One Night @ The Call Center by Chetan Bhagat

ONE NIGHT @THE CALL CENTER

                             -Chetan Bhagat

                   One night at Call center is written by Chetan Bhagat who is one of the most famous novelists in modern era. He wrote four more novels those are five point someone. One Night at Call center is the novel based on the life of the people of middle class family in India and their problems. IT is a story of emotions which shows pity, love, sorrow and ambitions. It denotes to the many aspects of human life. It deals with the expectations of people and the frustration after not fulfilling.

                    In this novel Bhagat talks about the call center where there are six character are working, Gurgaon, Haryana in the novel.  The characters of the novel are: Shyam, Varun, Esha, Priyanka, Radhika and Military Uncle. They are working in call center which is “Connexion call center”. All the character faces the problems in their family. One night they get call from God and God said them to listen your inner voice of your heart. All the characters inspired by the call of God.

               The story takes a dramatic and decisive turn through a literal Deux ex Machine, when the character receives a phone call from God

                   The story of one night at call center moves around six people. Three are male and three and females. All of them are working in a same group in a call center .They all are different from each other but they have a similarity in them that all of them are fed up with their lives and their lives are very messy.
This story is about a night at call center which changes the lives of all the people, not lives actually it changes their way of thinking .It changes their way to deal with the problems of their lives .
                   Shyam Mehra is the narrator of the story and is the main character of the story. He is very much confused in his life. He is a very simple boy. He loves Priyanka who has got engaged with Ganesh an NRI boy. He is sad because of it and second thing is that he thinks that his boss has cheated him and Varun
Varun ( Vroom ) is a friend of Shyam and does not want to do the job but he wants to keep up his standard up so he has to work there . Priyanka’s mother wants her to marry Ganesh next month but she does not want. She still feels something for Shaym. Later on Shaym tell her about the baldness of Ganesh who hid this from her. Esha Singh or Eliza is an ambitious girl who wants to become a model. She runs away from house and join call center in order to fulfill her dreams .She does many compromises. But she is bluffed by a man who said her that she is not suitable for being a model.
                   Her life represents the ambitious middle class youth who are running after blind race of materialism. Radhika call name is Regime Jones. She is married. She is not happy with her mother in law. She loves her husband a lot but when she comes to know that on a radio program he selects another girl over her. She gets very upset.
                   Military uncle is the oldest person in call center but he is living a lonely life. His heart cries for his grandson but he gets more upset when his grandson asks him to stop mailing him.
                   In this way everyone in the call center is fed up with his life but one day at night everyone receives a call from God. God motivates everyone and tells the way to handle their problems. He tells them not to get frustrated by problems. He suggests them to face the problems and to do 100% of efforts. After receiving the call the life of everyone is changed. Everyone starts facing the problem with full of courage and finds out the best solution.
                   Shaym finally gets his love. Priyanka also refuses to get marry to Ganesh who hid his baldness. Esha starts working for NGOs. Military Uncle also gets his family back at the end.
In this way the story of one night at call center is based on facts and fiction. The characters are taken from the real life. They represent the problem of middle class Indians. The story denotes the six different problems of six different people.                         Priyanka represent the girl in India who has to follow the decision of parents at the matter of marriage. God gives the solution to it and tells her to believe in herself. Military uncle also represent old people who are ditched by the family and it is a common and a serious problem in society. At the end he also gets his family back.
                   The story of the novel is very simple but the call from God makes it interesting. All the characters in it are young except military uncle. The language of the novel is very simple and that is the only reason of its popularity .

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

THE DA VINCI CODE

                   -Dan Brown

                   Since its 2003 publication date, Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code has had an impact not only in the world of literature and the related world of the arts but also in the social and political spheres. The Da Vinci Code is a stand-alone thriller, but again features Robert Langdon, the Harvard symbolist who was the lead character in Brown's 2001 novel, Angels and Demons, which was also a bestseller.

