauri at last
understood the extent of her role in the murder, and it is for this reason that she harbors so
much guilt, unease, and unrest.
These emotions, born of Gauri’s involvement in political violence, morph into personal
violence as Gauri tries—and fails—to adjust to “normal” family life in America. Gauri closes
herself off from the small community in Subhash’s Rhode Island college town, and, even after
the birth of her daughter Bela, behaves coldly and apathetically not just towards Subhash but
towards “their” child, too. When Bela is twelve, Gauri abruptly departs for California, leaving
behind only a coarse note. This deeply personal act of violence—a cleaving split which
symbolically mirrors the violent political splits of Partition and of the splintering Communist
Party of India—stems from Gauri’s guilt over her own contribution to the political violence in
Calcutta, and her inability to stop grieving for Udayan over a decade after his loss.
The personal and the political collide again and again throughout the pages of The Lowland.
Violence begets violence, and when radical politics and ideologies are involved, the fallout of
such intense conflicts almost always comes back around to the interpersonal relationships
belonging to the humans behind them. In showing how an atmosphere of political violence can
engender equal emotional violence between people, Lahiri uses The Lowland to demonstrate
the circular nature of violence itself.
• Duty and Desire
The Lowland follows the Mitra family through four decades and as many generations, with the
fraught relationship between brothers Subhash and Udayan forming the novel’s core.
Subhash and Udayan repeatedly question what they owe one another, and, in turn, what they
are owed. As they, along with Gauri and Bela, wrestle with their duties to one another, Lahiri
explores the tension between competing notions of responsibility and desire, as well as the
often selfish motives behind familial piety. Lahiri ultimately suggests that people may use the
excuse of familial duty for their own ends, and thus creates a complex and nuanced set of
characters whose dueling impulses often land them in difficult situations.
Subhash and Udayan are a year apart but look and behave like twins, and their codependence
creates a sense of reluctant duty in their relationship. Their closeness is clear from a young age,
as Subhash is held back from starting school and begins a year late because Udayan wants to
be in class with his brother. As the two grow up, Udayan and Subhash explore their city and
get into trouble together, with Udayan almost always taking the lead. For example, Subhash
repeatedly follows Udayan on sneaky escapades into the Tolly Club, an exclusive country club.
Despite the imbalance in power between the brothers, they do look out for one another—most
notably when Udayan flings himself in between Subhash and a police officer who beats him
with a putting iron when the two young boys are discovered breaking into the Tolly Club one
evening. Eventually, Subhash even helps Udayan go around Tollygunge slathering Communist
slogans in red paint on the walls of the neighborhood. Subhash feels reluctance to do these
things but fears “that he and Udayan would cease to be brothers, were Subhash to resist him.”
So deeply dependent is Subhash on remaining close to his brother that he makes self-sacrificing
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decisions on Udayan’s behalf, establishing early on the shape their relationship will take and
the patterns that will come to define it throughout their lives.
Subhash remains dedicated to his brother even after Udayan’s death. Upon traveling home to
Subhash witnesses the pain of Udayan’s widow Gauri—who is pregnant with Udayan’s child,
and who is being treated poorly by the Mitras in the hopes that they will be able to drive her
out and remove her from the unborn child’s life. Subhash comes up with the idea to marry
Gauri and to take her with him back to Rhode Island. His actions are primarily fueled by a
sense of fraternal responsibility. Despite not cowing to Udayan’s accusations of betrayal at the
time, Subhash feels that in leaving India and going to the United States, he did effectively
abandon his brother. He believes that he was “unable in the end to protect” Udayan when, as
children, they had always looked out for one another. It is this guilt—itself based in a sense of
duty—that leads him to protect and care for Udayan’s wife and child.
While this appears to be a remarkable sacrifice, Subhash has his own reasons for shouldering
such a burden. His admission of his attracted to Gauri, as well as the fact that he is tired of
being cut off from his family and Indian culture in Rhode Island, muddles the selfless nobility
of his actions. Furthermore, what is implied but never outright expressed in the novel is
Subhash’s desire to become more like Udayan. Subhash always felt that Udayan was the family
favorite, the adventurer, the trail-blazer. Subhash saw going to the United States as taking a
step Udayan could never take, and now sees marrying Gauri—and, in turn, becoming a father—
as yet another way in which he can, on some level, finally surpass his brother. Subhash thus
integrates his own wishes as he weighs the possibility of marrying Gauri, demonstrating a
distinct overlap of desire and duty.
Years later, Gauri’s relationship to her daughter Bela—or the lack thereof—further calls into
question the idea of familial duty undertaken competition against, or in tandem with, personal
desire. In the early, unhappy days of Gauri’s life in America, the only activity she will engage
in is surreptitiously attending a philosophy class. Her work in philosophy eventually proves so
impressive that her professor, Otto Weiss, offers to recommend her for a Ph.D. program when
the time comes. Gauri’s desire to be a student once again, and to carve out a space for herself
in this strange new country, soon subsumes not only her sense of duty to Subhash, which was
tenuous to begin with, but even that toward her own daughter.
Gauri immerses herself in work on her dissertation, neglecting her duties both as a wife and a
mother. Lahiri never executes narrative judgement against Gauri—Gauri knows that she is
failing as a mother, and though she carries a good deal of guilt about that failure, she ultimately
feels she never asked for the life she has been given in the United States. Soon, Gauri abandons
her shaky ties to that life entirely.
When Bela is twelve, Subhash takes her to Calcutta with him for several weeks, and they return
to an empty house; Gauri has left for California, leaving behind only a letter in which she half-
heartedly apologizes to Subhash and tells him that she is leaving Bela to him. Gauri has
followed her heart’s desire—to forge a career in academia—and abandoned her duty to her
child. The societal expectations internalized by Subhash, and indeed for some time by Gauri
herself, seemed to dictate that Gauri would capitulate to the role of wife and mother, sacrificing
her own desires in favors of duty to her family. Instead, Gauri chooses, in the end, to carve out
her own agency. Though the pain of her choice to leave Bela haunts her, Gauri is too grateful
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for her freedom to ever fully apologize for her choice, making her character a radical in many
ways.
Lahiri’s exploration of the intersection between duty and desire reveals a nuanced view of
humanity, and a subversive peek into the drives that motivate people to make certain choices
and sacrifices. Throughout the novel, she calls into question the duty one has to oneself versus
the duty one has to one’s family, ultimately suggesting that duty is a force that both strengthens
familial bonds and circumscribes the independent agency borne of desire.
• Heritage and Homeland
When Subhash, wary of becoming involved in the political unrest in Calcutta, comes to the
United States to study on the remote Rhode Island coast, he finds that he has left one miserable
situation for another. Through Subhash’s struggle to adjust to life in the States—and, later on,
through Gauri’s—Lahiri explores the anxieties of adapting to a new homeland while
remaining conscious of and loyal to one’s heritage. As Subhash and Gauri both wrestle with
feelings of dislocation and with the pressure—and desire—to assimilate, Lahiri uses their
struggles to argue for the complexity of the concept of “home.” The novel ultimately argues
that the relationship to one’s heritage and homeland is fluid, ever-changing, and unpredictable.
Upon his arrival in Rhode Island, Subhash is disheartened by how few Indians there are on his
new campus. He is more shocked to learn that no one in his new home knows anything about
what is going on in India. Yet Subhash works his way through his feelings of isolation and
even leans into them—for example, by taking up a research position on a boat that goes out to
sea for several months. In the process, he finds himself feeling grateful for his solitude and
even relieved to be removed from the insular, family-oriented structure of his life in
Tollygunge.
Subhash also stumbles into an affair with a married American woman, Holly, though he knows
that their cultural differences will render anything long-term between them impossible. His
affair with Holly ends after she, too, realizes that the differences between them are too much
to surmount, and expresses her desire to make things work with her estranged husband.
Subhash soon finds himself overwhelmed by memories of Calcutta. The changing fall leaves
remind him of the colorful spices his mother ground each morning, and as the dates of the
festival of Durga Pujo draw near, he grows homesick. Subhash’s intense longing for home in
the wake of the end of his first real relationship—with someone of a very different cultural
background—suggests that Subhash is torn between two worlds, and is pitching wildly between
the desire to remove himself from his heritage and to return to a life steeped in tradition and
familiarity.
At first, Gauri’s struggles to adapt to life in America echo Subhash’s initial sense of isolation.
She spends her days holed up in Subhash’s apartment rather than exploring her new town or
making friends. Gauri is so alone and sheltered that on a rare trip to the grocery store, she
purchases a block of cream cheese—not knowing what it is—and eats it plain, in one sitting.
This scene symbolically positions Gauri on a precipice—afraid of change and assimilation, but
at the same time ravenous for something new and different. In time, Gauri begins to embrace
life in the United States, evidenced by the fact that she cuts her hair into a blunt bob and begins
wearing strictly Western clothing. She also starts taking a philosophy class, flirts with men,
and starts sleeping with Subhash. When Gauri receives letters and newspapers from home sent
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by her brother Manash, she can only skim them, finding the references to Naxalite violence
contained within their pages too much to bear.
As the years go by, Gauri thinks of Udayan less, pushing him from her mind to focus on her
studies. Eventually she abandons Subhash and Bela to continue her studies on the West Coast.
Her focus on philosophy symbolizes the sense of dislocation she continues to feel. When
Udayan asked her, early on in their courtship, why she enjoyed studying, she answered simply
that it helped her “understand things.” By the time she leaves for California, she has become
completely enveloped by her chosen discipline, and eventually it is revealed that Gauri dove
so deep into her studies “in deference to Udayan”—to be as devoted to something as he was to
his own ideology. After years in academia, however, Gauri feels her ideology has become stale;
she embarked on her studies to feel closer to Udayan, and thus to a part of her heritage, but has
ultimately only become more disconnected from it.
When Gauri is approached by a student composing a book on the Naxalite rebellion, she at first
denies having had any connection to the movement, and only agrees to anonymously contribute
some information after a great deal of pressure. Gauri has tried to deny the part of her life tied
to radical politics, because it stirs up memories of violence and loss. Gauri’s disconnection
from this part of her life is another example of her estrangement from her cultural heritage,
however complicated that heritage is, and her homeland.
Gauri does return to Calcutta one day following a fight with Bela. There, she confronts her
repressed memories of aiding Udayan in his political actions, and, standing on the balcony of
a guesthouse similar to the balcony in her grandparents’ old flat, considers taking her own life.
Even back in her homeland, Gauri feels disconnected from her roots and ashamed of her past.
Whereas Subhash was able to adjust to life after leaving his homeland, the traumatic split Gauri
experienced has rendered her relationship to her heritage perhaps irrevocably fractured. Gauri
does not kill herself, and instead simply returns to California—symbolically abandoning for a
second time her connection to Calcutta and its difficult history.
Through her characters’ struggles to adjust to life in a new country, Lahiri shows how the
concept of a faraway homeland is at once burdensome and liberating. For Subhash, the longing
for his homeland is complicated by his desire to prove himself by striking out on his own; for
Gauri, her attempts to sever herself from all she left behind have resulted in a denial, in many
ways, of her heritage, her culture, and the woman she was back in Calcutta. As Lahiri tracks
the fluid relationship of her protagonists to their pasts, she exposes the complicated nature of
cultural identity, and examines the losses inherent to leaving one’s homeland behind.
• Secrets and Conspiracies
The Lowland is concerned with the secrets people keep and the deception they engage in as
they pursue ideological and personal goals; as they navigate not only politics, revolution, and
terrorism, but also marriage, parenthood, and self-delusion. Udayan’s role in a political
conspiracy is thrown up against Subhash and Gauri’s plot in the wake of Udayan’s death:
when Subhash brings Gauri back to America and promises to raise her and Udayan’s unborn
child as his own, without revealing to Bela the truth of her parentage, the two of them are
becoming complicit in a secret that will forever shape all of their lives. As Lahiri explores the
various conspiracies of the Mitra clan, she argues that the secrecy and subterfuge necessary to
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carry out and contain such schemes can destroy the lives of so-called conspirators—regardless
of whether the conspiracy at hand is politically or personally motivated.
Udayan is a conspirator in the most literal sense. A hotheaded revolutionary, Udayan is swept
up in a political movement he feels is vital to India’s future. The aftershocks of Partition are
still being felt, and the specter of colonialism looms over the country. Udayan joins
the CPI(ML), and eventually the Naxalites, in hopes of bettering his country through the
Communist ideology he feels has brought nationalistic pride and agency to countries such as
China and Cuba.
Udayan’s involvement is relatively successful at first—he helps organize a strike at a local
university, paints Communist slogans on walls around town, and even gets to meet with the
group’s esoteric leader, Kanu Sanyal. However, when Udayan—who has a hyperthyroidism-
related tremor—blows off the fingers of his right hand while trying to set off a pipe bomb, his
involvement in the Naxalite’s conspiracies take a dark turn. Udayan’s hand becomes a symbol
throughout the second half of the novel of the self-destructive nature not only of violence, but
of conspiracy, secrecy, and deceit.
Udayan’s participation in one conspiracy—the pipe bomb—maims him physically, while his
participation in another—the killing of a local policeman—causes him emotional pain, guilt,
and remorse. Eventually it is revealed that Udayan was instrumental in the plot to kill the
policeman, who was “in the way” of his group’s goals. Udayan had Gauri observe the
policeman and confirm his off day, and then, with the intel gathered, work as a somewhat-
