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Sample Final Exam submissions 2015 (2015 final exam assignment) Essay 2 Sample |
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Assignment: Referring to Objectives 1 & 2, compose a dialogue between at least four texts (at least 3 since midterm) on a topic, theme, issue, or objective of your choice (Objectives in addition to 1 & 2 may be included.)
Janice Smith
8
December 2015
Lucy, Jasmine, Hukum, and George: Searching for Unity
Several dynamic characters presented themselves in the reading for this course.
Suffice to say that the variety of men and women characterized within the novels
offered a decent range of cultural and historical perspectives. Within this
essay I would like to look at the cultural perspectives from men like Hukum in
Train to Pakistan and George Orwell
in Shooting an Elephant and compare
them to the cultural perspectives of women in Jamaica Kincaid’s
Lucy and Bharati Mukherjee’s
Jasmine. While the gender differences
are apparent, I would like to try and look beyond the surface of males as
dominant and females as the “others” and open up a dialogue between all four
characters to show how both Colonial and Post-Colonial perspectives wrestle with
the concept of oppression in the novel and the short story.
For
Hukum, being a Magistrate means he must maintain law and order. Placed in this
powerful position, he is forced to deal with the discord between the Muslims and
the Sikhs. He wrestles with this moral dilemma in the novel and often drinks to
help cope with the situation. On one hand he is seen as the corrupt official of
a town being subjected to the ravages of civil war. While I also see him as a
man left to determine the lesser of two evils for the outcomes of the village.
For me both perspectives create the tension that makes him worthy of discussion.
His unsettled nature is meant to reflect what Khushwant Singh felt was
part of the partitioning experience. At some point the feeling of right and
wrong are so misplaced that they seem almost relative. What is right and what is
wrong? Hukum is often perceived as
non-responsive at stopping vile acts, and this makes him look somewhat
apathetic. Many of his actions are worthy of comparison to the policeman in
George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant.
Like Hukum, Orwell’s police officer
struggles with the responsibilities of being a law enforcer. In this narrative a
police officer comes face to face with his own displacement when a rutting
elephant tears through a village. Conflicted by the idea that he must shoot the
elephant, but doesn’t want to. In the end the officer shoots the elephant to
avoid looking “like a fool.” Both
Hukum and Orwell struggle with the moral dilemma that confront them. Orwell acts
in an attempt to solve the problem whereas Hukum pours himself a drink, turns
off the light, and cries to himself rather than help stop the train plot. For
Orwell, his behavior leads him to the realization that he is not in control, but
rather the will of the people are governing his actions. This only serves to
deepen his anti-imperialist sentiment. When viewed in this way the conqueror and
the conquered are both being destroyed. This ideal seems to create a type of
destructive relativity that on some level equates to the moral relativity that
Singh speaks of in Train.
Being
misplaced and out of sorts is a way of life for the character Lucy in Jamaica
Kincaid’s novel. This young West Indian girl is generally thought to be an
extension of Kincaid’s essay titled, A
Small Place. There is rarely a time in the novel where the character is
comfortable in her skin. Like Hukum and Orwell, she struggle with the
colonialist’s ideal of moral right and wrong. This is best represented through
the relationship she has with her overbearing mother. Her psychological struggle
is very similar to Orwell’s and Hukum’s in that the preconceived colonialist
notions that define behavior tap at her conscience. It never seems to leave the
peripheral for all four characters in this essay. It is foreboding and ominous.
Yet Lucy is unlike Orwell and Hukum because the psychological “pressure is part
of what eventually brings about the change that will lead her to break out of
the slave role and establish herself as a free woman”( Smith 2015). Meanwhile,
Hukum and Orwell continue to struggle; their consciousness is in conflict with
the colonialist mindset. It seems that status is of no help to the male
characters because they cannot free themselves to act against the forces that
oppress them. When taking this into account, all four characters face a moral
struggle forced upon them by their culture.
In her 2013 research post Kristine
Vermillion argues “the gender binary is more ancient and widespread than the
reaches of colonialism, and that oppression has yet to come to pass. Yet the
novel is a place where voices of women are being heard through the moving
stories of individual women.” Jasmine is one such story. Like
Lucy and
Shooting an Elephant, Jasmine is a
narrative. All of these books give the reader close-up views of what is going on
in the minds of colonialist subjects. Told in this way, you see
Jasmine as a woman who knows what she
wants to become. She struggles like Lucy, Hukum and George with the implications
of colonialist mentality. From early on, she, like Lucy, seeks to push the
boundaries of her traditional life, and through very violent means, frees
herself from her past. Jasmine, Hukum, Lucy, and George are all subjected to a
death in some way as part of coming to conclusions about the lives they lead.
George’s killing of the elephant and Jasmine’s killing of her rapists bring both
characters to a new level of consciousness, and both are equally empowered by
the experience. Hukum and Lucy are faced by the death of family members. Hukum
remembers his daughter’s violent death and faces it with apathy and withdrawal.
It serves to remind the reader how war and corruption consume everything so that
there is no one and nothing left to carry on.
While the news of Lucy’s father gives her the strength she needs to spurn
the mother for good and become the modern women that she always wanted to be.
The death of Lucy’s father is a liberation from her mother.
