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 ASSIGNMENT SOLUTIONS GUIDE (2017-2018)
M.E.G.-12
Canadian Literature
Disclaimer/Special Note: These are just the sample of the Answers/Solutions to some of the Questions given in the
Assignments. These Sample Answers/Solutions are prepared by Private Teachers/Tutors/Authors for the help and guidance
of the student to get an idea of how he/she can answer the Questions in given in the Assignments. We do not claim 100%

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accuracy of these sample answers as these are based on the knowledge and capability of Private Teacher/Tutor. Sample
answers may be seen as the Guide/Help for the reference to prepare the answers of the Questions given in the Assignment.

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As these Solutions And Answers are prepared by the Private Teacher/Tutor so the chances of error or mistake cannot be

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denied. Any Omission or Error is highly regretted though every care has been taken while preparing these Sample Answers/

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Solutions. Please consult your own Teacher/Tutor before you prepare a Particular Answer and for up-to-date and exact
information, data and solution. Student should must read and refer the official study material provided by the university.

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Attempt all Ten questions and Answer each question in approximately 500 words.
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Q. 1. What was the general Canadian attitude to ‘Nature’ in the early years of Canada’s exzistence as a
nation?

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Ans. Given the immense importance of nature within Canadian culture, and especially within the literary imagi-
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nation, many types and genres could be considered to be “nature writing,” from scientific treatises, memoirs, and
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exploration journals, through novels and short stories, and including all kinds of poetry from the epic to the short
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lyric. To be sure, a full account must include works of prose and poetry both in French and English, Canada's two

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official languages. While this examination of prose written in English might seem unduly restricted, it does reveal

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broadly applicable trends and motifs. Furthermore, nature writing in Canada may be related to either explicit or

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implicit religion. If the natural world is comprehended under the aegis of a religious worldview already widely held

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and promoted by religious institutions, then nature writing in such a context is linked to explicit religion.

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In this light older Canadian writing frequently detailed in unambiguous terms a savage and unforgiving natural
world inhabited by forces opposed to the order of grace and to the divine transformation of the human. Less
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common, but equally explicit, was the religion of nature writing that set forth a human realm corrupted by human sin

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contrasted with an unfallen and benevolent world of nature. Two stories anthologized in The Oxford Book of
Canadian Short Stories in English illustrate this plain and unambiguous portrayal of nature in the explicit religious
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context of nineteenth-century Canada. Nature writer Charles G. D. Roberts, in his story “Do Seek Their Meat from
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God,” contrasts the instinct prompting a panther to stalk a child with the providential urge that leads a father to save

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that child. In Susie Frances Harrison’s “The Idyl of the Island” a city-weary visitor from a nearby hotel comes upon

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a woman sleeping on a mossy couch in an edenic island setting, described in the most lyrically romantic terms. Up
until a generation or so ago the explicitly religious context of Canadian nature writing was a supernatural theism
that placed the Creator outside of nature. The world of nature was either opposed to or allied with that transcendent

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realm of grace. At its extreme nature might be portrayed in negative terms as the realm of darkness and demons.
One can also look at the map of Canada as a dialogue with the wildness, the wilderness, an obsession, and its
repetitive effort to relieve that very moment of an encounter of the settlers with the nature. Wacousta or the Prophecy’s
tale of the Canadas was a novel on wilderness by Major John Richardson who fought with the British army against
the Americans in the war of 1812. The novel was a Gothic extravaganza set in the 1763. It was a historical romance
that described the last Indian uprisings which were led by the famous chief Ponties against the British forts. The two
forts according to Richardson were the outposts of civilization which were lost in terror and wilderness and were
desperately trying to protect the traditions of British Culture. The strongest character in the novel is the forest- a
“psychological space that is unimaginatively terrifying”. Culture and nature are in total opposition to each other and
there is only the possibility of a nightmare in such a situation.

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 In 1965, Alec Lucas, contributing a chapter on “Nature Writers and the Animal Story” to Literary History of
Canada: Canadian Literature in English, set Canadian nature writing in the framework of western literary history.
Lucas showed how writing about the natural world, from biblical and classical texts through the medieval period,
inevitably concerned itself with the human relationship to nature, and just as often, with the relationship of both the
human and natural to the divine. Accordingly, animal fables amounted to commentaries on people and social relations,
often allegorizing and moralistic, and assuming dominion over nature that was provided for human benefit by God.
Though Renaissance humanism promoted close examination of the whole of nature, and included humans within
nature, Cartesian logic and Newtonian physics fostered a rationalistic understanding of a mechanistic world. In the
nineteenth century, though Romanticism’s discovery of a moral order within nature gave way to Darwinianism, both
movements restored human beings to the world of nature. Lucas outlines the contributions of pioneer writers and
field naturalists to Canadian nature writing, suggesting that by the twentieth century nature ceased to be a source of
moral law or evidence of the divine, but a unity including both people and animals. He traces the Canadian tradition

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of outdoors and animal stories, sometimes in the pastoral tradition, sometimes through natural history, that often
advocated a return to nature to escape the evils of urban life and to refresh the spirit. Within all of the schools and

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genres that Lucas surveys and details whatever estimate is given of nature tends to be made against the backdrop of
Christianity in its various forms. The religion of nature is subordinated to a Christian worldview, or understood
generally within the context of western monotheism.

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In the final paragraph of this informative and detailed essay published in 1965 Alec Lucas concluded that the
zenith of nature writing “has long passed.” Perhaps, he surmised, it was because the “literary vein has been worked
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out,” or that after two World Wars the public had learned well the lesson that people and animals are “too much
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alike.” In addition, Lucas supposed, urban dwellers were several generations removed from their rural forebears,

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and the physical sciences had replaced the biological sciences in the public imagination. Of course, from the vantage

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point of more than a generation later this pronouncement surely has to be reckoned as premature in the extreme. The

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2002 volume, Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada, gives prominence to the persistent significance of nature in
Canadian literature in articles on “Animal Story,” “Ecocriticism,” “Exploration Literature,” “Landscape,” “North,”
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and “Science and Nature Writing.”

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Q. 2. Write a detailed note on different stages of Canadian history from the first settlers to the present
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Ans. The history of Canada is almost 400 years old. There is nothing special about the Canadian landscape.
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According to Northrop Frye to enter the United States is a matter of crossing an ocean, but entering Canada is a

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matter of being silently swallowed by an alien continent. But how this alien continent has turned into a favorite

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destination of immigrants is the story of Canada.
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Europeans arrived in the 1400s but they weren’t the first to set sights on this vast land. The earliest known site
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occupied by people is the Bluefish Caves of the Yukon. In 1000 AD the Vikings from Iceland and Greenland reached

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the Labrador coast and Newfoundland, but they didn’t stay.