                   The Da Vinci Code was number one on the New York Times bestseller list, stayed on the bestseller list for over a year, and has sold over ten million copies worldwide. The novel reached many readers who might not usually pick up fiction, owing to the intriguing nature of its multi-layered plot: the idea that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child; deciphering the symbols found in many works of art, including Da Vinci's painting The Last Supper, that indicate this secret history; and the resulting power struggles between the Catholic Church and a secret society named the Priory of Sion over what to do with this explosive information.

                   This novel starts off with a bang—literally.

Jacques Saunière, the respected curator of the Louvre museum in Paris, is viciously shot by an albino monk looking for a certain mysterious something…something only Saunière and three other men (that have already been offed) could direct him to. Realizing the secret he and those other men vowed to protect is about to die with him, Saunière scrambles to leave behind a message that can only be understood by very specific people…

                   Robert Langdon, a humble but groundbreaking professor of Symbology, gets summoned to a gruesome murder scene in the middle of the night because the DCPJ (basically the French version of the FBI) need his expert opinion. Upon arriving, Langdon is stunned to realize the victim is Jacques Saunière—coincidentally, the very man he was supposed to meet for drinks earlier that night.

                   Captain Bezu Fache of the DCPJ likes Langdon as the prime suspect in Saunière's death, and all he needs is an inadvertent confession at the scene of the crime. He's thwarted in getting one, though, because Sophie Neveu (Saunière's estranged granddaughter and code-breaker extraordinaire) interrupts the process and cleverly warns Langdon that he's in serious trouble. The two of them manage to escape the Louvre without being captured by the police…but not before they discover a series of clues left behind by her grandfather.

                   From there, Sophie and Langdon are led on a wild quest to find the keystone—a mysterious object that will ultimately lead to the Holy Grail. Turns out Saunière had been the head of a secret society known as the Priory of Sion (say that five times fast) who worship the sacred feminine and protect the secret of the Holy Grail's true identity and location. You see, the Holy Grail’s not a wooden cup like Indy Jones found: it's actually the bones of Mary Magdalene, and documents that prove she had been the mother of Jesus's children. (Whoa. That changes everything.) Now it's up to Sophie and Langdon to unlock his clues in order to discover the secret he's worked so hard to protect.

                   Along the way, while dodging capture by the DCPJ and attacks from the albino monk Silas, they enlist the help of the Grail expert Sir Leigh Teabing. Together they decipher Saunière's riddles and seek out answers all over London on a scavenger hunt to beat all scavenger hunts. As things develop, it turns out this entire charade has been orchestrated by a shadowy figure known as the Teacher. (Sheesh, that's an ominous name.) He's the one who ordered Silas to kill Saunière’s, and he's been pulling the strings with Silas's mentor—the unfortunate Bishop Aringarosa—as well, who's a man who is desperate to save his conservative Catholic sect Opus Dei from extinction.

                   In a twist no one sees coming, we discover—just as Langdon deciphers the final clue—that Teabing is the dastardly Teacher. With the timing of a Swiss watch, Captain Bezu Fache manages to save the day. He'd realized he had the wrong man thanks to a confession from the sheepish Bishop (who'd realized he and Silas had been played), and manages to track down and arrest Teabing just in time.

                   With their names cleared of any crimes, and the final clue solved Langdon and Sophie head to Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. There they'll supposedly find the Holy Grail, according to Saunière's last riddle. Instead, though, they find Sophie's long-lost grandmother and little brother, who also happen to be direct descendants of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. Sophie's happy to finally have family (after losing her grandfather, she thought she was totally alone), but Langdon is pretty bummed that he didn't end up finding the Grail.

                   Thankfully, Langdon pieces together Saunière's final clue in a different way, and is struck by the realization that the Holy Grail is actually hidden beneath the Louvre itself.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

THE SENSE OF AN ENDING

                             -Julian Barnes

                   The Sense of an Ending is about the person’s memory of youthful days. The novella is divided into two divisions. The divisions are entitled as Part1 and Part2. The first part begins in the 1960s.It begins with four intellectually arrogant school friends. We are told two friends out of four. The first one is Tony Webster who is the narrator of the story and the second one is Adrian the most talented and intelligent among four.