bewildered lookout while another of his comrades stabbed the officer to death. All of this
occurred before Udayan set off the pipe bomb, revealing the emotional toll Udayan’s
involvement in such conspiracies has been taking on him for a long time. Udayan is ultimately
traced to his home by paramilitary forces seeking to apprehend young Naxalite men. He
attempts to hide in the lowland behind the house but is discovered and then shot in front of his
family. Udayan’s roles in Naxalite conspiracies and acts of terror are eventually his end—but
his death is just the beginning of his family’s suffering.
In response to Udayan’s death as a result of his role in one kind of conspiracy, Subhash and
Gauri concoct a “conspiracy” of their own. They will abscond to America, where the pregnant
Gauri will be free from the disdain of Udayan’s parents, from the officers who question her
repeatedly about her ties to the Party, and from the isolation of being a single mother. Gauri
and Subhash conspire to raise Udayan’s unborn child as if she were Subhash’s. At the start of
their plan, they are each in their own way slightly desperate—Subhash for company and
consolation, Gauri for passage from India—and so the conspiracy is one of necessity more than
desire.
Any good conspiracy needs committed conspirators, though, and as Gauri’s unhappiness grows
over the years, her commitment to the plot weakens. Gauri ultimately leaves, telling Subhash
that how he wants to handle raising “their” daughter Bela, and whether he wants to inform her
of her true parentage, is up to him. Gauri does so knowing that she is bringing their careful plan
tumbling down and possibly shattering Bela’s world.
Ultimately, Subhash does tell Bela the truth about her parentage. When she comes home to
reveal that she is pregnant, and intends to raise the child on her own, Subhash sees how his
deliberate withholding of a major fact of Bela’s origins has impacted her life. In adulthood, she
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is making a decision that mirrors the way she herself came into the world, though she is ignorant
of the fact that her life has been so difficult largely because of the conspiracy intended to keep
her safe and allow her to live a “normal” existence. In finally revealing the truth, Subhash
shows how he is different from Udayan—Udayan’s commitment to the conspiracies of his
Party brought his life to an end, but Subhash knows when the lies have become too much to
bear. Though Bela initially reacts poorly, she eventually tells Subhash that knowing what he
did for her before she was even born—knowing what he risked to give her a life away from the
danger of Calcutta—has made her love him even more.
In showing the enduring ramifications of the conspiracies people choose to engage in, Lahiri
calls into question the choices that make up a life, and the secrets that must be kept to sustain
them. Udayan’s involvement with the Naxalites ends his own life and sends his family into a
veritable tailspin as they struggle to fill the void he has left behind. Subhash and Gauri’s attempt
to do just that becomes a veritable conspiracy of its own, and the upkeep of the façade they
create eventually drains their marriage beyond repair, resulting in devastating consequences
for Bela, the child they have altered their lives to protect. The secrets the Mitras keep from one
another radically change the shapes of all their lives, and the destructive forces of those secrets
result in pain, estrangement, and mistrust echoing through the generations of their family.
• Presence in Absence
Subhash learns that Udayan has been killed a quarter of the way into The Lowland. The novel,
up to that point, has largely been about Subhash navigating his brother’s emotional absence;
once Udayan is killed, however, the book becomes about Udayan’s physical absence not just
from Subhash’s life, but also from his wife Gauri’s. Udayan becomes, in death, in many ways
more present in the lives of those around him. Gauri, in turn, becomes a ghost in her own right
after traveling to America, moving through the home she shares with Subhash coldly and
glumly, taking up as little space in her new life as possible. Gauri is absent despite her presence;
the mirror image of her dead husband. Through her exploration of what it means to be
“present”—whether physically or psychologically—Lahiri suggests the immense weight and
space that the absent take up in the lives of those left behind.
Subhash and Udayan are extremely close as young boys, and spend their childhoods following
in one another’s footsteps—often literally. Udayan’s footprints, cemented forever in the
concrete of their family home’s courtyard, are a symbol throughout the novel for Udayan’s
constant presence in Subhash’s thoughts, as the older brother seeks to follow the younger
wherever he goes. As the two grow up, though, and Udayan’s involvement in
the CPI(ML) deepens, Subhash realizes that he cannot—and does not want to—follow his
brother into this new realm. Subhash makes plans to study in America, hoping that some
distance from his brother, and from the tumultuous political atmosphere, will allow him to
carve his own path. Udayan warns Subhash that to leave India at such a fraught time is to
abandon his country—what he is really saying, though, is that Subhash is abandoning Udayan,
creating an absence in Udayan’s life with which he has never before had to reckon. After
Subhash leaves for the States, he does feel his brother’s absence profoundly, but it is not until
his death that Udayan, in his removal from the world, becomes a nearly overwhelming
emotional presence in Subhash’s life.
After Udayan’s death, Subhash brings a pregnant Gauri back to America with him, and though
it is just the two of them living in Subhash’s house, Udayan’s presence is everywhere. Subhash
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looks like his brother, and Gauri is spooked by how similar the two men’s voices are, again
suggesting the notion of doubles and mirror images. Because of Udayan’s “presence” in
Subhash, Gauri finds herself unable to overcome the void her first husband’s death has left in
her life. Gauri and Subhash’s marriage never flourishes. Eventually even its basic functionality
is torn asunder by Udayan’s presence, which has grown so powerful in his absence that it acts
as a vacuum, pulling Gauri backwards in time even as the rest of her life marches on. Gauri’s
dissatisfaction in her marriage and in her role as a mother—combined with the crushing weight
of Udayan’s loss—pushes her to pursue a life in academia on the opposite coast, and she seeks
to shed herself of all ties to Subhash, Bela, and, by proxy, Udayan and his memory. Despite
her physical absence, however, as the years go by Gauri will herself become a stifling and
oppressive presence in Subhash and Bela’s emotional and psychological worlds.
Bela is one of the novel’s most intriguing characters—a nomad who seeks to make herself as
untethered and invisible as possible as a result of her tumultuous childhood. After Gauri leaves,
Bela becomes a withdrawn and quiet child, where once she was expressive and gregarious. For
years, she attempts to shrink herself both figuratively and literally—she becomes withdrawn
from her father and her classmates, and she eats as little as possible. After many years under
the care of a therapist, Bela begins to emerge from her cocoon, and becomes active and
politically-minded, just like Udayan—so much so that Subhash himself is spooked by his
brother’s presence in his daughter and becomes worried that Udayan is somehow claiming Bela
as his own from beyond the grave.
Rather than make her mark on the world by placing herself in the path of violence or conflict
though, as Udayan did, Bela becomes a radical in a quieter sense, studying agriculture and
taking up an itinerant existence that allows her to travel to farms across the country and educate
people about sustainability—while leaving behind as the only trace of her presence the things
she has grown. As the novel surges forward into the 2010s, Bela notably has no virtual
footprint. Gauri cannot find her in any internet searches and believes that her daughter has done
this purposefully. Bela’s desire to be absent from Gauri’s life, as Gauri was absent from hers,
is so profound that she has carefully orchestrated her own life to be as untraceable as possible.
When Gauri visits Subhash’s house, intending to hand him signed divorce papers, she finds not
Subhash but Bela and her own daughter Meghna inside. Bela and Gauri have a terrible fight
in which Bela tells Gauri that she is not her mother—Gauri is, in fact, “nothing.” In this
explosive scene, Bela wrestles with the duality of her mother’s absence and presence in her
life. Gauri wanted to be nothing to Bela, but to Bela, Gauri was everything. Over the course of
her life, Bela has attempted to exorcise, in a way, Gauri’s presence, and reduce Gauri to
“nothing” in her own mind. This fight between the two women shows how absence, ironically,
can result in an undeniable emotional or psychological presence.
The Lowland is about the things one leaves behind—the things which create presence in
absence. As Lahiri’s characters knowingly and unknowingly create situations in which their
absence will be felt for years and years after their departures—physical or emotional or both—
from one another’s lives, they must also negotiate the taxing and almost uncanny nature of
presence in absence, and the longstanding effects it has.
Major Characters
• Subhash Mitra
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The protagonist of the novel. Subhash is a reserved, thoughtful, and studious young man whose
coming-of-age in a post-Partition Calcutta forms the groundwork of his life—a life which will
be ripped apart by both political and personal violence and unimaginable tragedy. Subhash and
his brother Udayan are inseparable in childhood, though Subhash often feels suffocated or
controlled by his younger brother. As the boys grow older, Udayan’s fiery personality expands
and he becomes involved with radical local politics while Subhash, uninterested in such pursuit,
retreats into his studies. Subhash feels himself drifting further away from his brother and
decides to continue his studies in Rhode Island, where he is isolated, but at last free of his
brother’s influence. At the start of his third year of graduate school, word arrives that Udayan
has been killed, and when Subhash returns to Calcutta, he finds the city transformed by the
violence of the Naxalite movement—a terrorist faction that supported the violent overthrow of
landowners in the impoverished West Bengal city of Naxalbari, and which was taken up by
local political radicals. Subhash, realizing that his brother’s widow Gauri is not only pregnant
with Udayan’s unborn child but also seemingly mixed up in the CPI(ML), offers to marry her
and take her to America so that she can escape the ire of his and Udayan’s parents and the
scrutiny of the Calcutta police. This selfless act will transform Subhash and Gauri’s lives
forever, as their struggle to make a home together in America, their resentments toward one
another, their shared grief over Udayan’s loss, and their guilt over raising “their”
daughter, Bela, in ignorance of her true parentage overwhelm them. Gauri eventually leaves,
and Subhash raises Bela alone in her absence. As his identity as Bela’s father becomes the
center of his life, he must wrestle with his own feelings of inadequacy and the nagging sense
that he is an imposter, doomed to forever follow in his brother’s footsteps despite all his efforts
to the contrary.
• Gauri Mitra
Udayan’s widow Gauri is the antagonist of the novel—a smart, aloof, and selfish woman
whose unresolved grief over Udayan’s death and feelings of inadequacy as a mother ultimately
result in her detaching herself from the life she has built with Subhash and Bela and moving
to California, severing all contact with her second husband and daughter. After Udayan’s death,
Subhash takes Gauri back to America with him and offers to raise Udayan’s unborn child as
his own. Gauri’s adjustment to life in Rhode Island, though, is hampered by her traumatic
experience of watching Udayan being executed right before her eyes, as well as her guilt over
her own involvement in the covert CPI(ML) action that made Udayan a police target in the first
place. As Gauri begins taking classes at Subhash’s university and excelling in the philosophy
department, she burrows deeper into her work in order to escape the crushing duties of being
married to a man she does not love and mother to a child who reminds her of the man she lost
and the world she left behind. Gauri’s increasingly selfish actions, though condemnable, also
allow her to finally obtain the intellectual freedom, financial independence, and physical
solitude she has craved all her life.
• Bela Mitra
Bela Mitra is the biological daughter of Udayan and Gauri, though she is raised in Rhode
Island by Gauri and Subhash. Bela is, for all of her childhood and much of her adult life,
ignorant of the truth of her parentage. Bela is politically-minded, socially conscious, and
fiercely independent—all traits Subhash believes she has inherited from Udayan. She is also
deeply scarred by her mother’s abandonment and creates a nomadic life for herself that allows
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her to refuse attachments to other people and never put down roots. When Bela reveals to
Subhash that she is going to become a mother herself and wants to raise the child alone,
Subhash is so overwhelmed by the ways in which Bela is unknowingly repeating her own
history that he reveals the truth of her parentage. Though shocked at the news, Bela reminds
Subhash that it is he who is her true father, displaying the loyalty and gratitude she has felt
toward him all along, in spite of her transient lifestyle and difficulties maintaining a familial
structure.
• Udayan Mitra
Subhash’s younger brother Udayan is a rascal, a radical, and in many ways a secondary
antagonist of the novel—despite the fact that he dies early on and exists only in the collective
consciousness of those who knew him for much of the book. Despite being younger than
Subhash, Udayan is the more dominant one in their relationship; his fiery personality and taste
for adventure often land him and Subhash in trouble. As the boys grow older, Udayan becomes
involved in radical politics through his affiliation with the Communist Party of India (Marxist-
Leninist), a splinter group of the Communist Party of India with ties to the violent peasant
uprising in Naxalbari. Udayan’s devotion to revolutionary politics and interest in controversial
figures such as Mao, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara alienate him from his quiet, studious
brother, even as Subhash envies Udayan for his outspoken and intrepid nature. When Subhash
announces his intention to continue his studies in the United States, Udayan begs his brother
not to go, but Subhash’s mind is already made up. When news comes years later that Udayan
has died due to his involvement in the violent Naxalite terrorist movement, Udayan ceases to
be a character in the book in the traditional sense—but Subhash, Udayan’s widow Gauri, and
Subhash and Udayan’s mother Bijoli all spend the rest of the novel struggling with the ways
Udayan’s spirit haunts them and informs their actions even from beyond the grave.
• Holly
A woman whom Subhash meets when he is still in graduate school. They begin a romantic
and sexual relationship, and though Subhash knows that it is untenable in the long-term, he is
devastated when Holly informs him that she must cut things off in order to pursue the rekindling
of her relationship with her son Joshua’s father, from whom she was never officially divorced.
• Richard Grifalconi
Subhash’s roommate during his first year of graduate school. Richard is a radical and opposed
to the war in Vietnam but has never heard of the Naxalites or Naxalbari. Many decades after
Richard moves to Chicago during Subhash’s second year of graduate school, he moves back to
Rhode Island, and the two old friends are reunited. Soon after their reunion, however, Richard
dies suddenly, forcing Subhash to consider his own mortality.
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THE HUNGRY TIDE