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It was the North American Indians who greeted the Europeans. As far back as 30,000 BC, the people arrived in
North America from Asia by crossing the Bering Strait. These aboriginal people developed distinct languages,
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customs and religious beliefs. They depended on the land and developed specialized skills to deal with the climate

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and geography. The Inuit came after the North American Indians (they are not related to them, however) and settled
predominantly in the Arctic.

w In the early 1500s the Spanish, French, British and Italians were all vying to get to North America. The French
explorers and missionaries got to Canada first. Jacques Cartier landed at the gulf of the St Lawrence waterway and
this led to the founding of New France. It is thought that Canada got its name from Cartier who noticed the Huron
and Iroquois inhabitants referring to the land as ‘Kanata' which means,’ cluster of dwellings’ or ‘small community’.
The French had discovered a land rich in natural resources and one of their main activities was fur trading with
the Native peoples - that is, until the Natives realized they were not properly profiting from the trades. The French
and Natives fought throughout the 1600s because of this and because of the French development of aboriginal land.
France wasn’t all that interested in its new colony even’ though another of its men, Samuel de Champlain, settled
Quebec City and Montreal by 1642. The Hudson’s Bay Company was founded in 1670, primarily as a fur trading
enterprise (it is Canada's oldest business enterprise, existing today as a major department store chain). The English

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moved into the Hudson Bay area and by the early 1700s had taken over most of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
Canada is known as a peacemaking country, but its roots are, like most nations', rooted in war. In 1745, all hell broke
loose with the British capture of Fortress Louisbourg from the French. England officially declared war on France in
1756, starting in Europe what is known as the Seven Years' War. Part of that war was played out in Canada.
The French seemed the stronger nation for four years, but the tide changed in one of Canada’s most famous
battles. Both the French and English generals died in the battle, but it was the British who defeated the French in
1759 in Quebec on the Plains of Abraham. In 1763, France handed Canada over to Britain in the Treaty of Paris.
However, most of Canada’s population was French. The conclusion of the Treaty of Paris gave rise to concerns over
losing their rights and heritage. In response to these fears, Britain passed the Quebec Act in 1774 which granted
religious (Roman Catholic) and linguistic freedom to the French.
But what’s history without a little revolution and rebellion? The American Revolution saw Britain’s 13 colonies

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in the south fight for independence from Britain from 1775 to 1783. This led to the migration north to Canada of
about 50,000 ‘Loyalists’, so called because of their loyalty to Britain, balancing the number of French and British in
Canada. In 1791 Lower Canada (Quebec) and Upper Canada (Ontario) were formed.

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The War of 1812 is often thought to have brought about the beginnings of Canada’s national identity. The

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Americans invaded Canada believing it would be an easy victory. The British, Native peoples and French banded

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together and, although outnumbered, stood their ground. Many battles were won and lost by both sides, but it was
their first defence of their country against an invader that saw the people of ‘British North America.’ chooses their
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way of life over that of the republicans to the south. Many heroes and war legends were created. Perhaps one of the

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least known is that in August 1814, the British captured and burned Washington, including the White House (which

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in those days wasn’t so white and had to be painted white to cover the damage). The war ended in a draw in
December 1814 with the Treaty of Ghent.
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It wasn’t long until the people of Upper and Lower Canada started itching for their own independence. In 1837,

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rebellions occurred in both colonies, which prompted Britain to join them under a common legislature. Soon afterwards
they were granted responsible government and their first taste of political autonomy. More autonomy was on the
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way with the achievement of Confederation. In 1867, the Dominion of Canada was created under the British North
America Act (BNA Act) passed by the British government. Sir John A. Macdonald became the first Prime Minister
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of the Dominion that included Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Within the next six years Manitoba,
British Columbia and Prince Edward Island were admitted into the Dominion.

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If you come to Canada with children, they will undoubtedly learn about the building of the Canadian Pacific

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Railway (CPR) in school. Many scandals erupted during that time, but when it was completed in 1885 the CPR was

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the longest railway in the world and its construction within five years was considered a great engineering feat. It was
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built to connect the country from east to west and to encourage settlement. This was met with resistance from the

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Native peoples who were already settled on that land. The aboriginals lost their fight and large numbers of European

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immigrants came on promises of free land in the west. Between 1881 and 1891, 680,000 people immigrated into
Canada and many of them are responsible for the emergence of large-scale grain farming. In 1904-5 Alberta and
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Saskatchewan entered Confederation, leaving only Newfoundland on its own.

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The 1900s saw rapid change due to the industrial revolution: Canada was a significant participant in both World
Wars, notably at Vimy Ridge in WW I and Dieppe and Normandy in WW2 as well as in the air and at sea. English-

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French tensions continued and the labour movement became organized with the creation of the unions. Canada
developed social security programmes such as unemployment insurance, welfare and eventually ‘Medicare’. The
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was formed and natural resource industries became an integral part of
the Canadian economy. Women got the vote, Newfoundland joined Confederation in 1949 and the Maple Leaf flag
was adopted in 1965. In 1967, Canada turned 100 years old and celebrated with Expo festivities in Montreal. In the
1970s there was major upheaval in Quebec when the separatist movement took on a violent nature, but in 1980 a
referendum showed the majority of Quebecois were against independence. Also in that year, Canada officially
adopted O Canada! as its national anthem, although the original French version dates from 1880. Speaking of
national symbols, the beaver is Canada’s national animal.
The eighties were characterized by constitutional issues. Canada’s constitution (the BNA Act) was an act of the
British Parliament and, as an independent country, Canada wanted to 'bring home' the constitution. In 1982, parts of

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the BNA Act were changed and it became a Canadian Act: The Constitution Act. Included in it is the Canadian
Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Quebec is the only province that did not sign the new constitution and two subsequent
attempts to bring it in, the Meech Lake Accord and the Charlotte town Accord, failed. In 1995 another Quebec refer
endum on independence took place and the ‘no’ side (against independence) won by a very narrow margin.
Q. 3. Write a note on Atwood and Ondaatje’s contribution to Canadian Poetry.
Ans. Margaret Atwood has received more than 55 awards, including two Governor General’s Awards, the first
in 1966 for The Circle Game, her first major book of poems; the second for her 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale,
which was also shortlisted for Britain’s Booker Prize and made into a fairly successful wide circulation movie. Her
recognition was often reflective of the diversity of her work. Among awards, honors, and prizes was a Guggenheim
fellowship, the Los Angeles Times Fiction Award, 1986; Ms. Magazine’s Woman of the Year, 1986; Canadian
Booksellers Association Author of the Year, 1989; Government of France’s Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des
Lettres, 1994; the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, 1994; the Humanist of the Year Award, 1987;

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shortlisted for the Ritz Hemingway Prize (Paris), 1987; and Arthur C. Clarke Award for best Science Fiction, 1987.
Atwood clearly–quite early–enjoyed a career of remarkable distinction and success, not only as the highly

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prolific author of volumes of poetry, ten novels, two books of literary criticism, four collections of short stories, and
three children’s books and editor of two anthologies, as well as author of much uncollected journalism, but also as a

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major public figure, cultural commentator, and proponent of activist views in areas ranging from Canadian nationalism,
through feminism, to such international causes as Amnesty International and PEN.

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Most of her fiction has been translated into several foreign languages; a new Atwood novel becomes a Canadian,
American, and international best-seller immediately (only Robertson Davies, among Canadian writers, has a
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comparable international public). There is a Margaret Atwood Society, a Margaret Atwood Newsletter, and an ever-

American literature courses world wide.

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increasing number of scholars studying and teachers teaching her work in women's studies courses as well as North

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Atwood is not only an acclaimed writer, serious as well as popular, in several genres, but outspoken, sardonically

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memorable, and distinctly quotable on moral and political private and public issues and a stalwart spokesperson for
Canadian literature. Her popular and influential contribution to the never-ending quest for the Canadian identity,
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Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972) is, among other things, a manifesto for her own work;
what began as a polemical political comment on Canadian cultural history is now a part of that very history.

