Untouchable FRQ

In many novels, socioeconomic status affects the character development as characters decide whether they will try to change their ranking or come to acceptance. Social classes can not only affect the protagonists perception of his or herself, but also the treatment he or she receives from society over the course of the novel. Explain how Bakha's socioeconomic status altered his views of Indian society as a result of Indian society's treatment of him.

Bakha's Shift

While Bakha from the vey start of the book is critical of the caste system and the rigid roles it categorized life into, he still falls into the mannerisms of the untouchables. When he accidentally brushes into an upperclass citizen on the street, an act of physical contact that is forbidden, he automatically accepts the berating words of the man, cruel words that should not be exchanged between two humans for an act as small as an accidental bump. "He was about to apologise. He had already joined his hands instinctively" (47) describes just how trained Bakha and his fellow outcastes had become to accept their place in the hierarchy. However, once he is slapped in the face by the Lalla who he accidentally brushed against, something powerful awakens in Bakha giving him the strength and courage to develop a rage in the place of submission. "The strength, the power of his giant body glistened with the desire for revenge in his eyes, while horror, rage, indignation swept over his frame" (50) offers a description of change gripping Bakha from the inside out, allowing for his eyes to open to the unjustifiable indignities he has been subjected to all his life for a reason he cannot control. Instead of suffering silently, never questioning a better life, he now has the fire within him to take action to break free. As a side note, it is interesting that the concept of revenge is brought up. Perhaps before Bakha would have relied solely of the Hindu belief of karma to carry out revenge for him.

The Role of Anglophilia for Bakha

From the very start of Untouchable, Bakha is introduced as an "anglophile," through his deep interest in the English way of life, or at least his perception of English life. "The leather-worker's son, who oiled his hair profusely, and parted it like the Englishmen on one side, wore a pair of shorts at hockey and smoked cigarettes like them" (10) introduces Bakha. The use of "like the Englishmen" and "like them" is interesting as the narrator draws a deep distinction between the Untouchables and the Englishmen, a distinction that Bakha seems determined to overcome, despite the clear difficulty. He sacrifices his own comfort to use more English products, in his mind elevated himself from his class and towards the sahibs. However, spending his little money on English clothes and enduring sleepless nights shivering from refusal to use the warm Indian quilt over the thin English blanket, does not bring Bakha any closer to actually moving up in the social class system. Perhaps as a child of modern India, Bakha has new ideas on how to break the caste system and escape his "non-congenial" life through acquiring a full English suit. However, the English clothes are also tied to a fantasy that offer Bakha a mental escape, if not an actual escape. Remaining crisply dressed while doing the lowest jobs of the untouchables, like sweeping the latrines allows Bakha to believe he is different and above those who he is technically equal with in the eyes of the upperclass. Buttoning his shirt each morning and carrying himself as he perceives an Englishman would, he allows himself to take pride in his work, imagining that it is work worthy of the way he is dressed.

The Psychology of Story Telling

"The imaginative application of the paradigmatic mode leads to good theory, tight analysis, logical proof, sound argument, and empirical discovery guided by reasoned hypothesis. But paradigmatic “imagination” (or intuition) is not the same as the imagination of the novelist or poet. Rather, it is the ability to see possible formal connections before one is able to prove them in any formal way."

-Jerome Bruner

     This quote from the article The Psychology of Story Telling stuck out to me in how it applies the class of AP Literature and Composition. In class we read works of fiction written by a novelist or poet in an imaginative state and as a class we enter an imaginative state through creatively pulling out literary devices. Creating a hypothesis then supporting this hypothesis with a carefully reasoned argument filled with quotes and analysis is imaginative. It takes a strong imagination to read through a work and be able to pull out a distinct interpretation, seeing elements of the piece others might overlook. There is an element of imagination involved with visually the piece and finding the author's purpose. However, the imagination of the author in writing the literary work is a different imagination that the type exercised in AP Literature class. The author also has a vision and a purpose unique to him or her, but imagining a story and creating a setting and plot out of the blank white of a page is its own form of imagination. The author's imagination is the ingenuity of developing complex characters and using language to present a vision otherwise untranslatable. The reader's imagination is the ability to pick up on the subtle flecks of tone and metaphoric language that give the piece life. Furthermore, it is even possible for the reader to uncover themes that the author did not know were there.

C.S. Lewis: Response

I recently read the Brain Pickings article which quoted the writer C.S. Lewis in his explanation of why we, humans, read. One take away I had from reading his quotes is his idea that reading  and gaining ideas that are not one's own does not change one's self, but rather improves and increases that self. "The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison," Lewis says of those who do not read. Reading literature not only enhances knowledge, but improves one's own internal being. Taking other's stories and ideas and learning from them does not make one less oneself, but rather allows that person to break free of the prison of being ignorant and one dimensional. "Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do," Lewis comments of his life post literary experience. Allowing the stories of other people, other cultures, and other time period to impact one's mind only makes that mind more unique and true to the individual. How I perceive what Lewis is stating is that because one is allowing outside ideas to enter his or her brain, he or she can then process and form opinions on the literary works, opinions unique to the individual. Reading a novel does not mean that the reader will agree and conform to every point made by the author, in turn becoming the author, but that the reader will run the text through his or her individual brain and take away the points that interest, challenge, or support his or her preconceived sense of self.