-AMITAV GHOSH
Brief Biography of Amitav Ghosh
Amitav Ghosh was born in Kolkata, India to a Bengali Hindu family. His father was an officer
in the Indian Army prior to Indian independence. Ghosh attended a boys' school in India and
then attended college in both India and England at Delhi University, the Delhi School of
Economics, Oxford, and St. Stephen's College. He began to write novels during the 1980s, and
his first novel, The Circle of Reason, immediately garnered international acclaim and interest.
Several of his novels have won international awards, and he famously withdrew his 2000
novel, The Glass Palace, from the Commonwealth Writer's Prize on the grounds that the
English language requirement was unfair. Ghosh has taught literature in the United States at
several universities and was named a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow in 2015. He and
his wife, fellow author Deborah Baker, have two children and live in New York.
Historical Context of The Hungry Tide
Although the island of Lusibari is a fictional place, many of the historical events that the novel
mentions actually happened. Sir Daniel Hamilton was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1859. He
was successful in developing a cooperative estate on the Sundarbans Island of Gosaba, though
the estate fell apart after Hamilton's death in 1939. The 1979 Morichjhãpi massacre was a
consequence of the partition of the colony of British India in 1947. During partition, a number
of poor Hindu people attempting to enter India from East Pakistan were settled in a refugee
camp in central India, rather than allowed to settle in the Indian state of West Bengal. The
refugees attempted to settle in West Bengal in 1978, but the new Left Front government
declared that the refugees couldn't be considered citizens of West Bengal. About 40,000
refugees then marched south and settled on the island Morichjhãpi in the Sundarbans, which
was protected forestland. After several months of blockades and violent police action, the
Indian government began to forcibly evacuate the refugees in May 1979. Though the true death
count remains unknown, it's possible that up to a thousand people were killed after being
brutalized by the police. As Nirmal and Piya both notice and mention in the novel, the
Sundarbans suffer ecologically from farming, overfishing, and poaching of native species.
Attempts to curb tiger attacks have been overwhelmingly unsuccessful, and as many as fifty
people still die every year. However, the Bengal tigers are a protected species, and there's a
total ban on killing or capturing wildlife in the Sundarbans, save for some fish and other
invertebrates. Despite these attempts, biodiversity continues to decline. Ghosh himself has also
said that while tigers certainly pose a problem for people in the Sundarbans, their true enemy
is crushing poverty.
Summary
On the train to Canning, Kanai, a wealthy translator from New Delhi, meets Piya, a young
cetologist (a biologist who specializes in marine mammals). They're both headed to the
Sundarbans: Kanai is going to the island of Lusibari for the first time in thirty years to deal
with a long-lost packet of his late uncle Nirmal's writings, while Piya plans to conduct a survey
of the Gangetic and Irrawaddy river dolphins that live in the area. Before they get off at
Canning, Kanai invites Piya to come visit Lusibari. Kanai meets up with his aunt Nilima in
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Canning and discovers that Nilima is still very disturbed by Nirmal's death, which happened
twenty years ago.
Once on Lusibari, Kanai explores the landmarks he remembers and thinks back to when Nirmal
told him about Sir Daniel Hamilton, who successfully set up a cooperative society on the
islands in the first part of the twentieth century. He's shocked to learn that Kusum, who was a
friend when Kanai was on the island in 1970, died long ago. Her son Fokir, however, now
lives on the island and is married to one of the nurse trainees, Moyna. Upstairs in Nirmal's
study, Kanai opens the packet. It contains only a notebook that appears to have been filled over
the course of a few days in May 1979, on the island of Morichjhãpi. In a letter addressed to
Kanai, Nirmal explains that he's with Kusum on the island and simply wants to make sure that
what happens isn't forgotten. Nilima is upset that Nirmal didn't leave the notebook for her.
When Kanai met Kusum in 1970, she was in Nilima's care after Kusum's father died,
and Kusum's mother was sold into sexual slavery. Kusum and Kanai had become friends and
had gone to performances of the local legend The Glory of Bon Bibi together. Kanai had found
the story, which is about a boy named Dukhey who is saved by the goddess Bon Bibi after
being sacrificed to the demon Dokkhin Rai, very affecting. After the performance one night,
a fisherman named Horen took Kusum away for her safety, and nobody saw her again for
years.
Piya obtains her permits from the Forest Department and begins her survey with a forest
guard and a boat pilot named Mejda—both men are unhelpful and condescending. Piya spots
a fishing boat and asks them to approach it so she can ask the fisherman about the dolphins.
The forest guard does as she asks, but Piya soon realizes the guard just wants to fine and
intimidate the fisherman and his son. The fisherman mimes to Piya that he sees dolphins in the
area often. As the Forest Department boat pulls away, Piya tries to give the fisherman money
and falls into the river. The fisherman saves her and pulls her into his boat, and Piya, afraid of
going back with the Forest Department, asks if he'll take her to Lusibari. He agrees, and the
forest guard lets Piya go. The fisherman introduces himself as Fokir and his young son
as Tutul. He treats Piya with exceptional kindness and respect and the next day, he takes her
to a place called Garjontola where a pod of seven Irrawaddy dolphins are swimming. Piya is
shocked, as the dolphins don't behave as they're supposed to—she believes the dolphins migrate
daily out of the pool instead of twice a year. She spends the next day with Fokir, observing the
dolphins and mapping the riverbed. Piya is pleasantly surprised that she and Fokir can
communicate so well, and their pursuits are well-matched: mapping the riverbed by rowing in
straight lines gives Fokir the opportunity to fish for crabs. After Piya almost loses a hand to a
crocodile, she and Fokir row for Lusibari. Once there, Nilima invites Piya to stay in the
guesthouse with Kanai, and Kanai agrees to help Piya talk to Fokir the next day.
Over the course of the next several days, Kanai reads Nirmal's notebook. It tells the story of
how Nirmal became involved with the settlement on Morichjhãpi after he retired from teaching.
In his youth, Nirmal was a renowned Marxist in Calcutta, but he had to leave the city after he
was arrested and suffered a mental breakdown. He spent 30 years teaching on Lusibari, and
during that time, he wrote nothing. However, he remained a firm believer in Marxist theory,
much to Nilima's chagrin—she spent those years developing the Babadon Trust, which
provided healthcare and other services to the locals. She also developed a Women's Union to
help the many widows on Lusibari, as it's common for men to die while out fishing.
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After his retirement, Nirmal began visiting schools with the help of Horen. One evening, Horen
and Nirmal were caught in a storm and ended up meeting Kusum on the island of Morichjhãpi.
She took them in and told them her story of finding her mother, getting married, having her
son, and finally, joining a refugee march from central India all the way to the Sundarbans.
Nirmal was thrilled to learn that Morichjhãpi was being developed in a very Marxist way, and
he offered to teach the children there. When Nilima found out, she was incensed that Nirmal
was involved—she insisted that the refugees were just squatters, and the land was protected
forestland. She refused to provide medical services to the island. Nirmal vowed to keep his
involvement secret and continued to go to Morichjhãpi with Horen over the next several
months. The police began a siege on the island, which Kusum and Fokir survived, but Kusum
was distraught that people wanted to kill the settlers for the sake of animals. Finally, Nirmal
heard that the police were going to assault the island. He went with Horen to warn Kusum, and
while they were there overnight, he filled the notebook. He decided to stay on the island while
Horen took Fokir away, and saved the notebook for Kanai. Weeks later, Nilima found Nirmal
in Canning, disoriented and angry. He died months later.
Piya and Kanai negotiate with Fokir and Moyna to go out for a week to survey the dolphins at
Garjontola. Fokir helps Piya engage Horen to take them in his bhotbhoti, the Megha. Piya is
annoyed to discover that Moyna seems to think little of her husband. As Piya makes
preparations to leave, Kanai asks to go with her as a translator; Piya accepts. When Kanai tells
Nilima he's going with Piya, she's concerned and feels he doesn't understand the risks. She
explains that tigers kill multiple people every week. When she realizes he's romantically
interested in Piya, she insists he's a predator too and tells him to be careful. Later that night,
Moyna confides in Kanai that she's worried about a romantic relationship between Piya and
Fokir, and she asks Kanai to intervene. Kanai tries to convince Moyna that he'd be a better
partner than Fokir, which angers her. The next day, the survey party leaves Lusibari. Kanai
becomes very jealous when Piya mentions that she loves working with Fokir despite the
language barrier. That afternoon, the Megha's engine dies, though Horen is able to float the
bhotbhoti to a village where a relative can help fix the boat.
Early that evening, Piya and Kanai hear the sound of a water buffalo giving birth. Later, they
hear excited voices on the nearby island, so they go with Horen and Fokir to investigate. They
discover that a tiger that previously killed two people got into the building with the water
buffalo. Angry villagers surround the structure, poking bamboo poles inside. Piya is incensed
and tries to break up the mob, but Fokir pulls her away just as the villagers light the structure
on fire to burn the tiger alive. The next day, Piya and Kanai discuss what happened. Piya is
horrified, but Kanai insists that things like that happen because environmentalists like Piya try
to save tigers at the expense of the people who also share the habitat. He explains that the
government doesn't care about the poor people who are the most common victims.
The next day, Piya and Kanai go out with Fokir to observe the dolphins in the Garjontola pool.
Piya explains how she became interested in the dolphins, and Kanai translates that Fokir knows
of this dolphin pool because Kusum talked about it. He comes here to visit her spirit. He starts
to chant, but Kanai insists the chant is too difficult to translate for Piya. Over the next several
hours, Piya and Kanai draw closer to each other, and Kanai agrees the next morning to go out
in Fokir's boat to help observe the dolphins. On Fokir's boat, Kanai tries to talk to Fokir with
little success. Eventually, Fokir rows to Garjontola and points out fresh tiger tracks. He explains
that the island is protected by Bon Bibi, and the goddess will protect anyone who is good of
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heart. He suggests they go ashore to see if Kanai is good of heart, and Kanai reluctantly agrees.
Once they reach the shore, Kanai falls in the mud and loses his temper, sending Fokir away.
Suddenly terrified, Kanai crashes inland to get away from the crocodiles he knows are in the
water. He finds a tiger in a clearing, backs out, and is rescued by Piya, Fokir and Horen, all of
whom don't believe he saw a tiger. After this, Kanai decides to return to Lusibari.
The next morning, Kanai leaves Piya and Fokir on Fokir's boat with a packet for Piya, while
Horen takes him to Lusibari on the Megha. When the Megha reaches a major waterway, they
learn that a cyclone is coming and decide to turn around to fetch Piya and Fokir. The boat isn't
there when they return to Garjontola, so they decide to wait overnight for them. Meanwhile,
Piya and Fokir spend their day tracking the dolphins and finally find them circling a calf that
died. They drop anchor that night far away from Garjontola, and Piya reads Kanai's letter. It's
a translation of The Glory of Bon Bibi, which is what Fokir was chanting the day before.
Early the next morning, Horen admits to Kanai that both he and Nirmal were in love with
Kusum, but says that Kusum chose him in the end. They decide hours later that they can't wait
for Piya and Fokir, so they head back to Lusibari through the gathering storm. When Kanai
wades to shore, he falls and loses Nirmal's notebook in the rushing water. As Kanai and Nilima
ride out the storm in the guesthouse, she admits that Nirmal's one lasting contribution was
the cyclone shelter in the hospital. Kanai says he'd like to transcribe Nirmal's story from
memory, and Nilima asks if he'd record her side of the story too.
Fokir and Piya ride out the storm tied to a tree on Garjontola, straddling a branch with Piya
squeezed between Fokir and the trunk. After the eye of the storm passes and the wind changes
direction, they see a tiger. Fokir dies not long after when he's hit and crushed by something
large. Piya manages to take his boat in the direction of Lusibari the next day, and explains what
happened to Kanai and Horen when she finds them coming to get her on the Megha. She
remains in Lusibari for a few weeks and then returns a month later, much to Nilima's surprise.
Piya explains she'd like to work with the Babadon Trust to develop a conservation program in
the area that would work with local fishermen, and she'd like to name the program after Fokir.
Themes
• Language
The Hungry Tide follows Piya, an American-Indian cetologist (a scientist who studies marine
mammals) and Kanai, a Delhi-based translator, as they visit the Sundarbans, an archipelago of
islands in the Bay of Bengal. Piya is there to study the endangered Orcaella river dolphin; Kanai
is visiting his aunt, Nilima, for the first time in forty years after the unexpected discovery of a
packet of what are thought to be writings left to him by his late uncle Nirmal. As Piya and
Kanai immerse themselves in their respective pursuits and form relationships with the
Sundarbans locals, they both grapple with issues of language and how to form understandings
with people who speak an entirely different language (even if in Kanai's case, he also speaks
Bengali). Through Piya and Kanai's experiences, the novel ultimately suggests that spoken and
written language are insufficient means of communication, especially when compared to a
shared visual or emotional language—in this case, the language of fear.
Piya—who speaks no Hindi or Bengali, but works in a remote part of India where few people
speak English—must embrace the idea that she doesn't necessarily need a common spoken or
written language in order to complete her work. She finds that visual cues are a far more
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effective means for communicating with others. Though Piya initially begins her work on a
Forest Service boat, she abandons the Forest Service as soon as possible—even though she's
able to communicate with the forest guard and the boat pilot reasonably well through gestures
and mime, they show little interest in listening to her. This is an early example of how sharing
a language of some sort doesn't mean that two people can actually communicate effectively.
Rather, understanding other people requires respect and a genuine desire to connect—two
things that the Forest Service officials clearly don't care about. When Fokir, a local fisherman
who doesn't speak English, rescues Piya from the Forest Service, it soon becomes clear to her
that she and Fokir don't need to share a language to communicate. She's able to communicate
with Fokir using gestures, drawings, and her laminated flashcards with pictures of the dolphins
she's looking for, and he's more than willing to help her achieve her research goals despite the
language barrier. The flashcards in particular introduce the idea that sight is a communication
method that's far more effective than written or spoken language, as it allows individuals to
interpret a common sight in their own language.
Kanai undergoes the most notable transformation as he discovers the limits of spoken and
written language. He finds that being able to speak six languages doesn't teach him what the
locals insist is the real language of the Sundarbans: the emotional language of fear. Several
locals, including Fokir, Nilima, and Horen, another fisherman, explain that, according to local
wisdom, to even say the word tiger is to call the beast itself—essentially, they suggest that
words have the power to create the same kind of visual reality that Piya begins to get at with
her flashcards of the dolphins. However, when Kanai does come face to face with a tiger, he
confronts a reality that's far more real and terrifying than anything words could ever conjure.
He finds that language fails him—both spoken and in his head—and instead, the tiger (which
he cannot name at all, even with a euphemism) becomes "an artifact of pure intuition, so real
that the thing itself could not have dreamed of existing so intensely." With this experience,
Kanai discovers that fear, much like language, is something that one learns, internalizes, and
then uses to make sense of one's world.
The novel acknowledges that spoken and written language, while limited, certainly hold an
important place in the world—after all, this is how the story is relayed to the reader, how Piya
is able to achieve funding to continue her research project after the cyclone, and how Kanai is
forced to understand Nirmal's final months of life through reading his notebook. However, the
novel also suggests that visual language and emotional language (in this case, the language of
fear) are more universal languages, as neither requires the spoken or written word to translate.
• Man vs. Nature
The Hungry Tide takes place in the Sundarbans, the archipelago of islands that forms the
Ganges Delta. The islands of the Sundarbans vary in size from tiny spits of land to landmasses
of considerable size, though they're constantly made and remade by the ever-changing tides
and regularly occurring cyclones. The islands and rivers are covered in mangrove forests that
shelter man-eating crocodiles, snakes, and Bengal tigers, all of which constantly threaten the
lives of the Sundarbans' residents. The novel suggests that while outside or human conflicts
certainly affect life in the Sundarbans, the struggle to survive in a natural world that seems
entirely inhospitable to humans is a far more pressing concern.
For the people who call the Sundarbans their home, the natural world is an essential, respected,
and revered part of life. Kusum, a young woman who left the Sundarbans as a teen and returns
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to the island of Morichjhãpi with Fokir, her son, travels with Bangladeshi refugees who talk
about the Sundarbans. Many of these refugees were originally from the Sundarbans and were
forcibly removed after the partition of India in 1947, but they affirm that the mud of the
Sundarbans still flows through their veins—a sentiment she shares. This shows that for Kusum,
Fokir, and Horen, the specific environment of the Sundarbans is as much a part of them as
their language, religious beliefs, or indeed, their human biology. This offers some reasoning
for shocked outsiders like Piya and Nirmal as to why people want to live there in the first
place—the locals see themselves as intrinsically part of nature.
Despite the locals' deep connections to the land and the environment, it's also important to
recognize that the residents of the Sundarbans still live in fear of their environment. Upon her
arrival on Lusibari in 1950, Nilima is shocked when she learns that wives dress as widows
when their husbands go out fishing or to gather honey—at least one woman is guaranteed to
be widowed after every outing, given the aggressive and dangerous crocodiles and tigers that
attack and kill humans with tragic regularity. To address this, locals rely heavily on the story
of the goddess Bon Bibi, whom they believe watches over the islands. According to legend,
she long ago drew a line through the islands to separate her "good" realm from the "evil" realm
of a tiger demon, Dokkhin Rai, who had an insatiable desire for human flesh. When a greedy
captain made a deal with Dokkhin-Rai that promised the demon a boy, Dukhey, in exchange
for an island's natural resources, Dukhey called on Bon Bibi to save him from the tiger's jaws—
and she did. Because of this, shrines to Bon Bibi pepper the Sundarbans, and locals regularly
pray and leave offerings at the shrines. They believe that people who are good at heart can't be
harmed (at least by tigers) in places where Bon Bibi is present. Indeed, during the novel's two
sightings on an island where a shrine is present, nothing happens. This is especially telling
given the local wisdom that if a person sees a tiger, they're already as good as dead and certainly
won't live to tell the tale.
Although the prevalence and the apparent power of the Bon Bibi legend certainly offers the
illusion that humans are able to gain the upper hand in the fight against nature, the local
characters repeatedly affirm (and even demonstrate with their lives) that they live at the mercy
of the natural world, which seems overwhelmingly indifferent to human life. Despite several
efforts to curb tiger attacks, local women in the present (the early 2000s) still expect to be
widowed in their twenties. Likewise, when cyclones roll through, they destroy boats, kill
livestock and people, and submerge entire islands. The novel even offers the historical anecdote
of Henry Piddington, the Englishman who coined the term "cyclone," as a cautionary tale to
not underestimate the power of the storms—he correctly predicted that a cyclone would lay the
carefully planned port city of Canning flat within fifteen years of its construction. In illustrating
both the beauty of the Sundarbans and the region's danger, violence, and indifference to human
life, The Hungry Tide suggests that all humans can do is to hope, pray, and live with respect
and reverence for a place that can kill them as easily as it can provide the resources for human
life to thrive.
• The Human Cost of Environmental Conservation
While The Hungry Tide grapples primarily with the conflict between man and nature (in which
man is relatively helpless in the face of dangerous natural forces), it also explores the conflicts