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She alternated prose and poetry throughout her career, often publishing a book of each in the same or consecutive
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years. While in a general sense the poems represent “private” myth and “personal” expression and the novels a more
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public and “social” expression, there is, as these dates suggest, continual interweaving and cross-connection between

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her prose and her poetry. The short story collections, Dancing Girls (1977), Bluebeard’s Egg (1983), and especially

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the short stories cum pro1se poems in the remarkable, overtly metafictional collection Murder in the Dark (1983),
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bridge the gap between her poetry and her prose.

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The poems in Atwood’s first volume, Double Persephone reflect the influence of Blake’s contrasting mythological
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imagery. While this collection demonstrates her penchant for using metaphorical language, Atwood's second volume

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of poetry, The Circle Game, garnered widespread critical recognition. Atwood explores the meaning of art and

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literature, as well as the Gothic, in the poetry collection The Animals in That Country (1968). Presenting the poet as
both performer and creator, she questions the authenticity of the writing process and the effects of literature on both
the writer and the reader. In The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970) Atwood devotes her attention to what she calls

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the schizoid, double nature of Canada. Centered on the narratives of a Canadian pioneer woman, Journals investigates
why Canadians came to develop ambivalent feelings toward their country. Atwood further develops this dichotomy
in Power Politics, in which she explores the relationship between sexual roles and power structures by focusing on
personal relationships and international politics.
The story of an unnamed freelance artist who journeys to the wilderness of Quebec to investigate her father’s
disappearance, Surfacing (1972) focuses on the dichotomous nature of family relationships, cultural heritage, and
self-perception. The protagonist of Atwood’s novel Lady Oracle (1976) is Joan Foster, who writes “costume Gothics”
and fakes her own death to avoid the consequences of her past mistakes. The novel depicts relations between mothers
and daughters and explores twentieth-century female identity by illustrating the monstrosity of the societal roles
created by and for women. Just as Atwood uses monsters (Joan’s three-way vanity mirror is a "triple-headed monster"

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and Joan becomes a “duplicitous monster”) to highlight the novel's thematic concerns, so does Joan utilize her own
costume Gothic characters and narratives to explore the issues that concern her, and in the end is able to begin
writing in a new discipline-science fiction. In her novel Life before Man (1979) Atwood dissects the relationships
between three characters: Elizabeth, a married woman who mourns the recent death of her lover; Elizabeth's husband,
Nate, who is unable to choose between his wife and his lover; and Lesje, Nate's lover, who works with Elizabeth at
a museum of natural history. All three characters are emotionally isolated from one another and are unable to take
responsibility for their feelings as their relationships deteriorate.
Atwood turned to speculative fiction with her novel The Handmaid’s Tale, depicting the dystopia of Gilead, a
future America in which Fundamentalist Christians have imposed dictatorial rule. Here, in a world polluted by toxic
chemicals and nuclear radiation, most women are sterile; those who are able to bear children are forced to become
Handmaids, official surrogate mothers who enjoy some privileges yet remain under constant surveillance. Almost

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all other women have been deemed expendable. While The Handmaid’s Tale focuses on an imagined future, Atwood’s
novel Cat’s Eye (1990) explores how misconceptions about the past can influence people’s present lives. The story

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of Elaine Risley, a prominent artist who returns to her childhood home in Toronto, Cat's Eye traces Elaine’s discovery
that her childhood relationships were often manipulative and that her memories of past events have not always been

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accurate or honest. Considered by many an allegorical exploration of the realities confronting individuals at the

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approach of the twenty-first century, this work reveals the implications of evil and redemption in both a personal and
social context. In Cat's Eye, as in all her works, Atwood forgoes specific political or moral ideologies, concentrating
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instead on the emotional and psychological complexities that confront individuals in conflict with society.

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In The Robber Bride (1993) Atwood transforms the Brothers Grimm's grisly fairy tale “The Robber Bridegroom,”

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about a demonic groom who lures three innocent maidens into his lair and then devours them, into a statement about

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women’s treatment of each other. Three middle-aged friends are relieved to reunite at the funeral of the woman who

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tormented them in college, stealing from them money, time, and men, and threatening their careers and lives. But the
villainous Zenia turns up alive, forcing them to relive painful memories and come to terms with the connection
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between love and destruction. Alias Grace (1996) represents Atwood’s first venture into historical fiction. Based on

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a true story Atwood had explored previously in a television script titled The Servant Girl, Alias Grace centres on

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Grace Marks, a servant who was found guilty of murdering her employer and his mistress in northern Canada in

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1843. Some people doubt Grace’s guilt, however, and she serves out her sentence of life in prison, claiming not to

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remember the murders. Eventually, reformers begin to agitate for clemency for Grace. In a quest for evidence to

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support their position, they assign a young doctor, versed in the new science of psychiatry, to evaluate her soundness

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of mind. Over many meetings, Grace tells the doctor the harrowing story of her life, which has been marked by

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extreme hardship. Much about Grace, though, remains puzzling; she is haunted by flashbacks of the supposedly

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forgotten murders and by the presence of a friend who had died from a mishandled abortion. The doctor, Simon

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Jordan, does not know what to believe in Grace’s tales. The Blind Assassin involves multiple story lines. It is the
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memoir of Iris, a dying woman in her eighties who retraces her past with the wealthy and conniving industrialist
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Richard Griffen and the deaths of her sister Laura, her husband, and her daughter, and it is also a novel-within-a-

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novel, as interspersed with Iris's wry narrative threads are sections devoted to Laura's novel, The Blind Assassin,

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published after her death.
Ondaatje’s novels coming through Slaughter and Billy the Kid include many concerns (sensitivity to language

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and interest in silence, chaos, and order) which are also included in his poetry. Ondaatje is perhaps best understood
not as poet or novelist, but as an artist who has drawn into question the very limits of genres. In his playfully titled
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1981) we are treated to some of the formal exuberance and experimentation for
which Ondaatje is critically respected. As its author has stated, the book is not ‘interested in the real Billy the Kid’.
Often referred to as a ‘collage’, the ‘collected works’ brings together, within a single, episodic narrative, songs,
photographs, poetry, prose, interviews, a play, as well as the white space of blank pages. Where the title of this text
implies a ‘complete’ narrative of its hero, the events of the text are ambiguous and fragmented. Its protagonists, Billy
and Pat Garrett are the product of plural perspectives, a combination of history and legend that ultimately favors
uncertainty in place of the whole story.
In his first novel, coming through Slaughter (1976), Ondaatje continues his focus on folk heroes, creating a
fictionalized biography of Charles ‘Buddy’ Bolden (1876-1931), a legendary jazz musician. Here Ondaatje develops

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the formal experimentation of The Collected Works to produce a prose poem that is also ‘a parable of the twentieth
century artist’. Like Billy, Buddy exists outside ‘official’ history and the narrative hints that this is a ‘life’ only
available to us through music, stories and rumors. As if to highlight the blurred boundaries between real and fictional
lives, Ondaatje himself makes an appearance as a character within the text. Life and art, biography and fiction are
not polar opposites in this text, but mutually constitutive categories.
Ondaatje’s latest novel confirms his status as one of the world's leading storytellers.
Ondaatje’s most recent novel, Divisadero (2007), takes its name from a street in San Francisco, and is concerned
with the intersections between what otherwise seem divided narratives. In the words of Ondaatje, 'it's a story where
each half reflects the other’. One half focuses on a farm in California, the other on Southern France before the
outbreak of World War I. But there is also internal division. The first narrative describes the disintegration of an
already fragile family comprising a father, his biological daughter (Anna), an adopted girl (Claire) and an orphaned
boy (Coop). It is this story of division that reverberates throughout the novel as Anna slowly discovers when she

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traces the life of writer Lucien Segura in Europe. Ondaatje’s first novel in seven years has received a mixed critical
reception, with many praising Ondaatje's writing style, but with some complaining about the contrived connections
between the two parts.

