For each reading assignment, one team will be responsible for posting 4 things:
1. Two vocabulary words and definitions
2. One link that illuminates some aspect of the story that we don't all know about (specific aspects of the setting; political movements; religious references)
3. Two really great quotations from the reading.
4. Two interpretive questions that the reading leaves you with.
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4.(two questions)
What is the significance of the two recurring symbols in this story so far: blood (mentioned top of page 14, twice on page 15, pulse on page 20, stabbing on page 21)and eyes (page 5, 7, 9, blindness on page 13, 3 times on page 20, 21)?
Why did Estha get "Returned" to his father? What happened?
GST, page 10-21
I know this is a page before tonight's reading, but since we were all curious...
"He said... that the Kottayam Police didn't take statements from veshyas or their illegitimate children" (9).
And for today...
"[Estha] walked past the village school that his great-grandfather had built for Untouchable children" (14).
I know I already posted a link, but here's another that I thought would help better understand the reading:
"[Comrade Pillai] dismissed the whole business as the Inevitable Consequence of Necessary Politics. The old omelette-and-eggs thing. But then, Comrade K. N. M. Pillai was essentially a political man. A professional omeletteer" (15).
This is in reference to a famous quotation of Josef Stalin, regarding the famine genocide in Ukraine . (In the article, skip to Footnote 5)
Two Vocab Words (GST, 10-21) ~
- harbinger (17) - (noun) a person or thing that announces or signals the approach of another
- obeisance (20) - (noun) deferential [humble/submissive] respect
10-21
(two quotations)
I found this first quote strangely funny because since when is blood attractive?
(talking about the soft porn magazines)
"They spun lazily in the warm breeze, tempting honest ration-buyers with glimpses of ripe, naked women lying in pools of fake blood.
I really liked this line because it describes how I feel sometimes when I don't feel like talking.
"As though he had simply run out of conversation and had nothing left to say. Yet Estha's silence was never akward. Never intrusive. Never noisy."
Interpretive Questions (the first one is really long):
1. In the book, women are portrayed as a dependence on the family, as they have arranged marriages and require a dowry. On pg. 18, the quote: "... as though [Rahel] didn't know how to be a girl" described neglect and rejection in Rahel's childhood, and later said to have been the causes for her independence; Rahel seem to defy that model. In contrast, Estha, "much to the initial embarrassment of his father and stepmother ... began to do the housework" (12), instead of going to college. Is there any significance in this switch of stereotypical gender roles between the twins?
2. "In the country that [Rahel] came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening." (20) What do you think "the horror of peace" is, in terms of "the terror of war"?
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