that arise when people with power take it upon themselves to preserve and protect the natural
world from overfishing, poaching, and the general spread of civilization on previously wild
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land. Though Piya, as a cetologist (a scientist who studies marine mammals), begins the novel
believing fully that the welfare of the natural world should take precedence over anything else,
her time in the Sundarbans begins to show her that conservation efforts aren't necessarily a
clear force for good in the world. Although the novel acknowledges that wildlife conservation
is an admirable goal, the novel is ultimately wary of how those conservation efforts play out.
In exploring how governments can use the name of ecological preservation to justify violence
against vulnerable people, the novel asserts that the human toll of wildlife conservation efforts
must be taken into consideration first. In other words, conservation efforts must help both the
natural environment and the people who make that environment their home.
Kanai explains to Piya how some government and environmental groups try to protect the
environment at the expense of the people who live there. Such groups fail to take into account—
or care—about the potential human cost of ecological preservation efforts. When Piya and
Kanai discuss their experience of encountering a village mob torturing and burning a
captured tiger that killed two people, Kanai encourages Piya to consider both the reasons why
the villagers would want to do so, as well as the ways in which even Seattle-based Piya is
complicit in creating the environment where torturing a tiger can even happen. Kanai points
out that in the Sundarbans as a whole, tigers kill multiple people every week—so many, he
suggests, that if people were to be killed in such numbers elsewhere, it would be deemed
genocide. However, because the residents of the Sundarbans are "the poorest of the poor," the
killings aren't reported. He suggests that the government and environmental groups alike care
more for the tigers than they do for the tigers' human victims, if only because the victims are
so poor—while there's money and political favor to be had in promoting conservation efforts.
The Morichjhãpi conflict of 1978-79 also illustrates how environmental preservation can be a
convenient and impactful justification for violence against the people who live in a certain
environment. Though the settlement at Morichjhãpi was seen as a threat to the government for
a host of other reasons, some of the conflict had to do with the fact that the refugees chose to
settle on an island that the government had previously set aside as a wildlife refuge. The reader
learns about this conflict through an argument between Nirmal and Nilima. When Nirmal begs
Nilima to route some of the Trust's resources to the people on Morichjhãpi, Nilima insists that
the people there are just squatters (illegal occupants). She also says that if people are regularly
allowed to take land like they've done, the environment will suffer. Nirmal, on the other hand,
believes that the people on Morichjhãpi are people in need of medical attention, just like people
everywhere, and that the environmental argument is merely a convenient way to justify the
group's eviction. Later, Nirmal is struck when Kusum, who lives on Morichjhãpi, recounts
when, in the middle of the first siege, she listened to the police announce that the island is a
nature reserve funded by people all over the world. She wonders to Nirmal who these people
are who "love animals so much that they are willing to kill us for them?" Kusum comes to
believe that her true crime in the government's eyes is being human and poor in a world that
privileges people who no longer have to make a living by fishing, farming, and clearing land,
as most poor people in the area have to do.
Though the novel ends before any true, large-scale resolution can be reached in regards to the
balance between valuing human life and protecting the environment, Piya's proposed ongoing
project to study the Orcaella dolphins suggests that she has internalized what she learned from
being forced to humanize the locals. She tells Nilima that she'd like to work with local
fisherman, rather than attempt to stop their work, and believes that some of the research money
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she'd receive to study the dolphins could be shared with the Babadon Trust, which provides
locals with healthcare and other services. Nilima's apparent endorsement of Piya's plan
suggests that environmental conservation can only be truly positive and useful when it seeks
to conserve not just the natural world and the animals that live there, but also protect that people
who share the environment—no matter how poor they may be.
• Idealism and Theory vs. Practicality and Action
Upon returning to Lusibari for the first time since he was a child, Kanai receives a packet left
to him by his late uncle Nirmal, a dreamy, idealistic Communist who became involved in the
1979 Morichjhãpi conflict, much to his wife Nilima's chagrin. Unlike her husband, Nilima took
it upon herself to work with the government to form the Babadon Trust, which sought to
provide much-needed services to locals in a way her husband found wholly distasteful. By
considering the ways in which idealism bogs Nirmal down and paralyzes him from taking
meaningful action, and comparing that paralysis to Nilima's life of action, The Hungry
Tide makes the case that theory, idealism, and good intentions are relatively meaningless if
they're never put into practice.
Upon their arrival in the Sundarbans, Nirmal is simultaneously entranced and repulsed by the
history of Sir Daniel Hamilton, a wealthy Scotsman who developed the Hamilton Estate on
Gosaba. There, he implemented a cooperative system and did his best to distance Gosaba from
India's rigid caste system in the name of creating an ideal society in which everyone could
profit. Though Hamilton is frequently described as having been a wealthy capitalist, his estate
seems Communist in nature, which is what intrigues Nirmal. For the time that Hamilton was
alive, the experiment worked relatively well, which provides Nirmal with proof that his beloved
class and political theories can indeed work in the real world.
When faced with the corruption of the landowners and the poverty of the locals upon his and
Nilima's arrival in Lusibari, ten years after Hamilton's death, Nirmal is overwhelmed and
entirely unable to function. The narrator notes that he turned to his copy of Lenin's pamphlet,
which he rereads over and over again in search of answers as to how to help the impoverished
locals. Nilima, on the other hand, begins talking to the local women and listening to their
stories, and then forms a union to help them and bring services to the island. Though Nirmal is
dismissive of Nilima's methods (she works with the government to secure funding and
assistance, which he finds unacceptable given his political leanings), Nirmal is forced to
recognize that his wife was actually able to orchestrate a great deal of positive change on
Lusibari. Through her work, Nilima is able to break up the landholdings, eject the corrupt land
managers, and build a hospital capable of serving an extraordinary number of people. Through
Nirmal's notebook, it's clear that he believes Nilima is just as dismissive of his politics as he is
of hers. However, Nilima tells Kanai on several occasions—and Kanai infers himself—that
what actually drove Nilima and Nirmal apart was Nirmal's complete inability to act, write, or
work within a system he found distasteful to create any change. For him, his theory was too
important to compromise on, even if it meant that nothing got done because of that.
These conflicts between action and inaction finally came to a head when Nirmal became
involved with the Morichjhãpi conflict. His writing in his journal shows clearly that he was
entranced by the idea of the perfect, Hamilton-esque society that the refugees on Morichjhãpi
sought to create. Further, while he desperately wanted to be of help and felt he could help
(given his background as a schoolteacher and a once-prominent member of the Marxist
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academic circles in Calcutta), he again was bogged down in thinking about what should be
done. Nirmal died not long after the police invade Morichjhãpi and massacre the refugees in
1979, leaving only his account of the events in one small notebook to Kanai upon his death. In
the notebook, Nirmal speaks again and again about how he recognizes that inaction throughout
his life has been his undoing, and yet he still finds himself unable to do anything but record his
experiences of the conflict through the lens of idealized theory. Essentially, the novel suggests
that the notebook, as Nirmal's final contribution, really only serves the purpose of unraveling
personal mysteries for his family members and proving that Nirmal was entirely capable of
meaningful action. It's telling, then, that Nirmal's notebook doesn't even survive to the end of
the novel—it gets swept away in the cyclone's floodwaters. His one lasting contribution, on the
other hand, is the cyclone shelter he insisted Nilima include in the hospital—something he
pushed for because of his interest in storms and meteorological theory. The cyclone shelter
stands as proof that Nirmal's idealism and good intentions were impotent until and unless they
were joined with action, practicality, and funding.
Major Characters
• Piya Roy
Piya is a cetologist (a biologist specializing in marine mammals) who comes to the Sundarbans
to conduct a survey of the river dolphins. Though she was born in Calcutta to Bengali parents,
Piya grew up in Seattle and never learned Bengali. However, she knows that in her line of
work, she doesn't always need spoken language to communicate. This idea comes to the
forefront when she meets the fisherman Fokir. Even though the two can't speak to each other,
Piya recognizes that she and Fokir can communicate in a way that seems more honest and more
meaningful than she believes they'd be able to could they speak to each other. This stands in
stark contrast to her relationship with Kanai; even though they can speak to each other, Kanai
initially has little interest in getting to know Piya, which keeps Piya from feeling comfortable
opening up to him. Piya begins the novel believing wholly in the power and goodness of
conservation efforts. As the novel progresses, Piya is forced to recognize that conservation isn't
always a force for good—it often happens at the expense of poor people like Fokir. Though
Piya and Fokir are clearly attracted to each other and develop a quiet romance throughout the
novel, they never act on their feelings for each other. About six weeks after the cyclone, when
Piya returns to Lusibari, she suggests that she'd like to name her ongoing project after Fokir.
She also wants to work with local fishermen to carry out her project and share funding with the
Babadon Trust, which suggests that she learned that conservation efforts are most effective
when implemented in a way that actually helps locals.
• Kanai Dutt
Kanai is a wealthy middle-aged translator who works in New Delhi. When he was ten, he was
sent to the Sundarbans to live with his aunt Nilima and uncle Nirmal as punishment for
misbehaving in school. He returns to the Sundarbans as an adult to deal with a notebook left to
him by his late uncle Nirmal, which helps Kanai and Nilima unravel some of the mysteries of
Nirmal's life. Kanai is self-centred and believes that his way of thinking about the world is far
superior to how the locals think. He attempts to make advances towards Piya throughout much
of the novel, though he's unable to do so due to his habit of treating Piya like an object to be
won. This changes when he's the only one who can explain to her why a village would want to
kill a tiger—because he doesn't live in the Sundarbans, he has an easier time seeing both sides
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of the conservation issue. Kanai is forced to confront his own privilege when he and Fokir stop
on the remote island of Garjontola, where Fokir finds fresh tiger tracks. There, Kanai falls in
the mud, loses his temper, and realizes that people like him are one of the major reasons why
poor people like Fokir aren't cared for. After this, he sees a tiger. His terror is so great upon
seeing the tiger that he actually loses the ability to form language and instead, feels as though
his unspeakable knowledge of how terrifying the tiger is far more powerful than spoken
language. After this, Kanai's self-importance wanes. Nilima explains in the epilogue that
following these events on his trip, Kanai decided to restructure his business so he could take
more time off and spend time on Lusibari.
• Nirmal Bose
Nirmal was Nilima's husband. As a young man, Nirmal was a Marxist intellectual and a
promising writer who taught English at a college in Calcutta. He suffered a mental break after
being arrested for his politics, and his doctors suggested he leave the city. Though he was
initially aghast at the prospect of taking a job at the Hamilton Estate, which was started by a
renowned capitalist Sir Daniel Hamilton, Nirmal changes his mind when he learns that Sir
Daniel's work was very Marxist in nature. Nirmal this sees as proof that his theories—which
he loves more than anything else—can work in practice. However, for the thirty years that
Nirmal teaches in Lusibari, he writes nothing and does no reading. When he retires in 1978,
he's filled with regret that he's done nothing with his life. Nirmal then reconnects with Kusum,
whom he knew when she was a teen in the care of the Women's Union, and is introduced to the
settlement on Morichjhãpi. He becomes instantly obsessed with the settlement, which he sees
as an even better iteration of what Sir Daniel did years before. Though Nirmal desperately
wants to help, he becomes bogged down in theory and thinking about the implications of the
settlement. On the night before the final assault, he chooses to stay on the island with Kusum
and writes the story of his involvement on Morichjhãpi in a school notebook, which is to be
passed onto Kanai. When Kanai talks about Nirmal, he talks mostly about Nirmal's love of
stories and his belief that everything can be turned into a story. Though his notebook is lost in
the floodwaters of the cyclone, his one lasting contribution to the world is the cyclone
shelter he insisted Nilima include in the hospital.
• Nilima Bose
Nilima, who is known simply as Mashima (Aunt) on Lusibari, is Kanai's aunt and Nirmal's
wife. Nilima grew up wealthy in Calcutta and met Nirmal while in college in the late 1940s.
She was so taken with him, they married within a year against her family's wishes. Though
Nilima appears to have shared Nirmal's love for Communist theory in their youth, she's soon
forced to face the consequences of relying so heavily on theory: Nirmal suffers a mental
breakdown after being arrested for his involvement in a Socialist International conference and
later, she watches Nirmal do nothing with his life except fixate on theory. Nilima, on the other
hand, throws herself into helping the local women after discovering that women in the
Sundarbans expect to be widowed in their twenties. In a matter of years, Nilima forms a
Women's Union and the Babadon Trust, which provides a number of important services to the
people of Lusibari and the surrounding islands. Nirmal is dismissive of her work, given that
Nilima must compromise her morals in exchange for funding from the government. Then, when
Nirmal Nirmal becomes involved in the Morichjhãpi incident, it is Nilima who is scornful. In
the present, Nilima remains extremely disturbed by Nirmal's death twenty years earlier, and
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she's even more upset as she wonders why Nirmal left his notebook to Kanai instead of to her.
Though she loves Kanai, she also views him as a spoiled and self-centered man who preys on
women. At the end of the novel, Nilima accepts Piya's plan to develop a conservation and
research plan based in Lusibari because Piya wants to both provide funding for the Babadon
Trust and work with the locals.
• Fokir
Fokir is a poor fisherman whom Piya meets while still in the care of the forest
guard and Mejda. Fokir rescues Piya after she falls into the water, and Piya feels as though
she can trust him because he's with his young son, Tutul. Though Fokir doesn't speak English
and Piya doesn't speak Bengali, Fokir manages to communicate through his actions that he
views Piya as a full person worthy of care and consideration: he makes accommodations for
her privacy, offers her food, and even leaves her valuable shampoo with which to bathe. He
also knows a great deal about river dolphins and is happy to help her study them. Fokir's
wife, Moyna, is dismissive of his profession as a crab fisherman, as she believes there's no
future in that line of work. Instead, she wants Tutul to receive an education, something that
Fokir never had the opportunity to do. Fokir's mother, Kusum, told Nirmal on several
occasions that Fokir had the river in his blood, which may explain some of the comfort he feels
out in the dangerous jungle of the Sundarbans. Fokir wants Kanai to feel the consequences of
using his power to put poor people down; to do this, he puts Kanai in a situation where he's in
close proximity to a tiger. During the cyclone, Fokir and Piya aren't able to make it back to
the Megha in time and so must ride out the cyclone on Garjontola. Fokir ties them to a tree to
keep them from blowing away, but after the eye of the storm passes and the wind changes
direction, Fokir dies when a flying object hits him. Piya decides to name her project after him,
as his data (all the places he saw dolphins) will form the basis of her research project.
• Kusum
Kusum was the person who brought the Morichjhãpi conflict to life for Nirmal. Though
nobody knows exactly what happened, she died during the conflict in 1979 and never appears
directly in the novel; Nirmal only writes about her in his notebook and other characters talk
about her. As a young teen in 1970, Kusum was put in the care of the Lusibari Women's Union
after Kusum's father was killed by a tiger and Kusum's mother was sold into sexual slavery.
At the Union, Kusum met ten-year-old Kanai, and the two developed a close friendship. Right
before Kanai returned to Calcutta, Horen took Kusum away for her safety. The reader later
learns that Horen took her to a train station so she could find her mother. Horen describes
Kusum as entirely independent, with no need for male protection at this point. She finds her
mother working in a brothel and also meets Rajen, whom she marries and later has Fokir with.
After Rajen's death, Kusum learns about the refugee march to Morichjhãpi in the Sundarbans
and joins them, where she reconnects with Horen and Nirmal. Kusum believes fully in the
settlement project on Morichjhãpi, and believes the people who support evicting the refugees
in favor of the animals on the island are inhumane. She crystallizes many of Nirmal's radical
ideas and though Nirmal never admits it himself, Horen later shares that Nirmal was in love
with Kusum. In Nirmal's eyes, he saw her as a symbol of revolution. Though Kusum refused
to leave the island, she did send Fokir away with Horen. Kusum is the one who impresses upon
Fokir the importance of the Irrawaddy river dolphins, as she believes they're messengers of Bon
Bibi, the local goddess.
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• Horen Naskor
Horen is a fisherman who lives on an island that neighbors Lusibari. In his youth, he greatly
admires Nirmal and Nilima and often offers to do favors for them, as when he takes Nirmal,
Nilima, and Kanai to Lusibari in the absence of any ferries in the right direction. Horen was
married at age fourteen and had three children before his twentieth birthday. Kusum was a
distant relative of his, and Horen was instrumental in keeping her from harm and specifically,
from the predatory landowner Dilip Choudury. In 1978, Horen and Nirmal reconnect with
Kusum on Morichjhãpi. Though Horen's emotions seldom factor into Nirmal's writing in his
notebook, Horen later confesses to Kanai that both he and Nirmal were in love with Kusum.
He admits that he'd been in love with Kusum for some time, and even offered to marry her
when she was still a teen and he was already married. Kusum and Horen had sex the night
before the assault on the island. In the present, Horen is an older and distinguished man who's
an exceptional guide through the Sundarbans. He believes fully in the religious practices of the
region and regularly leaves offerings for the goddess Bon Bibi.
• Moyna
Moyna is Fokir's wife and a trainee nurse at the Lusibari hospital. Though she loves Fokir, she
also finds him difficult and exasperating. She thinks little of his work as a fisherman, as she
believes there's no future in it, and she believes he can't keep up with her ambition—she
desperately wants to be a nurse. The two married in the first place because Moyna's parents
insisted she marry. Moyna has a nuanced grasp of how the world works, which piques Kanai's
interest as he recognizes his own drive and outlook on life in her. Moyna fears throughout the
novel that Fokir and Piya are engaging in a romantic relationship, but feels as though she's
unable to talk to Fokir about it herself. Though Moyna is distraught after Fokir's death, she and
Piya form a strange friendship in the weeks following and Piya even plans to employ Moyna
as an office employee for her conservation project.
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PETALS OF BLOOD
-NGŨGĨ WA THIONG'O
The Mau Mau rebellion, as it is often called, which began in Kenya in the early 1950s, was a
nationalist, anticolonial armed resistance against the British colonial state. The guerrilla
movement called itself the Kenya Land Freedom Army; the British dubbed the movement “mau
mau,” a meaningless name, to obscure the aims otherwise so clear in the resistance army’s
name. Ngugi Wa Thiongío’s Petals of Blood examines, among other things, the betrayal by the
postcolonial regime of the ideals of this anticolonial struggle that helped Kenya achieve its
independence.
Summary
Set in the aftermath of Kenyan independence, revered Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong'o’s
novel Petals of Blood (1977) follows schoolteachers Munira and Karega, and barmaid Wanja
and her boss, Abdulla, as they cope with the rapid modernization of their rural village,
Ilmorog. The novel examines the effects of the Mau Mau rebellion and the legacy of
colonialism while criticizing the Kenyan government for reproducing the inequalities of the
colonial regime. The title is taken from “The Swamp,” a poem by Derek Walcott.