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Ondaatje made his writings quite hybridized and moves beyond the limitations of genres. The presence of poetic
element can be seen in his work. His works like his life has also been unconventional.
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In the culture generally, postmodernism is associated with a playful acceptance of surfaces and superficial style,
self-conscious quotation and parody (although these are also found in modernist literature, such as that of James
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Joyce), and a celebration of the ironic, the transient, and the glitzy. It is usually seen as a reaction against a naïve and
earnest confidence in progress, and against confidence in objective or scientific truth. In philosophy, therefore, it

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implies a mistrust of the grands récits of modernity: the large-scale justifications of western society and confidence

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in its progress visible in Kant, Hegel, or Marx, or arising from utopian visions of perfection achieved through

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evolution, social improvement, education, or the deployment of science. In its post-structuralist aspects it includes a
denial of any fixed meaning, or any correspondence between language and the world, or any fixed reality or truth or
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fact to be the object of enquiry.

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The tendency was anticipated, and perhaps most brilliantly expressed, by Nietzsche, whose perspectivism is
seen as a philosophical technique for dissolving the presumption that there can be objective knowledge. Objectivity

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is revealed as a disguise for power or authority in the academy, and often as the last fortress of white male privilege.

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Logical or rational thought is revealed as the imposition of suspect dichotomies on the flux of events. Postmodernists
differ over the consequences of such discoveries, sharing the sceptic’s old problem of how to think and act in the
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light of the doctrine. While the dismantling of objectivity seems to some to be the way towards a liberating political
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radicalism, to others it allows such unliberating views as the denial that there was (objectively) such an event as the

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Second World War or the Holocaust, and to others such as Rorty (Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, 1989), it
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licenses the retreat to an aesthetic, ironic, detached, and playful attitude to one’s own beliefs and to the march of

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events. This retreat has been criticized as socially irresponsible (and in its upshot, highly conservative). The
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postmodernist frame of mind, charted, for example, in The Postmodern Condition, 1984, by Jean-François Lyotard,
may seem to depend on a cavalier dismissal of the success of science in generating human improvement, an
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exaggeration of the admitted fallibility of any attempt to gain knowledge in the humane disciplines, and an ignoring

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of the quite ordinary truth that while human history and law admit of no one final description, they certainly admit
of more or less accurate ones, just as a landscape permits of no one unique map, yet there can be more or less

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accurate maps.
Ondaatje made his writings quite hybridized and moves beyond the limitations of genres. The presence of poetic
element can be seen in his work. His works like his life has also been unconventional.
Q. 4. Surfacing can be divided into three main sections. Provide a critical summary of all three.
Ans. Set in remote Quebec, this super slow-burning drama shadows a young woman’s return to her parents’
house when her father is reported missing, presumed dead. Accompanied by two friends and her lover, she attempts
to suss out where her father could be.
The longer she stays around the house she grew up in, the more she comes to realize that the city life she’s since
come to know and accept really isn’t for her, as the vivid nature and sweet memories of her childhood haunt her to
near-insanity, all the while clues to her father’s whereabouts elude her and her pals.

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 Atwood’s distinctive; uber-contemporary writing style is extraordinary and hugely challenging. In spurts it
rumbles along with full-blown prose, before shards of jumpy, bitty, incisive poetry upset the rhythm and momentum
and surprise the reader... ‘I slid my arm between us, against his throat, windpipe, and pried his head away. ‘I’ll get
pregnant,’ I said, ‘ it’s the right time.’ It was the truth, it stopped him: flesh making more flesh, miracle that frightens
all of them.’
The bewildering detail in her detail is little like I’ve ever read before and her way with words is utterly captivating.
Barely anything happens at all in Surfacing’s grand 186 pages and yet the settings, the characters and wordplay bring
everything eerily to life, as the novel takes in a huge spiritual slant as it nears its open-ended climax to the tale.
Family, friends, life, love, death. It's all incorporated, and while the end may be disappointing as the reader is left
to their own to work out if the woman is going to stay in the lonely country or return to the hustling city, the very fact
that nothing is clear-cut forces Surfacing to be damn thought-provoking stuff.

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The narrative structure of the novel can be divided into three parts and each part describes the narrator search
about herself and her father. Part I introduces us with the characters and physical background of the novel. The

o
narrator keeps searching for the clues due to the sudden disappearance of the father. The reference to the past and

c
present is referred by the use of the past and present tense. This part consists of eight chapters. The narrator is

.
alienated, feels depressed, disconnected and believes if she was disintegrating.

t
Part II consists of chapters 9 to 19. The narrator reflects on her disintegration. She feels as if she has been cut in

g
to two halves. She learns that her father is not insane She reaches the stage of self-discovery. This part contains clues

a r n
which makes the reader aware of what is going to happen next. When she sees the dead body of her father she comes
i
to reality. It also discusses the imagery and symbolism in the novel. Thus we can say that this part explores the world.
d
Part III consists of chapters 20 to 27 which describe the narrator's return. A new realization comes to her. She
begins to believe that reality has to be faced.
a
gives the reader.

ym e
e
Two of the most popular subjects were characterization and the validity of the narrator and the information she
R
The narrator’s friends added to the story, whether they were symbolic of something, reflections of the narrator’s

u d in s
characteristics, or representatives of other individuals. One can say that the narrator was projecting the identities of

l
her parents onto her friends. For instance, David was representative of the narrator’s brother (“fascist pig yanks”)

n ok
with his militancy and Joe was the narrator’s father, capable of love and close to her heart. Anna was representative

s t
of the narrator’s mother who concealed all of her pain and unhappiness throughout the story. One can also say that
O bo
the narrator's friends were symbolic, Joe as nature, David as the city, and Anna as the “icky” things about being a
r -
girl. The narrator’s brother was thought to represent absolutism while her mother, like Joe, represented nature.

. e o E
David was perhaps representative of the narrator’s previous lover.
f
One can question the narrator's humanness and what, exactly, constitutes being human. The question whether
b d
the narrator was actually domesticated or wild. She cooks and cleans for the others, taking care of them basically the
n
we u a
whole time, but it was argued that she seemed to be hardly one predisposed to subservience. One can see the narrator

H
to be more on the wild side than the domestic. It was concluded that she took care of the others because she realized

w Th
that they did not know how to take care of themselves. The reason the narrator was not given a name was because
this made her more likely to be anyone; any of the readers of the story could come to her predicament. Narrator’s lies
helped her to deal with her pain, phenomena which can be called “editing the truth”. With the assurance of her

w
father’s death, the narrator felt closure with her past and was, thus, able to continue with her future and her new
child.
Q. 5. Write a note on the Urban-Social Realism that forms the techanique in The Tin Flute.
Ans. In Gabrielle Roy’s The Tin Flute extreme poverty is the hardship that must be broken free of. However,
unlike stories where the human spirit overcomes life’s obstacles, Roy’s central characters, the Lacasse family, are
continually thwarted in their attempts to break free of the poverty that surrounds them. It would seem that Roy is
trying to convey the message that that there are times when despite what we may believe there are obstacles in our
life that cannot be defeated or broken free of. Sometimes the best we can hope for is to simply survive. For the
Lacasse family this is something they must learn. The family is led by three of its members: Azarius, the father, who
holds his position as head of the household by virtue of the fact that he is male, Florentine, the eldest daughter, who
is the only secure source of income the family

