Funny boy shyam selvadurai themes. Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai Plot Summary 2022-10-23
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Funny Boy, by Shyam Selvadurai, is a coming-of-age novel that explores themes of identity, sexuality, and cultural expectations. Set in Sri Lanka during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the novel follows the life of Arjie, a young Tamil boy who is struggling to understand and accept his own homosexuality in a society that is deeply conservative and homophobic.
One of the central themes in Funny Boy is the complexity of identity. Arjie is torn between his desire to fit in with his peers and his family's expectations for him, and his own sense of self. As he grows older, he becomes increasingly aware of his attraction to other boys, which conflicts with the traditional gender roles and sexual norms of his culture. This internal conflict is further complicated by the political turmoil in Sri Lanka, as the country is torn apart by civil war and ethnic tensions between the Tamil and Sinhalese communities.
Another major theme in Funny Boy is the power of love and acceptance. Despite the hostility and discrimination that Arjie faces because of his sexual orientation, he is fortunate to have a supportive family and a group of friends who accept him for who he is. Through their love and acceptance, Arjie is able to find the strength and courage to embrace his true identity and live his life authentically.
A third theme in Funny Boy is the importance of storytelling and the power of words. Throughout the novel, Arjie's grandmother tells him traditional Tamil stories, which serve as a way to connect with his cultural heritage and to understand the world around him. In turn, Arjie becomes a storyteller himself, using his writing to explore and express his own feelings and experiences. Through his writing, Arjie is able to find a sense of purpose and belonging, and to connect with others who share similar struggles and experiences.
In conclusion, Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai is a poignant and thought-provoking novel that explores themes of identity, sexuality, and cultural expectations. Through the story of Arjie, the novel illustrates the importance of love and acceptance, and the power of storytelling as a means of self-expression and connection with others.
Funny Boy Study Guide
They have to put this plan into action that same night, when a mob comes and burns down their house; Arjie is horrified and traumatized, unable to process the gravity of losing his home. His investigation into the cause of their strange and secretive relationship leads him to discover the racial tensions in Sri Lanka plaguing society. Ammachi blames him for the conflict and he lashes out before running down to the beach to cry. The Tamil Tigers demanded their own state because they felt Tamils were being made sub-citizens, while being Sri Lankan increasingly came to mean being Sinhalese. As Arjie¡¯s father said in chapter four: ¡°These days, every Tamil is a Tiger until proven otherwise¡± 178.
At the spend-the-days at his grandparents' house, Arjie conducts the game of "bride-bride," where he and all the girl cousins create an elaborate pretend wedding in which Arjie stars as bride. And yet Selvadurai presents this ethnic conflict from the perspective of a boy who scarcely cares about ethnicity. In the novel, Arjie comes to understand that he is homosexual, and endures bigotry and intolerance regarding his homosexuality. We all stared at him, angry and hurt that he would really believe this. She noticed that I was studying her, and she smiled. As Arjie¡¯s father explained to Arjie: ¡°The Sinhalese wanted to make Sinhala the only national language, and the Tamils did not like this. Arjie also befriends and develops an attraction to the jovial, carefree Shehan Soyza, who shows him around and defends him from Salgado.
Daryl Uncle, a Burgher journalist, came back from Australia to investigate the torture of Tamils, by the Sinhala police. These coming-of-age stories lead inexorably toward what was also a defining historical moment in the life of the author: the 1983 explosion of simmering tensions between Sinhala and Tamil ethnic cultures into full-blown violent rioting, which came to be known as Black July. It goes on, whatever decisions you make. While he can envision a better kind of nation, then, Arjie does not necessarily expect it to be possible. I looked around at my family and I saw that I had committed a terrible crime against them, against the trust and love they had given me. For example, in the novel, the protagonist Arjie is caught between the way he looks and responds to life and the way society looks and responds to life. The role of bride is given to the person who plays it best, namely Arjie, instead of a girl cousin.
For how could loving Shehan be bad? However, Ammachi refused to accept him because Ammachi¡¯s father was killed by Sinhalese in the fifties. After that incident, Arjie and Jegan change the park they run at. The trick is not to make yourself conspicuous. . This event along with the hate note, gives insight into how Arjie's father deals with being a Tamil in the corporate sphere, that an attitude of being cautious is needed to succeed. The father explains that he lost touch with his friend when his friend became an Orientalist scholar and he became a banker. The next day the referendum is held but thugs stuff the ballot boxes and rig the results.
Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and Violence Theme in Funny Boy
Forced to choose between his loyalty to Jegan and his business, Appa reluctantly fires Jegan, who leaves without even properly saying goodbye. Homosexuality involves romantic and sexual attraction between individuals of the same sex. As Arjie grows older, his eyes open to things that would have previously gone over his head, such as civil strife and culturally appropriate gender roles. Arjie, as a child, has a predilection for spending all of his time with his female cousins where he plays wedding and dresses up like a bride. The practice of being inconspicuous in everyday dealings shows the reader that being a minority is to make decisions one does not want but instead must make based on the need to move in a Sinhalese majority. Once they return from the hotel, Jegan leaves while the kids are at school without saying goodbye. This concept is a precursor of his later recognition of his homosexuality, but in the innocent, simplified terms of a child.
This chapter marks the third instance of Arjie finding acceptance from an adult outside his immediate family. Our daily routine had been cast away, while the rest of the world was going on as usual. As Arjie thought, ¡°It was so clear now that I was surprised I had not seen it before, that I had not understood the moment I saw Radha Aunty with that bloody bandage around her head that her relationship with Anil was over¡± 94. Radha Aunty's appearance marks another rift between the innocence of childhood and the realities of life. I was aware that it was a significant thing, a momentous event in my life even, but, like a newspaper report on an earthquake or a volcanic eruption, it seemed something that happened outside my reality, my world. A similar insistence from Amma that "boys must play with other boys" shows the opposition between reality and the idealism of "bride-bride" 20. As the story continues, events unfold highlighting the aggressions both large and small against Arjie's family.
From his earliest days, Arjie fails to meet his family's expectations of… While Funny Boy's most important love story is undeniably about Arjie discovering his sexuality and meeting Shehan, the vast majority of the book follows other relationships, in all of which people fall in love across, despite, and even because of the social boundaries that separate them. She plans to marry Rajan, a family friend she met while abroad, and the seven-year-old Arjie is thrilled at the prospect of his bride-bride fantasies becoming a reality. Jegan reveals to the rest of the family that he used to be a part of the Tigers but not anymore. In Funny Boy, Selvadurai shows both how real people are far more complex than ethnicity and also how they are nevertheless reduced to it by political forces. Shehan and Arjie also start spending time together outside school, although Diggy warns Arjie that Shehan is known for having sex with other boys.
This section contains 1,851 words approx. The beliefs of society had often led to hopelessness and certainty not only for Arjie but also for other characters. He agrees to meet the boy but only after he quizzes him to determine he has no history with the Tigers. In doing so, he points to the insolubility of ethnic conflict over national identity: people will never be as one-dimensional or cut-and-dry as nationalists and racists want them to be, and so nationalism and racism, beyond perpetrating horrible violence, cannot achieve the kinds of societies they want to begin with. However, the idea of a mixed ethnic marriage being a betrayal of one's family is seen through the eyes of a family friend, Aunty Doris 78-79. I glanced at Amma and imagined what her reaction would have been had she discovered us, the profound expression of hurt that would have come over her face.
Many strange issues confronted the country — looking after the newly acquired land, rehabilitation of the refugees, decline in political and human values, assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, rise of religionalism and the linguistic problems threatened and challenged the national unity and integrity. The rest of the family gets a visitor: Daryl Uncle, a white Burgher man who grew up in Sri Lanka but has been living in Australia for the last 15 years. At lunch, Appa clearly dislikes Shehan, and afterward Arjie begins to feel intensely guilty and blame Shehan for corrupting him, but he dreams about Shehan that night and worries as Shehan continues to receive punishments from Black Tie. Amma explains that the government is trying to extend their term through a shoddy referendum instead of a proper election. I thought of the number of times he had abandoned his promise, how he had left Jegan in jail overnight, how he had taken the side of the office peon against him, and I wondered if he had actually had a choice in any of these matters. Even before Abraham, there had been conflict, so it is as old as human history down to the Abrahamic period, to ancient kingdoms, Dukes, and Kings.
Appa shares that a local elite, Banduratne Mudalali, is very anti-Tamil and his people have done horrible things like beating and lighting Tamil families on fire. Shyam Selvadurai's second novel Funny Boy details the ethnic tensions and conflicts between the Sinhalese and the minority, Tamils. When Arjie first hears of her return to Sri Lanka and her engagement, his imagination works to produce a mental image of his aunt as someone "separated from everyday people, because she inhabited the realm of romance and marriage" 45. Just before the family leaves for Canada, Arjie meets Shehan for the last time, only to discover that they have already withdrawn emotionally from one another. But when Ammachi hears about this, she is furious: after her father was murdered by a Sinhalese mob during race riots in the 1950s, Ammachi began hating the Sinhalese and supporting the Tamil Tigers, a separatist militant organization.