                   Julian Barnes here justifies the Universal Truth that “One cannot know what he does not know” – with the reference of Tony Webster that he never understand the words of Veronica, When Tony asked Veronica bout the Money at that time she replied with very tragic answer “Blood Money”. The central theme of the novel is weakness of memory. Through the narrative of Tony Webster and his search for reason of Adrian’s death tries to justify one thing that is imperfection of memory, how our partial memory mislead us! Throughout the novel, writer tries to prove human memory and how it creates assumption on human mind.

                   In the book, Tony Webster is looking back on his life, or one particular arc of it, to do with a gifted school friend, a girl, and an everyday tragedy. Tony is an interesting study: retired, particular, clearly somewhat lonely: “I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded – and how pitiful that was.” His only regular human contact is his ex-wife Margaret, with whom he continues to get on well: indeed, she seems to be his only friend. She, with apparent disinterest, offers him advice on what to do when his teenage experience with ex-girlfriend Veronica starts to trouble him again. Why worry now about something that happened forty years ago? Because it involves death, and Tony is not getting any younger. And because the past is never dead; it is not even past.

                   The central character of the book is not Veronica, or Adrian, though their actions are central to it. The story is told by Tony and, as a consequence, is about Tony. He throws doubt on his own reliability (which led me to trust him implicitly), questions his own motives, and does his best to honor Adrian’s complaint from decades ago (which I suspect also reflects Barnes’s view): “I hate the way the English have of not being serious about being serious. I really hate it.”

                   The novel is open ended about these two topics. Reason of Adrian’s suicide is not clearly given. But the facts about his life, before his death is revealed. His philosophical, existentialist ideas suggest that he was mature and serious about his way of living. Like an existentialist, he was having anxiety and restlessness about human life. So, these facts suggest that perhaps following his existentialist mentality, he commits suicide. In their school days, one of their classmates commits suicide because he made one girl pregnant. The reference of this story strongly focuses on idea of Eros and Thanatos.

                    Even the novel ends with revealing facts about Adrian’s sexual relationship with Mrs. Sarah Ford quite before his suicide. It means, we can judge that, the writer may want to say, even Adrian is mature serious and has philosophical ideas cannot escape from very cheap trap of Eros and Thanatos. But we can also conclude against that idea that, perhaps, Adrian’s relationship and following events are only side kick of Adrian’s strong existentialist ideas on ending his life, the seed of suicide are already there.

The Swamp Dweller by Wole Soyinka

THE SWAMP DWELLER

                   -Wole Soyinka

          “The Swamp Dwellers” play written by Wole Soyinka. Wole Soyinka has survived to write so much about the African experience is a wonder. Throughout his long and creative career Soyinka’s politics have placed him in danger frequently. His education reflected both African and Western influences and the conflict and interaction between these two forces would occupy much of his writing particularly in the play Death and the King's Horseman. Through drama, poetry, essays, and autobiographies, Soyinka has documented not only the struggles of his homeland of Nigeria but of the African continent as a whole. His works earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, and he used the occasion to highlight the plight of fellow activist Nelson Mandela. Soyinka’s life has been so full of intrigue and accomplishment that he has published several memoirs in which the hardships of the African nation overlap with Soyinka’s own personal evolution. Dramatic methods are very vital in the art of playwriting as they assist in developing and presenting effective plot structure. Different techniques are used for different plot. Soyinka has been considered as a master-craftsman in the art of drama. Let’s have a look at one of his important plays from structural point of view.

                             The Swamp Dwellers is a play of worldwide appeal. It talks about distant rural and urban society, family life, conflict of old and new society, psychological conflicts between old and young generations, love for modernity and love for the swamp the supernatural, unfavorable forces of nature and so many problems. He focuses on family ties, love for family, hints of love in trivial quarrel between the married in the play.

                   Whenever they speak of their twin sons Awuchike and Igwezu, Makuri and Alu are seen continually at each other's throats. But their argument bears the testimony of deep love for each other and for their future generations and exhibits great concern for family ties that were in susceptible condition during the transitional period in the post-colonial African states. AkinwandeOluwoleWole Soyinka vividly portrays such family relationships, the individual and socio-cultural tensions pervading in Nigeria in his widely read The Swamp Dwellers. The patches of stories extremely adorned in the play give a preview of family bond throughout the play.