8
 Realism was a prominent trend of writing in Quebec from 1940 onwards. The chief example of it is The Tin
Flute. Roy’s The Tin Flute drew its sustenance from the Depression; from the desire of youth to break out of a
claustrophobic trap and from the tensions between socio-physical topographical entities.
Naturalism’s exclusion of God necessitates moral relativism. Naturalism faces some significant hurdles.
Naturalism has a major “Achilles' Heel” - the origin of life. Life only comes from life. Life is incredibly complex.
The Stanley Miller "Spark and Soup" experiments are the closest man has ever come to creating life from inorganic
matter “naturally by random chance” in the laboratory. However, there are three significant problems with Miller’s
experiments. Miller assumed a reducing atmosphere: Methane, Ammonia, and Hydrogen. He purposefully excluded
Oxygen, because as a biochemist, Miller knew that Oxygen would destroy any amino acids (the building blocks of
life) that might be produced. Oxygen precludes any naturalistic evolutionary origin of life.
Second, Miller used the wrong conditions. The experiment was supposed to demonstrate how life could evolve
from inorganic matter naturally by random chance. Miller used an electric spark to simulate lightning flashing upon

m
the ancient earth.
Third, Miller got the wrong results. Dr. Mark Eastman comments on the results of Miller's “Spark and Soup”

Miller did not create life -- he created poison -- wrong results.”

c o
experiment, “The major products of the experiment (tar and carboxylic acids) are poisonous to living systems.

.
Naturalism has another problem. Even if scientists were to discover a method by which amino acid building
blocks could be produced by random chemical processes, could life itself evolve randomly from inorganic matter?

ing
r t
Realism in art and literature may be described as an attempt to describe human behaviour and surroundings or to
represent figures and objects exactly as they act or appear in life. Attempts at realism have been made periodically

a
throughout history in all the arts; the term is, however, generally restricted to a movement that began in the mid-19th

ad
century, in reaction to the highly subjective approach of Romanticism. The difference between realism and naturalism
is harder to define, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. The distinction lies in the fact that realism is

attempts to apply scientific theories to art. e

ym
concerned directly with what is absorbed by the senses; naturalism, a term more properly applied to literature,

R
Naturalism and Realism, terms which the Impressionists used interchangeably. However, there is a long
e
d
philosophical tradition, Platonic and then German, which wants to distinguish between Appearances (which may be
n
i ks
misleading) and Essences (which, as it were, cannot be misleading). This philosophical tradition has been annexed

l
t u
by literary critics, notably Gyorgy Lukacs, and converted into a distinction between Naturalism and Realism in art,

n o
especially in the novel. So it is said that Balzac and Thomas Mann are Realist novelists, and Zola a Naturalist. It

O bo
might also be said that the Impressionists are Naturalists, whereas Cezanne (and pre-Impressionists like Millet and

s
Courbet) are Realists (of rather different kinds).
r -
The Naturalist is impressed by, and pays attention to, the surface of things whether it be the play of light on water

.e fo E
or the effects of poverty on the daily detail of life. The Realist is, in effect, a scientist who probes beneath appearances
in search of essences–the causes of things, the heart of the matter. Between 1930 and the 1950s a great deal of ink
b d
was expended in leftwing debates on who was and who was not a Realist, and whether Modernist practices were
n
we u a
compatible with Realism. Realism was taken to be a good thing, since it made Art and Science both part of a joint

H
enterprise for the advancement of human understanding. These debates can be followed in Lukacs' books and in the

w Th
collection, Aesthetics and Politics. Often overlooked was the simple point that someone might be or try to be a
Realist but get things wrong. And is it better to have tried to be a Realist than never tried at all–see below on
Surrealism.

w Pedagogically, the contrast between Naturalism and Realism could be explored in reading the novels singled out
for attention in the debates mentioned above. In another domain, one might explore the contrast through comparing
photography and painting, for example, in the genre of portraiture. Can a photograph capture the essence of a
personality a character in the way that a painted portrait can aspire to show a sitter’s soul? Well, yes, a photographer
can try to catch a subject at a moment of self-revelation: a moment at which appearance and essence coincide. The
painter may use many such moments or no moments at all to represent a character made manifest in the painted
image. In both cases, the contrast between appearance and essence is being used, and value is being attached to the
essence or, less grandly, something other than the fleeting or passing moment. It would make a good practical
exercise in photography to ask students to produce a photograph of someone which does more than show the fleeting
moment - though one could still ask: What's wrong with the fleeting moment?

9
 The energy which powers a search for essences can show up in Abstraction and, more generally, Formalism,
both of which can be discussed in terms of the contrast between appearance and essence. After all, when one
abstracts, one is generally trying to abstract what is (really) important, though there is also a kind of abstraction
which is `mere' formalism. The nature of Mere Formalism is nicely captured by Brecht when he writes, ‘if someone
makes a statement which is untrue or irrelevant merely because it rhymes, then he is a formalist’. This dictum is,
however, tongue-in-cheek to the extent that it lets off the hook virtually all those who would have been denounced as
Formalists by Brecht’s communist party comrades. (Even in nonsense poetry, where mere rhyme appears to take
over, it is often the case that the supposed mere rhyme sets up pathways of (humorous) association, and so contributes
to the sense as much as to the nonsense of the poem.)
Q. 6. Critically analyse The English Patient as a modernist novel.
Ans. Modernism, a general term applied retrospectively to the wide range of experimental and avant-garde

m
trends in the literature (and other arts) of the early 20th century, including Symbolism, Futurism, Expressionism,
Imagism, Vorticism, Dada, and Surrealism, along with the innovations of unaffiliated writers. Modernist literature is

o
characterized chiefly by a rejection of 19th century traditions and oftheir consensus between author and reader: the
conventions of realism, for instance, were abandoned by Franz Kafka and other novelists, and by expressionist

c
.
drama, while several poets rejected traditional metres in favour of free verse. Modernist writers tended to see themselves
as an avantgarde disengaged from bourgeois values, and disturbed their readers by adopting complex and difficult

r t
new forms and styles. In fiction, the accepted continuity of chronological development was upset by Joseph Conrad,
g
Marcel Proust, and William Faulkner, while James Joyce and Virginia Woolf attempted new ways of tracing the flow

in
of characters' thoughts in their stream-of-consciousness styles. In poetry, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot replaced the

a d
logical exposition ofthoughts with collages of fragmentary images and complex allusions. Luigi Pirandello and

a
Bertolt Brecht opened up the theatre tonew forms of abstraction in place of realist and naturalist representation.

m e
Modernist writing is predominantly cosmopolitan, andoften expresses a sense of urban cultural dislocation, along
with anawareness of new anthropological and psychological theories. Its favoured techniques of juxtaposition and
R
y
multiple point of view challenge the reader to reestablish a coherence of meaning from fragmentary forms. In

e
English, its major landmarks are Joyce’s Ulysses and Eliot’s The Waste Land (both 1922). In Hispanic literature the

d in s
term has a special sense: modernismo denotes the new style of poetry in Spanish from 1888 to c.1910, strongly

l
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influenced by the French Symbolists and Parnassians and introduced by the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío and the

t
Mexican poet Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera. For a fuller account, consult Peter Childs, Modernism (2000).