The novel begins with a glance at its ending: three notable Kenyans—a teacher and two
successful businessmen—have died in a fire. Inspector Godfrey, who believes that the police
force is “the maker of modern Kenya,” investigates. His suspicion falls on the schoolteacher
Munira.

From here, the novel moves back to the beginning of the story. Schoolteacher Munira arrives
in the pastoral village of Ilmorog, to take up a position at the village school. Many teachers
from the city have come and gone in Ilmorog, and the villagers assume that Munira won’t
last. His new neighbors treat him with suspicion, and few children come to his classes.
However, Munira befriends the owner of a local bar, Abdulla, a hero of the Mau Mau
rebellion, who helps Munira to settle in the village. Munira also befriends Joseph, a young
boy whom Abdulla has adopted. Eventually, Munira is accepted as one of Ilmorog’s own.
Another refugee from the city arrives, Wanja, the granddaughter of a respected Ilmorog elder.
She begins working in Abdulla’s bar, helping him to expand the business. Soon, Munira finds
himself falling in love with her. Munira and Wanja have a brief relationship, but Munira is
married, and when Wanja discovers this, she is bitterly disappointed. She leaves the village
for a time; when she returns, she breaks off the affair.

A former colleague of Munira’s, Karega, arrives in Ilmorog to question Munira about events
at the school where both used to work. Karega ends up taking a position at the school. That
year, the village suffers a long, dry summer and a poor harvest. Karega rallies the villagers
and leads them to Nairobi to ask their Member of Parliament for help.

It is a long journey. On the way, Joseph grows very ill. As soon as the villagers arrive in
Nairobi, they try to get help for Joseph. A minister turns them away, assuming they are
beggars. Finally, they are admitted to the house of a rich man, only to be rounded up and
imprisoned in the building. They are subjected to questioning by the house’s owner, Kimeria,
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an unscrupulous businessman who explains to the villagers that he and their MP are allies.
Later, he blackmails and rapes Wanja.

The villagers go to meet their MP anyway. They find that he is an empty demagogue with no
interest in their plight. However, a Nairobi lawyer takes an interest in their case, advancing it
through the courts and attracting national press attention. As a result, journalists and charity
workers pour into Ilmorog.

When the rains finally come, the villagers celebrate with ritual dances. A villager named
Nyakinyua brews a powerful traditional drink made from the Thang’eta plant. All the
villagers partake of the drink. Under its influence, Karega confesses to Munira that he had an
affair with Munira’s older sister, Mukami. Munira and Mukami’s father forced her to leave
Karega due to Karega’s brother’s involvement in the Mau Mau rebellion. This was the real
reason for Mukami’s suicide.

A plane crashes in the village, miraculously killing no one but Abdulla’s donkey. Many
people come to see the wreckage, and Wanja suggests they capitalize on this tourism by
selling the Thang’eta drink in Abdulla’s bar. The drink becomes a notorious attraction of the
village, and tourists begin visiting just to try it. Soon, Wanja starts a brewery making the
drink.

Karega and Wanja start seeing one another. Seething with jealousy, Munira schemes to have
Karega fired from the school. Karega is forced to leave Ilmorog.

The government begins building a new road—the Trans- Africa Road—right through the
village. Workers arrive, and the village rapidly expands. Soon it is a town, New Ilmorog. The
farmers of the old village are advised to fence their lands and mortgage them, so they can
prove they own them. Banks offer them loans against their harvests to pay for this. When
Nyakinyua dies, the bank moves to seize her land, so Wanja sells her brewery in order to buy
Nyakinkua’s land. She opens a brothel catering to the new arrivals and is eventually forced to
work as a prostitute herself.

Karega returns, telling Wanja that after his departure, he collapsed into alcoholism before
finding a job in a factory, from which he has been fired. Though they still love each other,
they cannot agree about how to live in the new Kenya, and Karega leaves again. Munira tries
to rekindle their relationship, but Wanja simply asks him to pay. He does so, and they have
sex.

Wanja comes up with a plan to rid herself of the men who have taken advantage of her. She
invites them all to the brothel, including Karega and Kimeria. Her plan is to present Abdulla
to them as her chosen partner. However, Munira sees Karega arrive and then leave again; in a
fit of jealousy, he sets fire to the brothel. The other men die, while Wanja is hospitalized.

Inspector Godfrey charges Munira with arson and Munira is imprisoned.