                   The target of this study is to discover the examples of family ties depicted, hinted and embedded in the play. Soyinka focuses the life and culture of an African society, but the play goes beyond the border of a particular area. It expands the border of readers‟ knowledge, and deals with tensions, problems, conflicts, calamities, and struggles ever-present in human community across the world. The playwright through his powerful imagination has made the language of the play metaphorical, and we have got bundles of images reflecting his individual outlook of human life.

                   It also gives us a picture of the consistency that existed between the individual and southern Nigerian society. The conflict between tradition and modernity is also reflected in the play. The play mirrors the socio-cultural pattern, the pain and the sufferings of the swamp dwellers and underlines the need for absorbing new ideas. The struggle between human beings and unfavorable forces of nature is also captured in the play.  His method is not only of sociological sense, but of human beings. The characters presented in The Swamp Dwellers happen to exist in a particular place and time, but the universally significant themes raises the play to a great height. The support of his writings, especially The Swamp Dwellers, may be the culture of Yoruba but the play excels the demarcation and falls in the stream of international movements for humanity. On the other hand, out of all these broadly discussed themes some examples of powerful family bond can be discovered through an extensive and analytical study of the play. A dramatist’s criticism of life is most fully personified in the spirit and trend of the action

                   The Swamp Dwellers is primarily concerned about social changes. An easy access to shortly abundant oil has caused the social changes and has an impact on human relationships in many African countries especially in Nigeria during mid-twentieth century. The play demonstrates how a money-making society is ruined, and falls into a deep tension, disappointment and frustration. The play concentrates on the conflict between the old and the young who are constantly approaching for better life. The clash between custom and innovation is also reflected in the play. It also investigates the existentialist elements, and finds parity between the old and the new. The priest Kadiye becomes fatter with gifts demanded in the name of the serpent. The serpent is pacified whenever his high priest Kadiye receives gifts from the swamp dwellers.

                   Igwezu becomes shocked to see himself in a dilemma of two cultures- the city one and the rural one. Two cultures have made him a union chamber causing deep frustration to him in the long run through the depiction of transitional aspects, Soyinka’s attempt is to strengthen the sense of nationality Instances of powerful family bond in Soyinka’s The Swamp Dwellers.

                   In the very opening scene of the play we can see Quarrels between Alu and Makuri. We see the hints of verbal bicker between the two old married Alu and Makuri. Alu seems more impatient than Makuri, and she is constantly nagging in the households. Alu has been waiting for long for her dear son and in her every household work she attempts to peep the doorways with great expectations of their son’s return. 

                   The Swamp Dwellers is a close study of the pattern of life in the isolated hamlets of the African countryside as well as an existential study of the simple folk who face rigours of life without any hope or succor. Soyinka tears apart social injustice, hypocrisy and tyranny. The Swamp Dwellers expresses the necessity for a balance between the old and the new. Soyinka is not for excessive glorification of the past. In the play we see Soyinka’s crusade against authoritarianism, complacency and self-delusion. Besides, in The Swamp Dwellers Soyinka satirizes the betrayal of vocation for the attraction and power in one form or another.  The Swamp Dwellers reflects the life of the people of southern Nigeria. Their vocation mainly is agro based. They weave baskets, till and cultivate land. They believe in serpent cult. They perform death rites. They offer grain, bull, goat to appease the serpent of the swamp. Traders from city come there for crocodile skins. They lure young women with money. Alu withstands their temptation. Young men go to the cities to make money, to drink bottled beer. In fact the city ruins them. The Swamp Dwellers consummate their wedding at the bed where the rivers meet. They consider the river bed itself as the perfect bridal bed. Sudden flood ruin the crops throwing life out of gear.

The White Tiger by Arvind Adiga

THE WHITE TIGER

                   -Arvind Adiga

                   Arvind Adiga is a writer and journalist raised in India and Australia. He studied English literature at Columbia College and Oxford University. Before pursuing his career as a fiction writer, Adiga worked as both a correspondent for Time Magazine and a financial journalist for the Financial Times. His experience working as a business journalist caused him to mistrust business magazines and get-rich-quick literature, informing the tone with which he describes India’s economic boom in The White Tiger.