O bo
The language of the novel also forms the part of the modernism. The combination of factual and technical with

e s
the complex allusiveness of mythical story deriving from Herodotus’s histories.

for -
The English Patient employs a narrative structure that is not based on the chronological order of the events
E
.
around which its story is built, but is rather structured like a collage. It is constructed largely of the recollection or

b nd
retelling of numerous, non-sequential memories of each of the four main characters. This collage of recollections is

we
interspersed between the main action of the story, which includes both the love story between Hana and Kip, and the
u a
uncovering of the patient's true identity by Caravaggio. Using this collaged and multi-voiced structure allows Ondaatje
to do a number of different things.
H
w Th
By providing a collage of episodes, rather than being tied to a strict chronological structure, Ondaatje is able to
reveal each of the character’s private memories, most specifically those memories that they would not share with

w
anyone else. For example, Kip's friendship with Lord Suffolk and Miss Morden is revealed only through the flash-
back of his memories. The personal effect of anguish is a major theme of the novel, and through revelation of each
of the characters’ most private memories, Ondaatje not only provides vital background information for each character
but is able to specifically explore the source of each character's most private grief, as well as how they are either able
or unable to come to terms with it. The English patient question realist conventions of the 19th century European
novel .The characters are interrelated to each other by the thread of second World War.
The collage of memories, all told from the point of view of each specific character, also provides the novel with
a number of varied points of view. For example, because Ondaatje–having abandoned chronology in the structuring
of this novel–is not constricted by time, he is able to include the voice of a dead character–that of Katharine. Her
perspective, given in the chapter “Katharine,” on the stormy relationship she has with the patient, provides an
intimate portrait of the character of the patient that would otherwise not be revealed.

10
 The non-linear and multi-voiced, collage-like narrative structure of the novel is echoed by the patient’s copy of
Herodotus’s The Histories, into which the patient has pasted his own personal writings and observances, as well as
clippings from other books and magazines. Like the collage the patient has created with the histories by interspersing
personal anecdotes and the writings of others between the pages of the story that Herodotus tells, Ondaatje has
created a collage of multi-voiced narrations and experiences. This non-linear and multi-voiced, collage-like narrative
structure, then, becomes more than a narrative device. It represents an alternative to the way that history itself - also
traditionally recorded in a strictly chronological manner-can be written, providing a framework for a form of written
history that takes into account more than one perspective.
Many similarities can be seen in Joseph Conrad's heart of darkness and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient.
The framed narrative stream of consciousness, time, memory, telling in The English patient. It has also borrowed a
lot from Marcel proust’s Remembrance of Thing's Past. Memory plays can important role in the taking place of
events.

m
Q. 7. What is the main theme of the story ‘Swimming Lesson’?
Ans. In “Swimming Lessons” the narrator, Kersi Boyce talks about his life in Canada as well as comments on his

c o
past life in India (Bombay). One day he sees an old man in his building and by seeing him he remembers about his
grandfather. Both the old men were similar about one thing which is they are alone and were in continuous search of

.
a thing through which they can pass their time. Another old lady whom stays in the same building has information
about all the people who lived in that building and she tells the narrator that the old man is living with her daughter.

grandfather and how he died at the hospital.

ing
r t
The narration keeps moving in present and past. The narrator remembers how her mother used to take care of his

a
There is an intersection in the story which is seen in the form of the narrator’s parent’s reaction to his letters

ad
which forms the sub-text. Kersi being alone in Toronto wrote about his life in India while taking swimming lessons,
found chlorinated water as something foreign. Mistry includes a commentary within the story and critique of his
own writing.

Kersi's life is “locked in silence and secrecy”.

e
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ym
Through narrators unexpected and uncommon letters one thinks that the father’s comments are appropriate that

u l n d
The narrative shifts back to Toronto where two women were sunbathing. Both look luscious and gleaming and
i ks
the narrator fantasizes their bodies and breasts. He feels disappointed when at a closer looks he finds their skin
wrinkled and ageing.
n o
t O bo
When he goes for his first swimming lesson the woman at the registration desk asks him if swimming was not

s
encouraged in India to which the narrator replies that most of the Indians swim perfectly but he is the exception.
r -
While looking at his swimming costume he dreams about a gorgeous woman who can have intercourse with

.e fo E
him. His imagination suggests that he lives his life in dreams and is very quick in fantasizing about anything.

b n d
While her mother wrote letter to him the father gave the suggestions how a writer should behave and do his
work. The first lesson of swimming proved horrible for the narrator as he felt terrified with water. He even has to

we
hear racial comments while bathing.
H
u a
Everything was present in his swimming class but the woman of his fantasy was missing and at the end he has to

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settle for a 35 year old woman in a pink dress with little stomach. When the instructor wanted a volunteer for one
who can float on the back the lady in one piece pink suit does it and in the meanwhile the narrator notices her body

w
carefully. When the instructor wanted a volunteer for the second time the narrator unmindfully came forward and
end up on the verge of drowning himself. He decided not to come for the swimming classes from the next week
onwards.
The narrator still goes back as he thought of seeing the hair again of the lady but to his wonder the hair was
removed. He felt betrayed and decided not to come again to do swimming as the swimming seemed more difficult to
him now.
Now the scene shifts to Bombay at narrator’s parent’s house where the postman delivers a parcel which was send
by the narrator, who wrote it himself. Now the parents get to know what their son has been doing all the while. They
decide to read it turn by turn (chapter wise).

11
 In looking for the major themes of “Swimming Lessons,” it would be a mistake to take the narrator’s remarks
about cause and effect too literally. It is a noticeable thread in the narrative, but Mistry makes it almost too apparent.
The narrator mentions it when he considers his grandfather's osteoporosis and a fall that broke his hip. Did the
weakened bone snap and cause his fall or did his fall cause the break? This leads him to wonder if the Bombay Parsi
community has the highest divorce rate because it is the most westernized or if it the most westernized because of its
divorces. The theme comes up early in the story and continues as he wonders if the waters of Bombay are filthy
because of the crowds or if the crowds gather because of the chance to pick through the filth and junk. Which is the
cause, which the effect? After raising the question initially, Mistry’s narrator drops it. Readers are left with the
thought, however, and it haunts other events in the story. Do Bertha's husband and son leave her because she is
always yelling at them, or does she yell because she knows they are going to leave? It serves to give an overall sense
that life is mysterious and that one cannot figure out why things happen as they do. The theme arises significantly at
the end when the narrator’s parents wonder if he writes about Bombay because he is lonely in his new home, or if he
had to go to the new locale to find his subject matter back in the old one.

o m
The artistic patterning of life’s experiences is a theme that arises out of the self-consciousness of the narrator in
“Swimming Lessons.” He wants to know what “the equation” is as he contemplates whether he will experience a

c
“watery rebirth.” As it turns out, his focus on water as the source of regeneration has been a false hope. Just as the

