Passages
Page 31: "Once I had had no
secrets from my employer; it was so much simpler not to have secrets. But some
instinct told me now it would be better not to let him know about the green
suit or the few dollars I had, just as instinct had already told me I should
keep my own growing knowledge of English to myself." We started off this
chapter with a pronouncement that Santosh felt himself a prisoner, and I had
laughed off the idea. Somehow, this small section where he's concerned about his
employer, where he suddenly sees himself growing into a person and how that
would make his employer unhappy, is enough on its own to turn my view of this
section so that I suddenly can see him as a prisoner. It's most especially
effective, and worthy of comment, because of the fact that prison is not
mentioned in this section at all.
Page 42: "It was worse than
being in the apartment, because now the responsibility was mine and mine alone.
I had decided to be free, to act for myself. It pained me to think of the exhilaration
I had felt during the days of the fire; and I felt mocked when I remembered
that in the early days of my escape I had thought I was in charge of
myself." Such a cool twist, even if possibly a little bit expected; I'm
most impressed with how quickly we get to this point. He's decided to be free
only a few pages prior, and already he's losing that freedom and imprisoning himself
once again.
Page 86: "A laborer's face.
But the sadness of the sleeping face hit me, and the smallness of the room, and
the concrete wall outside the window, and that yard where no sun fall. And I wonder
what it is leading to, what will happen to him and me, whether he will ever
take that ship back and get off one bright morning and take a taxi to the
junction and drive through places he
know." One thing that Naipaul is amazing at is taking landscape he's
already described, that he's already created a certain expectation and emotion
from, and turning it so that a new emotion is pulled out of that setting and
somehow feels like the only emotion that could ever have existed therein. Love
it.
Page 98: "And now my brother
come to me. He is going away with his wife, for good. He hold me by the hand,
he look at me, tears come in his eyes, and he say, "I love you." It
is true, it is like the time he cry and say he didn't have confidence. I know
that he love me, that now it is true, but that it will be true as soon as he go
out of this room, that he will have to forget me." This is so fricking
good I'm not even sure what I love about it. It just hits all the right notes,
after so much despair and misery and with so much despair and misery coming,
and this one almost pleasant moment can't even escape without tinges of
despair, and yet I have no idea if this moment is good for the narrator or not,
I only know that the narrator has expended his life to get his brother to this
point, and it's not what he wanted or intended by it's where his brother got
to, and so it has to be enough. So much silent perfection throughout this
entire story.
Page 135: "You stop. He is
my friend," and "You turn right." There's almost no way to read
this and not immediately get a clear Disgrace
vibe here. We're supposed to, of course, and so maybe I'm falling into a
clear chasm of stereotype or some such, but what fascinates me is how quickly
I'm terrified for these characters, and it comes out of nowhere, with so little
said and seen.
Page 154: "He couldn't say
he was sorry because they were in the car together and because he had confessed
to her and because she would now always have some idea of him as he truly
was."
Page 160: "He got me my job
here, and I suppose he showed me how to look at the country. But he wanted me to
keep on being helpless. He wanted to remain my go-between. He kept on saying
that I didn't understand Africans and he would handle them for me. He didn't
like it when I started to find my own feet and get around. Such a naïve man,
really. He wanted me to remain his property. He went insane when he discovered I
didn't object to physical contact with Africans." It's really amazing how
perfectly these characters fit within each other (characters from different
chapters) without having any connection between them at all. This so carefully
and closely mirrors the writing about Santosh from the earlier chapter. So
gorgeously done.
Techniques
Interesting to note that the "Prologue,
From a Journal" and "One Out of Many," while different characters
speaking, are not written in a tremendously disparate style, and moreover are
both utilizing first-person.
Page 15: "I am now an American
citizen and I live in Washington, capital of the world. Many people, both here
and in India, will feel that I have done well. But." From here, this
chapter floats back to how Santosh entered the United States -- although it's
written in past tense, it's a close past, so that we feel the emotions of
Santosh as he comes to America and is surprised by everything, rather than his
interpretation of how he feels in the present tense. Indeed, the present almost
melts away, and we're completely invested in Santosh's embarrassment of the
past moment, although we started in a present.
Page 54: "And my heart drop
and my stomach feel small." First time we've seen English clearly misused.
Immediately sets us up for a completely different kind of voice than we'd experienced
previously.
The interchangeable I and You in
"Tell Me Who To Kill." Not entirely sure what to do with it, but it
certainly gives the impression of someone struggling with a language that might
not be their first.
Page 99: "In this country in
Africa there was a president and there was also a king." Immediately set
into more of a fairy-tale storytelling mode. Also, the lack of a comma before
the "and" seems different from what our other narrators would have
done, thus immediately setting us into a new style from the first words.
Pages 120-130ish: Love how the
dialogue repeats when Carter appears. There's so little to say, and it's
already been said, and none of these people know each other well enough to say anything
that has any meat to it. I can imagine these conversations circling around
forever.
Words
Ague: a fit or fever
Stories/lines/ideas
to steal/attempt
Page 14: "But he was of less
interest than he thought…That passion was over."
Page 21: "Below that
imitation sky I felt like a prisoner."
Page 28: "So to some extent Americans
have remained to me, as people not quite real, as people temporarily absent
from television."
Page 37: "…as though my
admiration was increasing his worry…"
Page 57: "…some ordinary
year…"
Page 70: "…and he is getting
a nice little accent, so that sometimes he sound like a woman, the way educated
people sound."
Page 80: "I know it is too
much, but for me that is part of the pleasure."
Page 106: "That evening he
had broken all his rules; the evening had shown how right his rules were."
Page 120: "It's like being in
an earthquake. It's the one thing that really makes me hysterical. That and
earthquakes."
Page 150: "You make it sound
like childbirth."/"Women can believe anything."
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