                   The White Tiger takes place in modern day India, but Balram traces the socioeconomic inequality with which he struggles back to 1947: the year India gained its independence from Britain through the Indian Independence Act. The act made India independent, which quickly led to race riots between Muslim and Hindu Indians, and the establishment of Muslim Pakistan as a separate independent state. In the 1960s, shortly after gaining their independence, Indians abolished the Caste System, which had rigidly enforced the social role of all Indians under British Rule and for thousands of years before that. Balram believes that the disorganization and chaos following the end of the caste system has contributed to even more extreme inequality. The action of The White Tiger takes place in economically flourishing modern India. After approaching bankruptcy in 1991, the Indian government received a major loan from the International Monetary Fund and began a program of economic liberalization, resulting in a high rate of economic growth and foreign investment that continues to this day. Unfortunately, the economic boom has also drastically increased income inequality. The White Tiger tells the story of those left behind in the midst of India’s rapid economic rise.

                   The entire novel is narrated through letters by Balram Halwai to the Premier of China, who will soon be visiting India. Balram is an Indian man from an impoverished background, born in the village of Laxmangarh. Early on, he describes his basic story: he transcended his humble beginnings to become a successful entrepreneur in Bangalore, largely through the murder Mr. Ashok, who had been his employer. Balram also makes clear that because of the murder, it is likely that his own family has been massacred in retribution.

                   In Laxmangarh, Balram was raised in a large, poor family from the Halwai caste, a caste that indicates sweet-makers. The village is dominated and oppressed by the “Four Animals,” four landlords known as the Wild Boar, the Stork, the Buffalo, and the Raven. Balram's father is a struggling rickshaw driver, and his mother died when he is young. The alpha figure of his family was his pushy grandmother, Kusum.

                   Balram was initially referred to simply as “Munna,” meaning “boy," since his family had not bothered to name him. He did not have another name until his schoolteacher dubbed him Balram. The boy proved him intelligent and talented, and was praised one day as a rare “White Tiger” by a visiting school inspector. Unfortunately, Balram was removed from school after only a few years, to work in a tea shop with his brother, Kishan. There, he furthered his education by eavesdropping on the conversations of shop customers. Balram feels that there are two Indias: the impoverished “Darkness” of the rural inner continent, and the “Light” of urban coastal India. A mechanism that he dubs the “Rooster Coop” traps the Indian underclass in a perpetual state of servitude. It involves both deliberate methods used by the upper class and a mentality enforced by the underclass on itself.

                   Balram’s father died from tuberculosis in a decrepit village hospital, where no doctors were present due to abundant corruption within all the government institutions in the Darkness. After the father’s death, Kishan got married and moved with Balram to the city of Dhanbad to work. There, Balram decided to become a chauffeur, and raised money to take driving lessons from a taxi driver.

                   Once trained, Balram was hired by the Stork - whom he crossed path with coincidentally - as a chauffeur for his sons, Mushek Sir (known as the Mongoose) and Mr. Ashok. Officially, Balram was the “second driver,” driving the Maruti Suzuki, while another servant, Ram Persad, drove the more desirable Honda City.

                   As a driver in the Stork’s household, Balram lived a stable and satisfactory life. He wore a uniform and slept in a covered room which he shared with Ram Persad. When Ashok and his wife, Pinky Madam, decided to visit Laxmangarh one day, Balram drove them there, and thus had a chance to visit his family. They were proud of his accomplishments, but Kusum pressured him to get married, which angered him since that would cede what he saw as his upward mobility. He stormed out of the house and climbed to the Black Fort above the village, spitting from there down upon the view of Laxmangarh far below.

                   Balram describes at length the corrupt nature of politics in the Darkness. A politician known as the Great Socialist controls the Darkness through election fraud. The Stork’s family, involved in shady business dealings in the coal industry, must regularly bribe the Great Socialist to ensure their success.

                   As part of these political maneuverings, Ashok and Pinky Madam made plans to go to Delhi for three months. When Balram learned that only one driver would be brought with them, he spied on Ram Persad to discover that the man was secretly a Muslim who had lied about his identity to gain employment. Once his secret was out, Ram Persad left, and Balram was brought to Delhi as the driver of the Honda City.