.
water in Bombay was a compromised symbol because of the filth in it, so the pool of his swimming lessons fails as

t
a symbol, presumably because he brought “impure” expectations to it. What finally works toward his rebirth in his
g
r
new country is simply the passing of time. He is new to the phenomenon of the seasons, and pays close attention to

in
it as the story develops. By the end of his narrative, when the old man has died, he has begun to perceive a sense of

a
the ongoing larger natural rhythms created by the cycle of the seasons in Canada.
d
a
For most of the story, the narrator tells the events. When the typeface becomes italic, the story shifts to Bombay

m e
where the narrator’s parents discuss their son, his life in Toronto, and, after it arrives in the mail, the manuscript of
stories he has written since he immigrated to Canada. One effect of this shift is to give a double vision of the narrator.
R
y
He is seen as he displays himself and also as his parents see him from halfway around the globe. His self-revelation

e
is sometimes very intimate; he talks about sexual fantasies and very private scenes from his life. But his parents’ talk

d in s
about him also comes close to being embarrassing at points; it has the feel of parents discussing their children when

l
u
n ok
they are not around.

t
The style of the story is realism; that is, the events in the story are things one would expect to happen in

O bo
“everyday life.” The narrative dwells on encounters between characters in the apartment lobby and mundane

e s
conversations in the laundry room. The most dramatic event in the story is the narrator’s moment of terror at his

for -
swim lesson when the instructor is close by. In other words, there is no great drama, no supernatural agent, not even
E
.
a direct confrontation between the characters, unless one counts Bertha’s bouts of screaming at her husband and son.
This kind of low-key realism is often termed “psychological realism” because its focuses on the “inner life,” or
b d
psychology, of one or two central characters. In “Swimming Lessons” the focus is on the narrator, his human
n
we u a
interactions, his sensitivity to social environments, and his perception of images and symbols from “the page of life

H
itself,” as he puts it. Things happen, but they are subtle things that must be noticed by careful observation and

w Th
interpreted by understanding their psychological and symbol significance.
When the narrator brings up a point about symbols, it reminds readers that he is a writer, the kind of person who

w
thinks about such literary things. He says, “symbols, after all, should be still and gentle as dewdrops, tiny, yet shining
with a world of meaning.” He has noticed that water imagery has been a constant in his life. His tone is almost that
of an excuse–his actual life has handed him the symbol and he apologizes for how obvious it is. All this should also
be a hint to look for more subtle symbols throughout the story. Of course, the most striking image pairing in the story
is the pubic hairs of the woman in his swim class that arouse him and later the hair he sees caught in the drain plug
of his tub. A psychological reading of this image set is that sexuality is under the surface of things. The narrator says,
suggestively “The world outside the water I have seen a lot of, it is now time to see what is inside.”
Q. 8. Attempt a critical analy sis of the story ‘A Mother in India.’
Ans. There are two major characters in the story–the protagonist is Helena Farnham, the mother of the title, and
her daughter Cecily. Duncan is ambivalent in her attitude towards Helena. On the other hand she looks at Helena as
a suffering colonial, who is a victim of circumstances, who has suffered bad time in order to bring up her daughter.

12
On the other hand she is shown as a woman who does not show any motherly love and affection towards her
daughter.
The portrait of Cecily seems to be very sketchy. She grew up in England with her aunts, asked to go with her
unknown parents to India to which she agrees. She does not possess the thinking as was presumed by her mother. She
is simple and passive, but she is also a charming and caring person, capable of thinking for herself and she can take
decision for herself.
The story is written in first person narrative and the narrator is not very dependable; Helena is not an objective
observer of things. As she is involved in the action she more or les revolves round herself only. She presents a biased
picture of the happenings, which is true in the case of the daughter.
A Mother in India, as a story depends on the facade of appearance and the reality of emotional abandonment
within a male dominated & Victorian society. Duncan's point is that Victorian men create monstrous Victorian
women. Relationships of any emotional worth are rendered impossible between Helena and her daughter Cecily

m
because of a life long separation imposed by the father. It is impossible for Helena to be Cecily's emotional or
spiritual mother because Helena is not emotionally equipped to be anything else other than a servant to her husband.

o
Her life has been pre-arranged by a series of male allowances and dictates. Helena and Cecily's relationship must be
emotionally void to work within the shallow, materialistic pre-arrangement of their lives. Helena has nothing to offer

c
her daughter but the emptiness that she's acquired over her lifetime. Helena has spent her life in an emotional

t .
vacuum. When Helena is forced to draw on emotional experience for her daughter's sake she finds immature childish
emotions are all she has. Cecily is as a doll to Helena that does not live up to its warranty upon close scrutiny. She
g
ir
recoils from the situation looking with repugnance at her alien possession. Cecily is frequently referred to as an it as
n
opposed to my daughter by Helena. Cecily is also frightened by the appearance of her estranged Mother and this is

da
reasonable for a four year old. Helena however, reacts with swallowed anger and removes herself from Cecily and

a
the situation. This is also very childish, but understandable considering Helena's emotional maturity. Helena, like a

e m
scolded four year old, sends herself to a room where she is safely locked away by herself for two atrocious hours. It
is at this point that it becomes apparent that the mother and daughter relationship is doomed for the lack of an
R
emotionally developed or mature mother.

e
d y
Helena gave birth to Cecily at nineteen and was brought out there to marry John at an even earlier age. Her life

n
i ks
to this point has been dictated by men. She does what she is allowed to do and little else. Her husband did not allow

l
u
Cecily's return until she was twenty one years old because he simply would not hear of her coming before. Helena is

n o
t
expected to be maternal with a young woman whom she has not been allowed to raise. This is an un-fair position to

O bo
be placed in by a requently absent husband. Helena does not want to feel old and is resolved to be young until [she]

s
is old. She would rather not be reminded of her middle age by the maternally successful Mrs. Morgan or the presence
r -
of her youthful attractive daughter. With her daughter present she will lose the status of lady and gain attention as the

.e fo E
mother of a twenty one year old woman. The relationship is tagged on too late by a pathetic father and a totally in-
experienced mother who is now beyond caring.
b n d
Cecily is the victim of the self centred human garbage that is her parents. This story is an attack on Victorian

we u a
domesticity and the pitfalls of being a mother in those times. Helena being a product of her society was incapable of
H
being a mother at the age of forty and it is doubtful she could have been anything else other than a servant to her

w Th
husband. Cecily did not stand a chance of having a meaningful relationship with her mother and is to be pitied as a
character in such a dark, lamentable story. No doubt there is truth to the story, but it's lack of humour and it’s absence

w
of love puts a hopeful purpose to the category of fiction.
By reading the story I sympathize with Cecily who does not get motherly affection in her childhood and adulthood.
And at the end we can see that she takes the firm decision to not to marry anyone.
Q. 9. Attempt a character analysis of Rita joe to show how her life represents the general apathy of urban
White society towards Native Indian Canadians-who are now referred to as the First People.
Ans. Seminal in the history of modern Canadian theatre, this play recounts the story of a young aboriginal
woman who comes to the city only to die there. However, the villains of the work are not so easy to pinpoint: the
violence of white culture is to blame, to be sure, but so is the patriarchy of Native culture.
The play is not great for what it is as much as it is great for what it promises and what it offers the imaginative
creative team. In a structure that is often clumsy and cinematic more than theatrical, the story is told in songs,