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THE HAND MAID’S TALE

- MARGARET ATWOOD
Brief Biography of Margaret Atwood
Atwood is the second of three children. Her father was an entomologist (insect researcher), and
she grew up playing in the Canadian woods. A writer since childhood, she received a bachelor’s
degree from the University of Toronto and a Master’s at Radcliffe College, the former women’s
college affiliated with Harvard. Atwood studied Victorian novels, which she has said
influenced her belief that novels should be about society as a whole, not just about the
characters’ specific lives. She has taught writing and English at many universities in Canada
and the US, and has published dozens of books of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Critics tend
to acclaim her books, and she’s won major prizes. The Handmaid’s Tale is her most famous
book, and its title and themes are often invoked even in contemporary discussions about
women’s rights and theocracies.
Historical Context of The Handmaid’s Tale
Atwood has written that her research on 17th-century American Puritans, who created a rigid
and inhumane theocracy based on a few choice selections from the Bible, influenced Gilead.
But the novel also responds to the modern political scene in America. The religious right, with
its moralizing tendencies, was gaining power in America as backlash to the left-wing Free Love
and feminist movements. In the 1970’s, Jerry Falwell and other Christian leaders urged the
Republican party to bring prayer back to schools, diminish abortion rights, and defeat the Equal
Rights Amendment, which was meant to support women. The Handmaid’s Tale shows how
religion can be used as an excuse to reduce women’s rights, a political tendency which
continues to occur all over the world.
Summary
The United States has fallen, overthrown by a theocratic regime, founded on rigid Christian
principles and the disempowerment of women, which has installed a new nation called Gilead
in its place. The novel begins with Offred, the first-person narrator, remembering her restricted
life at the Rachel and Leah Center, a training camp for Handmaids in an old high school. The
scene changes to her current residence, where she lives with a Commander and his
wife, Serena Joy. Offred puts on a red uniform and goes on a shopping trip with Ofglen, and
afterwards they stop by the Wall to look at the bodies of recently executed men.
In the evening, Offred lies in bed. She remembers her spunky friend Moira, her
activist mother, and the loss of her daughter and her husband, Luke. She thinks about
the previous Handmaid who left a Latin message scratched into the wall. She describes her
trip to the doctor on the previous day. The doctor suggested that her Commander might be
sterile and offers to have sex with her. Though her life depends on getting pregnant, Offred
refused.
She takes a bath and thinks about her daughter and the hysterical Handmaid Janine. After her
bath, she and the rest of the members of the household gather to listen to the Commander read
the bible. Then the Commander, the Commander’s wife Serena Joy, and Offred perform the
Ceremony: the Commander has impersonal sex with Offred while she lies between Serena
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Joy’s legs. Afterwards, Offred sneaks downstairs in a rebellious gesture and runs into Nick,
who gives her a message from the Commander to meet the following night.
The next day, Offred and other Handmaids attend Janine’s birth. In the afternoon, Offred
remembers how Moira managed to escape from the Rachel and Leah Center disguised as an
Aunt. In the evening she sees the Commander, who surprisingly only wants to play Scrabble
and get a chaste kiss. Afterwards she can’t stop laughing.
Months pass. Offred and the Commander meet often, and the Ceremony becomes more fraught
for Offred now that she and the Commander know each other. Offred and Ofglen go shopping
regularly, and Ofglen reveals that she’s part of a secret organized resistance. Offred recalls all
the events that lead from the US government to the Republic of Gilead—a massacre of the
President and Congress, a succession of restrictive measures imposed for “safety,” the removal
of all power and possessions from women. One night the Commander explains the meaning of
the previous Handmaid’s Latin, and Offred learns that the previous Handmaid hanged herself.
After a shopping trip one day, Serena Joy tells Offred to have sex with Nick in an effort to get
pregnant, and Offred agrees. Offred and Ofglen attend a Prayvaganza, celebrating arranged
marriages. Afterward, Serena Joy shows Offred a photo of her daughter. That night, the
Commander gives Offred a skimpy outfit and makeup, and Nick drives them to a
nightclub/hotel filled with prostitutes. Offred spots Moira across the room, and they meet in
the bathroom. Moira reveals that she spent many months on the Underground Femaleroad
before she was captured. Offred and the Commander get a room and have sex, and Offred has
to fake arousal.
Shortly after returning home, Serena Joy leads Offred to Nick, and Offred doesn’t have to fake
arousal this time. Time passes, and Offred sees Nick often. She becomes so obsessed with him
that she doesn’t want to leave or help Ofglen with Resistance efforts. Offred and Ofglen attend
a Women’s Salvaging, where three women are hanged. Afterwards there’s a Particicution, a
frenzied group murder of a supposed rapist, who was actually a member of the Resistance. The
following day, a new Handmaid comes for the shopping trip with Offred. She says that the old
Ofglen committed suicide when the Eyes—the Gilead secret police—came to get her.
When Offred returns home after shopping, Serena Joy confronts her with the skimpy outfit and
threatens to punish her. Offred goes to her room and sees the Eyes coming for her. Nick tells
her that they’re secretly members of the Resistance, and she enters their van, unsure of her fate.
The novel ends with “Historical Notes” from a future academic conference about
Gilead. Professor Pieixoto describes the discovery of Offred’s narrative on cassette tapes in
Maine, suggesting that the Eyes that took her were part of the Resistance, as Nick claimed. It
is revealed that researchers may have discovered who the Commander was, but no one knows
what happened to Offred.
Themes
• Gender Roles
Gilead is a strictly hierarchical society, with a huge difference between the genders. As soon
as the Gileadean revolutionaries take over after terrorism destroys the US government, they
fire all women from their jobs and drain their bank accounts, leaving Offred desperate and
dependent. Luke, however, doesn’t seem so furious at this turn of events, a subtle suggestion
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that even good men may have embedded misogynistic attitudes, and that Gilead merely takes
these common views to the logical extreme. Soon Gileadean women find all liberties taken
from them, from the right to choose their clothes to the right to read.
Even women in positions of power, like Aunt Lydia, are only allowed cattle prods, never guns.
The Commander’s Wife, once a powerful supporter of far right-wing religious ideas about how
women should stay in the home, now finds herself unhappily trapped in the world she
advocated for. Gilead also institutionalizes sexual violence toward women. The Ceremony,
where the Commander tries to impregnate Offred, is institutionalized adultery and a kind of
rape. Jezebel’s, where Moira works, is a whorehouse for the society’s elite.
Though the story critiques the religious right, it also shows that the feminist left, as exemplified
by Offred’s mother, is not the solution, as the radical feminists, too, advocate book burnings,
censorship, and violence. The book avoids black-and-white divisions, forcing us to take on our
own assumptions regarding gender. We may blame Offred for being too passive, without
acknowledging that she’s a product of her society. We may fault the Commander’s Wife for
not showing solidarity to her gender and rebelling against Gilead, without understanding that
this expectation, since it assumes that gender is the most important trait, is just a milder version
of the anti-individual tyranny of Gilead. These complicated questions of blame, as well as the
brutal depictions of the oppression of women, earn The Handmaid’s Tale its reputation as a
great work of feminist literature.
• Religion and Theocracy
Gilead is a theocracy, a government where church and state are combined. Religious language
enters into every part of the society, from Rita’s position as a Martha, named for a New
Testament kitchen worker, to the store names like Milk and Honey. And religion, specifically
the Old Testament, is also the justification for many of Gilead’s most savage
characteristics. Offred’s job as Handmaid is based on the biblical precedent of Rachel and
Leah, where fertile servants can carry on adulterous relationships to allow infertile women like
the Commander’s Wife to have families. Each month before the Ceremony, the Commander
reads from Genesis the same lines that make the book’s epigraph, justifying and moralizing the
crude intercourse that will take place.
Yet many of the biblical quotes in the book are twisted. The theocracy is so rigid about its
religious influences, and so emphatic about the specific rules it upholds, that it even warps
essential virtues like charity, tolerance and forgiveness. Offred knows that the prayers that the
Aunts play the Handmaids in the Rachel and Leah Center are not the words that actually appear
in the Bible, but she has no way of checking. The Salvagings and executions are supposedly
the penalty for biblical sins like adultery, but Offred knows that others are executed for resisting
the government. The Handmaid’s Tale is not a criticism of the Bible in itself, but a criticism of
the way that people and theocracies use the Bible for their own oppressive purposes.
• Fertility
Fertility is the reason for Offred’s captivity and the source of her power, Gilead’s major failing
and its hope for the future. Inhabitants of Gilead give many reasons for the society’s issues
with creating viable offspring: the sexual revolution and birth control, pollution, sexually
transmitted diseases. And the book hints at other, more subtle problems: in a society that
restricts women so much, treating the potential child-bearers alternately as precious objects,
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bothersome machines, and prostitute-like sources of shame, how could anyone conceive?
Similarly, though Offred knows her life depends on a successful birth, the atmosphere of
extreme pressure and fear can’t be as successful a motivator as the hope, love and liberty that
characterized life with her first daughter and Luke. Despite the sterile atmosphere, markers
of fertility, such as flowers and worms, throng in the Commander’s Wife’s carefully tended
garden.
The Commander and his wife host Offred for her proven fertility, and they even rename her
as Fred’s possession—her body’s functions are valued, but her personhood is not. This division
is highlighted in Janine’s Birthing Ceremony, where Janine’s Commander’s Wife pretends to
give birth at the same time, and the faked birth is treated as the authentic one. In this way,
Gilead manages to strip away even the Handmaid’s connection to the babies they bear in a
version of a sharing, collective society gone totally wrong.
• Rebellion
Every major character in the story engages in some kind of disobedience against Gilead’s
laws. Moira rebels most boldly, disguising herself and managing to escape from the
Handmaids’ imprisonment, though her daring escape proves futile, and she ends up at
Jezebel’s, resigned to her fate. Ofglen’s rebellion is more community-minded, since she works
as part of an organized resistance, although her careful plotting also ends badly. More
unexpected are the small-scale rebellions from the Commander and the Commander’s Wife.
The Commander seems to have every advantage, being a man, powerful in the new regime,
and wealthy. Gilead should be his ideal society, especially since the book suggests that he had
a role in designing it. Yet he desires a deeper emotional connection, and cares enough
about Offred’s well-being to break the law and consort with her beyond his duties. The
Commander’s Wife also tries to get around the strictures of Gilead, setting Offred up
with Nick in an illegal attempt to make a family.
These rebellious acts, coming from Gilead’s privileged group, add complexity to their
characters and to the dystopia as a whole. No one in the book is purely evil, and no one is so
different from real-world humans to fully embrace the lack of independence in Gilead. Whether
large or small, attempting to destroy the Gileadean government or merely to make one’s
personal circumstances more tolerable, each character commits rebellious acts, highlighting
both the unliveable horror of Gileadean society, and the unsteadiness of its foundations.
• Love
Despite Offred’s general passivity in the face of the oppressive society, she has a deep and
secret source of strength: her love. Though love might keep Offred complacent, permitting her
to daydream rather than to rebel outright, it’s also responsible for the book’s greatest triumph,
as love drives Nick to help Offred escape, which she manages more effectively than Moira
or Ofglen. Her love for her mother, her daughter, Luke, Moira, and ultimately Nick, allow
her to stay sane, and to live within her memories and emotions instead of the terrible world
around her. Although the novel never proposes an ideal society or a clear way to apply its
message to the real world, and although the novel looks critically both on many modern
movements, including the religious right and the extreme feminist left, love—both familial and
romantic—surprisingly turns out to be the most effective force for good.
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Love is also a driving force behind other characters’ actions. We know that Nick reciprocates
Offred’s feelings, but also the search for love, in the form of a real, not purely functional human
connection, influences the Commander’s desires to bend the rules for Offred. In the end, love
is the best way to get around Gilead’s rules, as it allows for both secret mental resistances, and
for the trust and risk that result in Offred’s great escape.
• Storytelling and Memory
The structure of The Handmaid’s Tale is characterized by many different kinds of storytelling
and fiction-making. For one, the title itself, and the fictional “Historical Notes on the
Handmaid’s Tale” of the book’s end, frame the entire novel as Offred’s story, that she’s said
into a tape recorder in the old fashioned storytelling tradition. For another, her whole story is
also punctuated by shorter stories she tells herself, of the time before Gilead or Aunt Lydia’s
lessons. These small flashbacks can be triggered by the slightest impression, and they occur so
often throughout the novel that it seems like Offred lives in several worlds, the terrible present,
the confusing but free past, and the Rachel and Leah Center that bridged them.
Adding to the overlap of past and present, the tenses are always shifting, with some memories
in the past tense, and some in the present. A third form of storytelling comes about because of
the constant atmosphere of paranoia and uncertainty. Offred constantly makes up fictions.
She’s filled with questions—is Ofglen a true believer, or lying? Is Nick’s touching her foot
accidental, or intentional? Offred must keep several stories in mind at once, imagining each to
be true at the same time. This form of storytelling is most clear in her imaginings about Luke’s
fate, where he could be dead, imprisoned or maybe escaped.
Fourth, Offred also uses storytelling as a pastime. Since she has no access to any entertainment,
and very few events happen in her life, she often goes over events from other people’s points
of view, making up very involved fictions about what others might be thinking and saying. One
major example is her long imaginary recreation of Aunt Lydia and Janine talking
about Moira. Another is her creative ideas about what Nick might think of her and the
Commander’s relationship. With more stories and memories than current-time actions, the
book is profoundly repetitive. It forms its own kind of simple, quiet hell—we, like Offred, are
trapped within the echo-chamber of her mind.
Major Characters
• Serena Joy
Also known as the Commander’s Wife, she is unable to have children and therefore
requires Offred’s services. Before Gilead, she was a singer who became famous on TV for her
emotional Christian music. She also used to give speeches about how women ought to be
housewives. During the novel, she occupies her time gardening with Nick’s help, and knitting
elaborate scarves for soldiers, despite her arthritis. For much of the novel, she resentfully
ignores Offred, but towards the end she encourages Offred to try to get pregnant by having sex
with Nick.
• Offred
The novel’s protagonist and first-person narrator, Handmaid of the Commander and Serena
Joy, former wife of Luke, and lover of Nick. We never learn her real name (Offred means “Of
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Fred,” her Commander), and we know little about her physical appearance. She has brown hair,
stands about five foot seven, and is 33 years old. Before Gilead, she had a daughter with Luke
at about age 25. Moira was her best friend from college, and she had a rocky relationship with
her radical, outrageous mother. Though Offred is rebellious, even violent, in her thoughts, and
full of passionate memories, she seems stolid and devout to outsiders, doing her best to obey
Gilead’s laws. Readers may be quick to judge Offred for her passivity, but her keen
observations and honest emotions, even after the terror and brainwashing that she’s
encountered, demonstrate the limitations of Gilead’s power over its subjects.
• The Commander
The head of the household where Offred serves as a Handmaid, and husband of Serena Joy.
The Commander has gray hair, wears a black suit, and looks “like a Midwestern bank
president.” Though he is a high-ranking official of Gilead who may have played a large role in
its construction, he breaks many laws, including going to the sex club Jezebel’s (and at least
once hiring Moira), and spending time with Offred. Though he attributes many of his
misogynistic attitudes to “Nature,” he cares for Offred’s well-being, and often wants to know
her opinion on controversial matters.
• Nick
The Commander’s driver and Serena Joy’s helper in the garden, and Offred’s lover. Nick’s
official position is Guardian, and he seems to be low-ranking because he hasn’t been assigned
a woman. From the beginning, he roguishly rejects some of Gilead’s strictures (by rolling up
his uniform sleeves, for example), but the Commander and Serena Joy find him trustworthy
and get his help for their own misdeeds. He is secretive and discreet, and Offred can never
quite figure out what he’s thinking, even during their love affair. The question of his true
alliances comes to a head at the book’s cliff-hanger ending, but the postscript “Notes” suggest
that he was working for the Resistance after all.
• Luke
Offred’s pre-Gilead husband and father of her daughter. He was previously married and had
a long affair with Offred before divorcing his first wife. Though Offred passes a lot of time
remembering him, he seems to have been frequently at odds with her emotions. He doesn’t
seem greatly distressed when Offred loses her job and must cede all her money to him. Perhaps
he lacks sympathy, or perhaps he’s sexist. After their failed escape, Offred imagines many fates
for him, but never pictures him joining with Gilead, although subtext suggests that he might
have.
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HUMBOLDT’S GIFT
-SAUL BELLOW
Humboldt’s Gift (1975) was Saul Bellow’s major follow-up to his two previous best-
sellers, Henderson the Rain King (1959) and Herzog (1964). It is also his affectionate yet
tongue-in-cheek tribute to his friend the poet and short story writer Delmore Schwartz who
died in obscurity in 1966. Bellow had already won three National Book Awards for fiction,
but Humboldt’s Gift propelled him in 1976 to both a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Nobel
Prize for Literature.
The novel is a fictional memoir of Von Humboldt Fleischer – a Jewish American poet and
philosopher of precocious talent. But the narrative is also a double portrait – both of Humboldt
and of Charlie Citrine, his one-time friend who is telling the story, writing the memoir, and
revealing the serio-comic events in his own life at the same time.
It is generally accepted that the character study of Humboldt Fleischer is based upon the figure
of Delmore Schwartz – an American writer whose collection of poems and short stories In
Dreams Begin Responsibilities was published in 1938 when he was only twenty-five years old.
He was widely admired and at first very successful; but then later his life and reputation went
into decline, and he died in poverty, an alcoholic with paranoid delusions.
Saul Bellow was a protegé of Schwartz, and Citrine has many of the features of Bellow’s own
life – problematic relationships with ex-wife and mistress, great success as a writer, and a
fashionable life as an intellectual who mixes with politicians and celebrities.
Bellow seems to invite readers to make close comparisons between his own biography and the
details he supplies of his fictional narrator. Despite this however, readers should keep in mind
that in terms of literary interpretation, a clear distinction should be maintained between
biographical and textual evidence.
Chronology
The novel has a very complex sequence of events – primarily because it is presented in the
somewhat rambling mixture of Citrine’s memories of Humboldt, recollections of his own
boyhood in Chicago, abstract reflections on Anthroposophy, and the narrative of the events of
two or three days as he prepares to fly to Europe with his mistress Renata. These are worth
tabulating for the purposes of clarification:
• the history of his relationship with Humboldt
• memories of a Chicago boyhood
• reflections on Rudolph Steiner and Anthoposophy
• conflicts with gangsters, lawyers, and an ex-wife
This is a very skilful arrangement of the events in a novel. It encompasses the historical
background to its milieu, the presentation of a character, philosophic reflections on the nature
of life and death, and a concentrated account of dramatic events over the space of a few days.
There are not many novelists who could orchestrate this chronological complexity without
resorting to a clumsier structure.
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Bellow keeps these four separate strands of narrative alive at the same time by having them all
presented via the very engaging narrative style of his principal character and narrator, Charles
Citrine.
Summary
Humboldt’s Gift by Canadian-American author Saul Bellow is a 1975 novel that won the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was a factor in his being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
in 1976. The story is told from the point of view of Charlie Citrine, a successful writer. The
narrative covers American life from the 1930s to the 1970s. Charlie thinks about his
childhood in Chicago, as well as his time living in Greenwich Village in New York, and
working with Von Humboldt Fleischer, who was a mentor to him. In the present timeframe,
Humboldt has already died.

