Fictional literature enables readers to gain new insights on the world through transportation into alternate places and times, an example of this is in the two texts A Fine Balance (1996) by Rohinton Minstry and The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck where the idea that adverse experiences can impact an individual’s beliefs is explored through the different ways that the composers of both texts convey how living in a hostile environment and loss can change an individual’s personal philosophy.
Throughout the two texts it is apparent that a hostile and oppressive society exists and through the use of various techniques, the authors reveal how living within a hostile environment can shape and develop one’s personal beliefs. In The Grapes …show more content…
Minstry utilises the mid-1970s State of Emergency in India as a contextual backdrop for the text to create a hostile environment in terms of violence and social stratification, similar to the The Grapes of Wrath where there was an evident social division between the rich and poor. Living under the Emergency’s tyranny, many were determined to fight their oppressors, in Om’s case it was the upper-caste system, whose parents were tortured and killed for entertaining ideas above their station as chamar by the village brahmin, Thakur, “Their screams were heard through the village… their lips and tongues melted away. The still, silent bodies were taken down from the tree. When they began to stir, the ropes were transferred from their ankles to their necks, and the three men were hanged. The bodies were displayed in the village square” (A Fine Balance, p. 178-179) the unadorned prose magnifies this lucid depiction of cruelty, in contrast to Steinbeck’s writing which is more descriptive as well as less brutal, and what happens to an individual when they try to resist the rigidly enforced set of social strata. Om is a refugee from caste and communal violence and from the institutional violence of Indira Gandhi 's emergency rule, whose life is filled with unending misfortune and his defiant paan-spit at Thakur who killed his parents costs him his manhood and ultimately forced him into beggary. Through the adversity he faces as a result of his oppressors, Om ultimately learns the wisdom of compromising and accepting the benefits of complicity instead of resisting his oppressors, “the secret of survival is to embrace change, and to adapt… You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair” (A Fine Balance, p. 231) stated by the lawyer who is a symbol of Minstry’s own philosophy, and reveals to Om that one can only find
Throughout the two texts it is apparent that a hostile and oppressive society exists and through the use of various techniques, the authors reveal how living within a hostile environment can shape and develop one’s personal beliefs. In The Grapes …show more content…
Minstry utilises the mid-1970s State of Emergency in India as a contextual backdrop for the text to create a hostile environment in terms of violence and social stratification, similar to the The Grapes of Wrath where there was an evident social division between the rich and poor. Living under the Emergency’s tyranny, many were determined to fight their oppressors, in Om’s case it was the upper-caste system, whose parents were tortured and killed for entertaining ideas above their station as chamar by the village brahmin, Thakur, “Their screams were heard through the village… their lips and tongues melted away. The still, silent bodies were taken down from the tree. When they began to stir, the ropes were transferred from their ankles to their necks, and the three men were hanged. The bodies were displayed in the village square” (A Fine Balance, p. 178-179) the unadorned prose magnifies this lucid depiction of cruelty, in contrast to Steinbeck’s writing which is more descriptive as well as less brutal, and what happens to an individual when they try to resist the rigidly enforced set of social strata. Om is a refugee from caste and communal violence and from the institutional violence of Indira Gandhi 's emergency rule, whose life is filled with unending misfortune and his defiant paan-spit at Thakur who killed his parents costs him his manhood and ultimately forced him into beggary. Through the adversity he faces as a result of his oppressors, Om ultimately learns the wisdom of compromising and accepting the benefits of complicity instead of resisting his oppressors, “the secret of survival is to embrace change, and to adapt… You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair” (A Fine Balance, p. 231) stated by the lawyer who is a symbol of Minstry’s own philosophy, and reveals to Om that one can only find