13
montages and scenes. But then there are flashes of dramatic brilliance and also the historical aspect of the work’s
timing; this was one of the first works about Native Canadians mounted on a stage and taken seriously.
The critics were virtually unanimous on two counts: the work’s structural problems; the work’s odd power. Jack
Richards of the Vancouver Sun echoed many other writers with, “I don't know if it is a great play. But if the role of
the stage is to communicate...Ryga and...Bloomfield have accomplished their purpose.” On the revival in 1976
Jamie Portman of the Vancouver Province wrote, “Yet...the play still worked. Rita Joe was a landmark in more ways
than one. It was-and remains-a play for all seasons and for all peoples.“On its Washington production, the Post was
postive, but Julius Novick, for the New York Times wrote, “Canadian Playwright.‘The words seem a little incongrous
together, like 'Panamanian hockey-player,' almost, or 'Lebanese fur-trapper.”
The theme of The Ecstasy of Rita Joe is exploitation of Indian woman at the hands of white Canadian. The
Magistrate is the representative of the attitude of whites. He refuses to listen to the grievances of Rita. He is aware

m
of the cruelty and injustice meted out to them but stressed on the dogmatic laws.
Ryga is a social commentator in most of his plays. His work drifted between clumsy messaging and vivid and

c o
thrilling theatricality. George Ryga’s The Ecstasy of Rita Joe is perhaps the best known contemporary Canadian play
- a lyric documentary about a young Indian girl who comes to the city only to die on Skid Row, a victim of white

.
man's violence and his paternalistic attitude toward Native Peoples.

t
The Magistrate is the representative of the attitude of whites. He refuses to listen to the grievances of Rita. He is
aware of the cruelty and injustice meted out to them but stressed on the dogmatic laws.
g
a r n
The characters in the play are dealt in an allegorical way. The play is constructed like a parable. Rita is the
i
protagonist, who suffers the most. She protests but nobody listens to her and thus she was not helped by anyone. Her
d
hopes and aspirations all come to an end when she was mass- raped, which ultimately leads to her death. Her father
a
David Joe is a weak character so as the teacher who is the victim of the state of the education - system.evil forces rule
which is represented by the murderers.

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Jaimie Paul loves Rita but was not able to cope up in the urban area. He stands against the system but is

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ultimately crushed. He exposes hypocrites like Mr. Homer just as Rita renders the priest impotent. The singer

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functions as a chorus. She also serves as an alter ego to Rita Joe.

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Ryga has painted the characters in the light of white and black. Ryga’s analysis doesn’t speak strongly to the

n ok
present, however. The play’s Native characters lack understanding and agency–the script makes no mention of the

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residential-school system that did such damage to First Nations cultures, for instance–so they are lost in victimization,
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unable to take responsibility for their own lives.
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Rita Joe, a simple, romantic young American Indian woman. She moves to the city to escape the stagnation of

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life on her reservation, but things go wrong: She loses her job and is arrested repeatedly for a variety of offenses,
such as vagrancy and prostitution. At the mercy both of a legal system she does not understand and of people who
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view her as inhuman, Rita ends up serving time in prison. Her dreams of a good life conflict with memories of a life
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that was simpler but one that was dominated by white people’s ideas about religion and education.

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All sharp, skinny angles and tiny pigeon-toed feet, Ravensbergen inhabits Rita Joe - her distinctive accent, her

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manic poles of emotion and energy, her paralyzing frustrations–creating a character into whom the actress completely
disappears. Hers is undoubtedly one of the best performances of this theatre season. She's supported by a strong
ensemble, including Cancer Man himself and Loring, whose Jaimie Paul slips effortlessly between jubilant optimism

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and uncontrollable fury.
All that happens to Rita is due to the city life and the whites discriminating policy can be held responsible for it.
She keeps complaining and groaning but no one listens to her. The Magistrate does not understand her problem
rather behaves as deaf and dumb. He acts as a robot having no feelings and keeps repeating a learned set of rules and
regulations.
Desire acts as the main factor in the play. Rita and Joe want to marry and have children but the past record of the
natives of having children was not good. By introducing Eileen the author has shown the misery of Rita. Eileen
never gets proper work to be done in order to earn the living. Natives do not find right work and often targeted and
victimized. They need to have qualifications beyond their reach. A woman if denies to be exploited sexually or
otherwise, she loses her job.

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 Ryga’s technique draws a lot from other sources. European influence on his work can be comprehended very
easily.
Both the elements of Ryga’s play expressionism and Theatre of Cruelty shocks the reader through the use of
violence, distortion and exaggeration. The term Theatre of Cruelty was first introduced by Antonin Artaud which
aims at communicating with the audience through the use of gesture, movement, sound and symbols.
Expressionism was meant to define an artistic movement which flourished at the beginning of the 20th century
in Europe especially in Germany. Strindberg was the first one of the idols of this moment. Expressionist elements in
Ryga's play involve ability to shock, startle and jolt people into awareness. Rita’s claim to have seen the god in the
sky, her nightmarish experience, Jaimie sees a TV commercial that show a knife ' cutting of good shoes like they
were potatoes’. The play also has the quality of being relentless and exaggerated in the presentation of extremes
which confirms the inclusion of Theatre of Cruelty.
Ryga uses circular ramp for his play. Violence and rape are shown on stage. Songs are used repeatedly. The

uses allegory to good effect.

So we can say that form and content both work equally to produce a powerfully statement.
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singer functions as the chorus and talks about the harshness of life. The form of the play is that of a parable and it

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Q. 10. Write a note on Arnold Itwaru and Arun Mukherjee as ‘oppositional critics’ of Canada.

t .
Ans. Arnold Harichan Itwaru and Arun Mukherjee are leading names among ‘oppositional critics’ in Canada.
Arnold Harrichand Itwaru was born in Guyana in 1942 and immigrated to Toronto, Canada in 1969. His M.A. thesis

g
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completed in 1978 at York University is a sociological analysis of consciousness orientation and its implications in

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West Indian prose literature in English during the 1950s. It deals with the colonial experience in terms of the thematics
i
a
of the works of six authors of the period. Itwaru also received a Ph.D. from York University in 1983. His thesis
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formed the basis for his work The Invention of Canada. Itwaru is the Program Director for the Caribbean Studies
a
Program at New College, the University of Toronto. His poems are highly evocative and create more a sense of
atmosphere and images of immigrant's experience.

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Arun Mukherjee did her graduate work in English at the University of Saugar, India and came to Canada as a
Commonwealth Scholar in 1971 to do a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto. Her current teaching interests are South

u l n d
Asian and Minority Canadian literatures. She is the author of The Gospel of Wealth in the American Novel: The
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Rhetoric of Dreiser and His Contemporaries, Towards an Aesthetic of Opposition: Essays on Literature, Criticism

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and Cultural Imperialism, Oppositional Aesthetics: Readings from a Hyphenated Space and Postcolonialism: My

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Living . She has edited and written the Introduction of Sharing Our Experience (Canadian Advisory Council on the
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Status of Women: 1993), an anthology of autobiographical writings by aboriginal women and women of colour. She
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is a member of York Stories Editorial Collective which edited York Stories: Women in Higher Education. Her

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translation of Dalit writer Omprakash Valmiki’s autobiography Joothan: A Dalit’s Life won the New India Foundation
f
Prize for “the finest book published in India during 2002-2003.” Her translation of Dalit writer Sharan Kumar

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Limbale's novel, Hindu, will be published by Samya in 2008.
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Mukherjee in her introduction to ‘Oppositional Aesthetics: Readings from a Hyphenated Space’ introduce South

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asian Canadian texts as an ‘oppositional discourse’ to the dominant ideologies of literacy and cultural analysis in

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Euro-America. The essay is written from the point of view of a person who has experienced what is to be an
immigrant in Canada. She has also described the tendency to use Eurocentric texts to perpetuate the myths of
colonial history.

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