The narrative opens with Charlie in his youth in Chicago, reading Humboldt’s book, The
Harlequin Ballads. The book moves him to the point of being inspired enough to borrow
money from a friend and head to Greenwich Village to find him. Humboldt becomes a
mentor to Charlie and they begin a long-lasting relationship. They experience the dawning of
the Cold War and become Marxists. They get involved with the anti-establishment movement
and oppose capitalism. They embrace the Bohemian lifestyle.

In the present timeframe, the middle of the 1970s, Charlie is in middle age. He wakes up one
morning in his apartment in Chicago to what becomes one of the worst days possible. He
finds out that this former wife is suing him and that the Internal Revenue Service is on his
trail. He is receiving threatening telephone calls from a mobster named Rinaldo Cantabile.
When he leaves his building, he sees that his new Mercedes has been damaged by hammers
and baseball bats, and he immediately knows that Cantabile was responsible. Charlie is being
pursued by Rinaldo because he stopped payment on a check that he had given the gangster in
order to pay a gambling debt. It was when Charlie’s friend George Swiebel told him that
Rinaldo and his cousin were cheating when they beat Charlie at George’s poker game that
Charlie stopped payment on the check. Charlie tells Rinaldo that he is willing to settle the
debt, but as a matter of pride, the mobster asks for the payment to be made in public. He leads
Charlie on a journey around various places in Chicago. He ultimately accepts the payment on
a beam of a skyscraper that is under construction. Rindado decides at this point that Charlie is
his friend and he then spends several months following him around, including going to
Europe.
As he deals with a midlife crisis, Charlie has a relationship with Renata, a beautiful young
woman who has expensive tastes and an insatiable desire for sex. Renata, along with
everything else, wants to marry Charlie. In Charlie’s memory, flashbacks show that he once
had a wife named Denise and they had two daughters. Charlie had made a good deal of
money when he wrote a successful Broadway play which also became a movie. Denise has
already acquired a good deal of Charlie’s money but now is apparently out to take everything
from him. Following his relationship with Denise, Charlie falls for a woman named Demmie.
She dies in a plane crash in South America with her parents.

Pondering death becomes an obsession for Charlie. He thinks that the human spirit does not
die with the person. Charlie spends much of his time thinking about this and some of the
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other universal questions of life. He develops a habit that involves talking to the dead and
reading to them. Charlie in essence is painted as a neurotic man who is growing old. Old age
is also something that Charlie grapples with, including its implications with respect to his
sexuality. He has a young lover who breaks up with him in Madrid. As heartbreaking as this
is for Charlie, he also finds a more mature perspective towards sexuality from the experience.
He also finds himself trying to cope with the problem of being an artist trying to survive in a
capitalist society.

The Los Angeles Times called Humboldt’s Gift, “both a crazy mess of a novel and an abiding
testament to the vital exuberance of Saul Bellow's genius…The narrator is Charlie Citrine,
and his friend Humboldt has just died in a fleabag New York hotel. Citrine uses his
relationship with the doomed poet as a springboard for meditations on the relationship
between the artist and society in America, on women, on marriage, on contemporary life, on
pretty much anything, in effect, that interests or obsesses his creator, Saul Bellow.
But Humboldt's Gift is, too, the story of artistic friendship and rivalry. Citrine, when he first
meets Humboldt, is filled with spunk and ambition. He travels from the Midwest to New
York to gain access to literature and to try to take the world by the throat; by the time, many
years later, that he sits down, or rather, lies down (on a couch) to reconstruct Humboldt's life,
Citrine has written a Broadway hit and a host of books…Beyond and behind the wit lies
Bellow's spiritual questing...In a way Humboldt's Gift is like a kaddish that's run out of
control-gorgeous, funny and sad.”
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THE JOY LUCK CLUB