                   Balram considers Delhi to be a crazy city, rife with traffic jams and pollution, and with illogically numbered houses and circuitous streets that are difficult to navigate. Ashok and Pinky Madam rented an apartment in Gurgaon, the most American part of the city, since Pinky Madam hated India and missed New York. Balram lived in the servant’s quarters in the basement of the building. Teased and ostracized by the other servants, he nevertheless found a mentor in a fellow driver he refers to as Vitiligo-Lips, since the pigment of the man's lips is affected by the skin condition vitiligo. To escape the teasing, Balram chose to live in a tiny, decrepit room swarming with cockroaches.

                   After a while, the Mongoose returned to Dhanbad, leaving Ashok as Balram’s sole master in Delhi. One night, a drunken Pinky Madam insisted on driving the car, and she accidentally killed a child in a hit-and-run. The next morning, the Mongoose arrived and announced that Balram would confess to the crime, and serve jail time on Pinky Madam’s behalf. Balram was terrified by the prospect of going to jail, but was relieved when the Stork arrived and casually mentioned that they had gotten out of the incident through their police connections.

                   During this time, Balram's political consciousness grows more intense, and his resentment towards the upper class more violent. Much of the novel traces his growth from a meek peasant to an inflamed individual capable of murder in pursuit of his own success.

A few days later, Pinky Madam found Balram and asked him to drive her to the airport. With this abrupt departure, she ended her marriage to Ashok. When Ashok discovered that Balram took her to the airport without informing him, he furiously attacked the driver, who defended himself by kicking Ashok in the chest.

                   Dealing with the divorce, Ashok began to live a debauched lifestyle, frequently getting drunk and going out to clubs, while Balram cared for him like a wife. Ashok rekindled a relationship with his former lover, Ms. Uma. Their relationship grew more serious, but he remained anxious about telling his family about her. Meanwhile, on his family's behalf, Ashok frequently collected large sums of money in a red bag, using it to bribe government ministers.

                   Balram’s family sent a young male relative, Dharam, for Balram to care for. Dharam is a sweet and obedient companion. One day, Balram took Dharam to the zoo, where Balram observed a white tiger in a cage.

                   Finally deciding to break free of the Rooster Coop, Balram fashioned a weapon from a broken whiskey bottle, and lured Ashok from the car. He rammed the bottle into Ashok’s skull, and then stabbed him in the neck, killing him. He stole the red bag, filled with 700,000 rupees, and escaped with Dharam to Bangalore. In revenge for his actions, the Stork’s family likely murdered all of Balram’s family, though Balram remains unsure of their exact fate. Nevertheless, he chose to commit the murder knowing this was a likely outcome.

                   In Bangalore, Balram found great success. He launched a taxi service for call center workers, which he calls White Tiger Technology Drivers. By bribing the police, Balram was able to gain influence and make his business successful. Demonstrating how far he has come, he is able to cover up a fatal accident through his connection to the authorities. He considers himself to be a quintessential entrepreneurial success story that represents the future of India, and presents himself as such to the Premier.

Waiting for Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee

WAITING FOR BARBARIANS

                             -J.M. Coetzee

                   Waiting for the Barbarians is a novel by the South African-born Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee. First published in 1980, it was chosen by Penguin for its series Great Books of the 20th Century and won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for fiction. American composer Philip Glass has also written an opera of the same name based on the book which premiered in September 2005 in Erfurt, Germany.

                   The story is narrated in the first person by the unnamed magistrate of a small colonial town that exists as the territorial frontier of "the Empire". The Magistrate's rather peaceful existence comes to an end with the Empire's declaration of a state of emergency and with the deployment of the Third Bureau—special forces of the Empire—due to rumors that the area's indigenous people, called "barbarians" by the colonists, might be preparing to attack the town. Consequently, the Third Bureau conducts an expedition into the land beyond the frontier. Led by a sinister Colonel Jolly, the Third Bureau captures a number of barbarians, brings them back to town, tortures them, kills some of them, and leaves for the capital in order to prepare a larger campaign.

