The Other Family: An Outsider

Response paragraph Based on the theme of The other family, outsider is a well-suited postcolonial term that relatsto the story content. First and foremost, at the beginning of the plot, the author creates a solitary atmosphere describing her feeling as outsider. “How small and insubstantial she seemed, and how alone,” “ It felt unreal. So different was this childhood from her own, so far from the sun, the trees and the peopled streets of her own country” (Bannerji 141). These quotations demonstrate that the mother feels a sense of being outside while she is looking at her only girl walking alone towards the house. The mother has immigrated to Canada with her daughter for unknown reasons. Because of her decision, her daughter has to move to another strange cultural environment far away from her …show more content…
From this character’s internal perspective description, it shows that the mother and daughter go through a hardship of experiencing geographical differences.The mother repeats “own” more than three times when she is thinking, in this case, the mother believes that they are the outsiders of Canadian society. Furthermore, after the little girl shows her artwork to her mother, the notion associated with outsider has been introduced. That is by depicting ideological conflict of “I”, the mother.
“ Said the mother, ‘ this is not your family, I, you and you and your father are dark- skinned , dark haired’” (Bannerji 142), “ Someday this child would be shame of her, she thought, someday would move out into the world of those others” (Bannerji 143). This young girl’s painting proves that she has accepted the truth that she has a number of differences from the majority children. In fact, the ‘ family’ that she has drawn is not her real Indian family. However, because of the impact from outside, she tries to refuse her original identity. The girl even is ashamed of her parents and family. In this case, it is more likely that