- AMY TAN
Brief Biography of Amy Tan
Amy Tan was born to Chinese immigrants, John and Daisy Tan, in Oakland, California. After
her father and brother both passed away when she was 15, Tan moved to Switzerland with her
mother and younger brother. During this time, she learned about her mother’s first marriage to
an abusive man in China, and the three daughters her mother had to abandon in Shanghai. This
family history inspired her first novel, 1989’s The Joy Luck Club, which became a bestseller
and, later, film. Other novels, such as The Kitchen God’s Wife and The Hundred Secret Senses,
also received critical acclaim for their intimate portrayals of familial relationships. Tan
currently lives in northern California with her husband, where she continues to write fiction,
memoirs, and children’s literature.
Historical Context of The Joy Luck Club
In the novel, Suyuan flees China as a young woman, when Japanese forces invade the city of
Kweilin. This reflects actual historical events in the Second Sino-Japanese War, which was
fought between 1937 and 1945. During the eight-year war (which overlapped with World War
II), Japan aggressively attacked mainland China, hoping to expand the Japanese empire onto
the Asian continent. Over twenty million Chinese citizens were killed or displaced during the
ground invasions. Japan succeeded in capturing many major Chinese cities until it became
involved in World War II in 1941, fighting against the United States and other Allied countries.
Japan surrendered to Allied forces in 1945, after the United States dropped two atomic bombs
on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing millions of Japanese citizens. As part of the
surrender agreement, China regained all its seized land in 1946.
Summary
The Joy Luck Club is divided into four parts of four stories each, totalling sixteen stories in all;
in the beginning of each part, a short parable introduces a common theme, connecting the four
stories that follow. Each story is told by one of the seven main characters, and these stories are
all woven together into a larger narrative about the complex, and often misunderstood,
connection between immigrant Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters.
A few months after her mother Suyuan’s unexpected death, June Woo is asked to take her
mother’s seat at a weekly mahjong game that’s been ongoing between four friends for almost
forty years. The weekly meeting is known as “the Joy Luck Club,” and the other members
are An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair. The four women met in a San
Francisco refugee center after emigrating from China to the United States during World War
II, and bonded over both shared grief and resilience. Suyuan’s particular grief related to the
loss of her twin baby girls, whom she was separated from during the Japanese invasion of
Kweilin. Suyuan secretly searches for her two daughters for the rest of her life, unbeknownst
to June.
With Suyuan gone, June is supposed to fill her mother’s role in the group of friends, but June
feels childish and out of place at the table of older women, especially when they start talking
about their own daughters with whom June grew up. When the game night concludes, the three
older women inform her that Suyuan’s twin girls have been found as adults in China; it is up
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to June to travel to China and fulfill her mother’s lifelong wish of reuniting the family. June
worries that she doesn’t know her mother’s personal history well enough to communicate to
her long-lost half-sisters, which the older woman strongly deny. This strong denial reveals
these women’s own fears: that their daughters would also be unable to articulate their Chinese
heritages if asked).
In the first part of the novel, An-mei, Lindo, and Ying-ying relate how their traumatic
childhoods in China affected their parental styles. An-mei was initially raised by her maternal
grandmother, after her mother remarried in a dishonorable manner. When her mother returns a
few years later to care for An-mei’s dying grandmother, her mother cuts off a piece of her own
arm to brew medicine that might save her grandmother. An-mei witnesses the sacrifice, which
redefines her notion of a daughter’s love. Lindo’s life is decided for her by the time she’s two,
when a matchmaker arranges a future marriage between her and Tyan-yu, a wealthy but
spoiled boy. Lindo moves to Tyan-yu’s family’s mansion when she’s twelve and becomes an
indentured servant to Tyan-yu’s cruel mother, Huang Taitai. After she and Tyan-yu marry,
Lindo takes fate into her own hands and concocts a plan to scare Huang Taitai into annulling
the marriage. When Ying-ying is only four years old she falls off her family’s boat during a
Moon Festival and gets separated from them. She soon comes upon the Moon Lady performing
on a stage and believes it to be the goddess who grants wishes, as her nanny taught her.
However, when she goes to talk to the Moon Lady, Ying-ying is horrified to discover the actor
is actually a man dressed as a woman. The fear of being lost finally sinks in, and Ying-ying
relates at the end of her story that she is uncertain if she was ever completely found.
The second and third parts contain the stories of the older women’s daughters: Waverly
Jong, Rose Hsu Jordan, Lena St. Clair, and June again. These stories address their upbringings
with immigrant mothers, and the way that maternal wisdom, derived from Chinese tradition,
shaped them as adults. Waverly becomes a chess prodigy before she’s ten years old, and thrives
under the pressure of competition. Still, she gets irritated by her mother Lindo’s boasting and
self-congratulations, and the two have a fight that leads to Waverly quitting chess out of guilt.
Lindo’s ability to shake Waverly’s confidence continues into Waverly’s romantic life when
she’s an adult. Rose’s stories involve her mother An-mei’s faith to keep trying, despite fate’s
cruel circumstances. Rose’s baby brother accidentally drowns while under Rose’s supervision,
and An-mei tries to rescue him by appeasing God and Chinese ancestral spirits with prayers
and jewelry. Though unsuccessful, An-mei’s attempt inspires Rose to take control of her own
fate during her later divorce. Lena remembers her mother Ying-ying’s unnerving ability to
predict bad events, and highlights the ominous premonition about her mother’s stillborn baby.
Acting as an interpreter between her suffering Chinese mother and her bewildered white father,
Lena fails to communicate Ying-ying’s sorrow, leaving her mother bereft and without support.
Ying-ying also predicts that Lena will marry a bad man, which comes true years later. Lena
senses the impending divorce, but it takes Ying-ying’s presence to help Lena acknowledge her
husband’s lack of support. June recalls Suyuan’s desire to make June into a child prodigy like
Waverly, which ultimately backfires. For most of her life, June believes her mother thinks she’s
a disappointment, until Suyuan holds a New Year’s dinner party right before her passing.
During the dinner of whole crabs, which represent good fortune for the next year, Waverly
picks the best crabs for her and her family. By the time the plate reaches June and Suyuan, only
one perfect crab remains. June tries to take a damaged crab so Suyuan can have the perfect
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crab, but Suyuan stops her. Later, Suyuan praises June for having such a generous heart when
other people (like Waverly) only think of themselves.
The final section returns to the mothers’ perspectives, and tries to reconcile the gap between
Chinese and American cultures by offering solutions that appease both sets of values. Using
old-fashioned superstition to manipulate her abusive husband, An-mei’s mother controls the
outcome of An-mei’s fate. Her suicidal plan both acknowledges Chinese customs as well as a
new spirit of self-agency. Similarly, Ying-ying identifies with the Chinese Tiger zodiac sign,
even if its assigned traits don’t always appear to others. The animal’s resilience motivated
Ying-ying to survive her life in China, and Ying-ying believes it can help Lena through her
divorce; just because the idea is old-fashioned doesn’t mean it doesn’t apply to American
situations. Lindo contemplates her daughter Waverly’s upcoming marriage and the similarities
between their life paths, despite growing up in different countries.
In the last of the sixteen stories, June flies to China to meet her long-lost half-sisters.
Immediately after touching down in Shanghai, June feels a sense of connection to the country,
and to her mother, in a more immediate way than ever before. When she finally meets her
sisters, Chwun Hwa and Chwun Yu, the three of them feel their mother’s presence together
and represent what Chinese heritage really is: a connection to family and a greater cultural
legacy that transcends place and time.
Themes
• Mother-Daughter Relationships
The main focus in The Joy Luck Club is the complex relationship between mothers and
daughters, and the inherent bond that’s always between them despite generational and cultural
conflicts. The novel follows June Woo’s search to understand her deceased mother Suyuan’s
life, supplemented by stories from her mother’s three best friends, Lindo, An-mei, and Ying-
ying. June’s memory of her mother is complicated by the revelation that Suyuan had twin baby
girls during World War II, but had to leave them in China for their own safety during the
Japanese invasion. June questions whether she ever truly knew her mother, but the three older
women insist that Suyuan exists deep in June’s bones. The novel, in fact, suggests that the
connection between mother and daughter exists beyond the knowledge of personal events; it’s
steeped in inherited behaviors and selflessness over the course of a lifetime. An-mei tells a
related story about her banished mother returning home to care for An-mei’s dying
grandmother, Popo; her mother goes so far as to cut out a piece of her arm to prepare special
medicine. The physical sacrifice represents the lengths that some daughters go to honor their
mothers.
In contrast, the daughters of the Joy Luck Club members share stories about the difficulties of
growing up with immigrant mothers. Cultural values clash as the American-born daughters
want freedom from their mothers’ old-fashioned beliefs. Yet by the end, the daughters discover
their overbearing mothers have always had their best interests at heart. Ying-ying’s
daughter Lena tries to hide her impending divorce, but her mother wants to help her rediscover
the “tiger side” of her Chinese identity, which fights and does not yield to sadness. Though
initially ashamed to reveal such a failure to her mother, Lena realizes her mother fundamentally
understands her decisions, as they share similar personal histories and values. As the standalone
stories weave together in The Joy Luck Club, they expose how boundless maternal love can be,
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even when daughters misunderstand or undervalue it. As June meets her half-sisters for the
first time in China, she feels her mother’s presence with them, dispelling any doubt about
understanding her mother’s lifelong intentions. Though she cannot know every detail of her
mother’s history, June preserves the lessons that Suyuan taught her as a child, and the deep
love for family to share with her new half-sisters.
• Storytelling and Tradition
The novel has four sections of four stories each, narrated in turn by one of the novel’s seven
main characters. At the start of each section, a one-page Chinese parable (a short story with a
moral) introduces the theme that connects the four stories that follow. The brief parables reflect
the mothers’ own parenting styles throughout the book, as they teach their daughters lessons
through stories that can be internalized, rather than direct opinions or warnings. As a
child, Waverly learns not to whine for attention, because her mother tells her that the “wise
guy, he not go against wind… strongest wind cannot be seen.” This lesson of stoicism drives
Waverly’s eventual success, both as a child chess champion and as a strong-willed professional.
The style mimics the Chinese tradition of oral storytelling, where family history is passed along
and immortalized through generations. More than just communicating advice, storytelling
allows historical context and a stronger connection to Chinese heritage to be passed on, which
fades as children become more Americanized and less interested in inheriting ancient proverbs.
Tradition is vital to the development of personal values in The Joy Luck Club, and slowly
becomes important to the daughters as they get older and realize the relevance, and strength,
of all the stories and inherited customs within their own lives.
The mothers’ longer narratives in each chapter often address their daughters, and storytelling
acts as a way to transfer wisdom through personal experience. Suyuan repeats a story
to June about escaping Kweilin, changing the ending each time as June grows older. When
she’s finally mature enough to comprehend the gravity of Suyuan’s loss, June is told the whole
story about the twins’ abandonment and her mother’s first husband’s death. The story makes
June confront the meanings of sacrifice, love, and despair more viscerally than simply being
instructed to not take things for granted.
• Immigration, Language, and Mistranslation
Though storytelling is the main mode of communication in The Joy Luck Club, a constant
conflict in the novel is the language barrier between Chinese and English. When first
immigrating to the United States, the mothers wish for their children to speak perfect English
and succeed as Americans. However, by assimilating into American culture, their daughters
lose a sense of their Chinese heritage and inherited language, in fact they lose even the ability
to fully understand that heritage or language. In the opening chapter, June remembers
translating all of her mother’s comments in her head, but not retaining any meaning. While
able to speak some English, the mothers feel most comfortable expressing ideas and stories in
their native Chinese, which often cannot be translated into English. Though the daughters
understand Chinese, they do not take the time to learn the language’s complexities, and
therefore struggle with abstract concepts, resulting in frustration or misunderstanding.
With their broken English, the mothers are often viewed as less competent or alien in American
society. Non-Chinese characters often speak condescendingly to them, or ignore them
altogether. Still, it is the mistranslation within the family that is most
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devastating. Lena recounts the relationship between her white father and Chinese
mother Ying-ying, and her role as translator between them. When her mother has a stillborn
son and wails her grief, Lena’s father asks her to translate; rather than hurt him with her
mother’s near-insane words, Lena lies and tells him a more positive message. This
mistranslation prevents Lena’s father from properly supporting Lena’s mother through her
subsequent depression, resulting in Ying-ying’s withdrawal from the family and life.
Tan highlights the difficulty of comprehendible expression by including Chinese or broken
English in the dialogue, particularly with idioms. The reader must infer meaning rather than
understand outright. During a fight with her husband, Lena can only express her anger in
Chinese phrases, which aren’t translatable. Unable to understand her, Lena’s husband believes
she’s deliberately shutting him out. The novel argues that immigrants are no less intelligent or
complex, but often misinterpreted to the point of being silenced, even by their own families.
• Fate and Autonomy
The notion of fate permeates the novel, as the protagonists waver between the traditional
acceptance of a singular destiny and the opportunity to decide their own fates. The mothers
often refer to the Chinese belief of predetermined outcomes; in particular, they regularly
mention Chinese zodiac characters established by birthdates, which supposedly dictate
personalities and personal weaknesses. Still, a common thread in all the stories is the ability to
break out of one’s preordained life to pursue a more positive direction. As a child, Lindo is
arranged to be married to Tyan-yu, a spoiled boy from a rich family. Once she’s folded into
the family, more as a servant than a wife, Lindo initially resigns herself to the harsh life. She
changes her mind when she sees her marriage candle blow out, signaling an inauspicious end
to her marriage. When the candle is lit again in the morning, she knows someone artificially
maintained the light, not fate itself. She then constructs a plan to scare her in-laws into releasing
her from the marital contract and paying her way to America. Though fate might have delivered
her to such circumstances, it is her own will and ingenuity that construct the solution and
change the course of her life.
Similarly, An-mei’s mother refuses to accept her abusive lot in life, especially as her children
suffer alongside her. Though seemingly fated to live with her shame, An-mei’s mother decides
to kill herself at a time when her husband cannot refuse her anything, thus placing An-mei and
her baby brother in a position of power. Though she dies, in doing so An-mei’s mother decides
her own destiny and the fortune of her children. Though the traditional Chinese belief in
predetermined fate exists and determines much of a person’s life, The Joy Luck Club reminds
the reader that there is always room for free will to alter the future for the better.
• Sacrifice
The Joy Luck Club shows that all actions of love require some level of sacrifice, and that
women in particular sacrifice themselves for the good of others. The greatest sacrifice in the
book is Suyuan’s decision to leave her twin babies in a safe spot to be rescued during the
Japanese invasion of Kweilin. Nearly dead herself from dysentery, she places them near a road
along with all her remaining money and her husband’s information, believing they’d be saved
if they seemed abandoned. Her willingness to put her daughters’ lives before her own ensures
their rescue. When An-mei’s mother returns to care for her dying mother, she slices off a piece
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of her own arm and uses an ancestral recipe to prepare a medicinal broth, ignoring the physical
pain. These actions show that no cost is too great when love is threatened.
These memories of sacrifice from the immigrant mothers of the novel are directly weighed
with the petulance of the American daughters, who do not value their mothers’ generosities.
Unable to afford piano lessons in cash, Suyuan works extra hours cleaning a piano teacher’s
house so that June can learn how to play. At the time, June resents her mother’s desire to turn
her into some sort of child prodigy, and refuses to practice. As an adult however, she
appreciates her mother’s attempts to foster her natural talent. Though rarely appreciated in the
moment, the novel argues that the act of sacrifice is the ultimate sign of love, giving up anything
for the sake of another.
• Sexism and Power
As a novel centered entirely on women’s points of view, The Joy Luck Club grapples with the
nuances of sexism. On an explicit scale, the forced marriage of Lindo to her childish
husband, Tyan-yu, shows the powerlessness of being a woman in pre-modern China. Without
any say in her future, Lindo is used as barter to please a more powerful family. Sexual assault
and domestic abuse feature in each of the mothers’ personal histories. However, Tan does not
only highlight blatant acts of sexism, but also carefully considers smaller aggressions against
her female characters in daily life, which add up to life-altering problems. Lena’s
husband Harold, who is also her boss, repeatedly denies Lena a raise, saying that it’d be
awkward to reward his wife in front of other employees. Even though she has earned the
company the most profit, she remains passive to maintain peace in her marriage. This power
imbalance ultimately ruins her, as she grows resentful of Harold’s unwillingness to listen and
cherish her. Similar instances of small, but constant, devaluations of all the protagonists show
that sexism is not singular to one cultural experience, but universally shared as an oppressive
force in their lives.
Major Characters
• Jing-mei “June” Woo
June is the main narrator in The Joy Luck Club, as her vignettes specifically bridge the histories
between mothers and daughters, and between childhood memories and present-day events. She
also has the most stories in the novel – “The Joy Luck Club, “Two Kinds,” “Best Quality,” and
“A Pair of Tickets” – since she represents both herself and her deceased mother, Suyuan.
Suyuan tried to make June into a child prodigy, but June hated the pressure to succeed. Instead,
she decided that being her “true self” meant having the right to be mediocre, which continues
to color her adult life as she struggles with an unfulfilling career and social life. It isn’t until
the end of the novel that June understands that Suyuan’s critique was actually her way of
encouraging June to reach her full potential. June brings Suyuan’s story to her long-lost half-
sisters, and gains an even more profound understanding of who her mother was.
• Suyuan Woo
Suyuan’s death is what sets off the events of The Joy Luck Club. Therefore, unlike the other
mothers and daughters in the novel, who actively narrate their histories through the novel,
Suyuan is only experienced through stories told by her daughter June, her husband Canning,
and her three Joy Luck Club friends. In 1944, Suyuan was forced to flee China, leaving both
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her husband (who was fighting as a Chinese Nationalist against both the Communists and the
Japanese) and her two baby girls behind. Though she remarries in the United States and has
June seven years later, Suyuan never stops searching for her children. Her sacrifice represents
the willingness of all mothers to protect their children over their own well-being.
• An-mei Hsu
An-mei is the narrator of “Scar” and “Magpies,” and her stories revolve around the sacrifices
of her disgraced mother. When she is four, An-mei’s father dies and her mother is exiled from
the family for remarrying and becoming a rich merchant’s lowly fourth wife, rather than
remaining a widow forever. An-mei’s mother returns to take An-Mei to her second
husband Wu Tsing’s house after An-mei’s grandmother, Popo, dies. At Wu Tsing’s, An-mei
and her mother are treated terribly by Second Wife, who controls the household. An-mei’s
mother eventually commits suicide on a date that frightens the superstitious Wu Tsing, giving
power back to An-mei.
• Rose Hsu Jordan
Rose is the narrator of “Half and Half” and “Without Wood.” She has two sisters and three
living brothers; her youngest brother Bing drowned when he was four years old while fourteen-
year-old Rose was supposed to be watching him. As an adult, Rose is in the midst of a divorce
from her husband, Ted Jordan. Their marriage was initially based on his attraction to her
passivity, but he later became irritated by her constant indecision and deferral of opinion. Rose
eventually learns how powerful her voice can be, following wise anecdotes from her
mother, An-mei.
• Lindo Jong
Lindo is the narrator of “The Red Candle” and “Double Face.” She is a Horse in the Chinese
Zodiac, which predetermines a strong and hardworking nature. At only two years old, Lindo is
arranged to be married to a spoiled boy named Tyan-yu, based on their compatible zodiac
signs. When she goes to live with Tyan-yu’s family at the age of twelve, Tyan-yu’s
mother, Huang Taitai, abuses Lindo like an indentured servant. The marriage is short-lived,
as Lindo ingeniously plans a way to get out of her marital contract. Lindo sees this ingenuity
inherited in her daughter Waverly, but fears her daughter is too Americanized to ever
appreciate her Chinese heritage.
• Waverly Jong
Waverly is the narrator of “Rules of the Game” and “Four Directions.” Her stories center on
her experiences as a child chess prodigy, and the tension between her and her mother, Lindo,
who often assumes credit for Waverly’s successes. Waverly treats her mother as the ultimate
opponent, rather than a guiding figure, which antagonizes their relationship up into Waverly’s
adulthood. While seeking Lindo’s approval before her second marriage, it is revealed that
Waverly believes that Lindo poisoned her confidence as a child, so that Waverly is unable to
trust her own instincts over love, parenting, and life in general. She has a young
daughter, Shoshana, from a previous marriage.
• Ying-ying St. Clair
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Ying-ying is the narrator of “The Moon Lady” and “Waiting Between the Trees.” Though
outwardly appearing as the quietest and most meek of the Joy Luck Club members, Ying-ying
identifies as a Tiger in the Chinese Zodiac, meaning she has a fierce and cunning nature. She
loses her Tiger spirit following the end of her first marriage and a vengeful abortion; by the
time she meets and marries Clifford St. Clair, she is barely a shadow of her former spirited
self. As an adult, Ying-ying is a distant mother to Lena, until she sees her daughter approaching
a divorce and believes she can help her.
• Lena St. Clair
Lena is also a Tiger in the Chinese Zodiac, like her mother Ying-ying. She grew up in a biracial
household with two languages, and subsequently acted like an interpreter between her white
father and Chinese mother. The role led her to feel guilty about not always perfectly translating
important conversations, affecting the family’s relationships. Lena also has a difficult marriage
as an adult, with her husband Harold, who is oblivious to her sensitivities. Lena tries to
maintain an equal partnership between them, but loses track of what equality actually looks
like in a marriage, and finds herself disillusioned and silenced in his presence.
• Canning Woo
Suyuan’s second husband and June’s father. He insists that June take over Suyuan’s spot in
the Joy Luck Club, sparking the novel’s chain of events. He is aware of Suyuan’s first family
and shares more of Suyuan’s history with June while they visit China, believing it’s important
for June to know her mother’s legacy.