                   In the meantime, the Magistrate begins to question the legitimacy of imperialism and personally nurses a barbarian girl who was left crippled and partly blinded by the Third Bureau's torturers. The Magistrate has an intimate yet uncertain relationship with the girl. Eventually, he decides to take her back to her people. After a life-threatening trip through the barren land, during which they have sex, he succeeds in returning her—finally asking, to no avail, if she will stay with him—and returns to his own town. The Third Bureau soldiers have reappeared there and now arrest the Magistrate for having deserted his post and consorting with "the enemy". Without much possibility of a trial during such emergency circumstances, the Magistrate remains in a locked cellar for an indefinite period, experiencing for the first time a near-complete lack of basic freedoms. He finally acquires a key that allows him to leave the makeshift jail, but finds that he has no place to escape to and only spends his time outside the jail scavenging for scraps of food.

                   Later, Colonel Jolly triumphantly returns from the wilderness with several barbarian captives and makes a public spectacle of their torture. Although the crowd is encouraged to participate in their beatings, the Magistrate bursts onto the scene to stop it, but is subdued. Taking the Magistrate, a group of soldiers hangs him up by his arms, culminating his understanding of imperialistic violence in a personal experience of torture. With the Magistrate's spirit clearly crushed, the soldiers mockingly let him roam freely through the town, knowing he has nowhere to go and no longer poses a threat to their mission. The soldiers, however, begin to flee the town as winter approaches and their campaign against the barbarians collapses. The Magistrate tries to confront Jolly on his final return from the wild, but the colonel refuses to speak to him, hastily abandoning the town with the last of the soldiers. The predominating belief in the town is that the barbarians intend to invade soon, and although the soldiers and many civilians have now departed, the Magistrate helps encourage the remaining townspeople to continue their lives and to prepare for the winter. There is no sign of the barbarians by the time the season's first snow falls on the town.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

THINGS FALL APART

                   -Chinua Achebe

                    Published in 1958, Things Fall Apart is one of the masterpieces of 20th century African fiction.

Things Fall Apart is set in the 1890s, during the coming of the white man to Nigeria. In part, the novel is a response and antidote to a large tradition of European literature in which Africans are depicted as primitive and mindless savages. The attitudes present in colonial literature are so ingrained into our perception of Africa that the District Commissioner, who appears at the end of the novel, strikes a chord of familiarity with most readers. He is arrogant, dismissive of African "savages," and totally ignorant of the complexity and richness of Igbo life. Yet his attitude echoes so much of the depiction of Africa; this attitude, following Achebe's depiction of the Igbo, seems hollow and savage.

                   Digression is one of Achebe's most important tools. Although the novel's central story is the tragedy of Okonkwo, Achebe takes any opportunity he can to digress and relate anecdotes and tertiary incidents. The novel is part documentary, but the liveliness of Achebe's narrative protects the book from reading like an anthropology text. We are allowed to see the Igbo through their own eyes, as they celebrate the various rituals and holidays that mark important moments in the year and in the people's live.

                   Achebe depicts the Igbo as a people with great social institutions. Their culture is rich and impressively civilized, with traditions and laws that place great emphasis on justice and fairness. The people are ruled not by a king or chief but by a kind of simple democracy, in which all males gather and make decisions by consensus. Ironically, it is the Europeans, who often boast of bringing democratic institutions to the rest of the world, who try to suppress these clan meetings in Umuofia. The Igbo also boast a high degree of social mobility. Men are not judged by the wealth of their fathers, and Achebe emphasizes that high rank is attainable for all freeborn Igbo.

                   He does not shy from depicting the injustices of Igbo society. No more or less than Victorian England of the same era, the Igbo are deeply patriarchal. They also have a great fear of twins, who are abandoned immediately after birth to a death by exposure. Violence is not unknown to them, although warfare on a European scale is something of which they have no comprehension.

                   The novel attempts to repair some of the damage done by earlier European depictions of Africans. But this recuperation must necessarily come in the form of memory; by the time Achebe was born, the coming of the white man had already destroyed many aspects of indigenous culture.