Compare the Ways the Immigration Process Dehumanises People in Both ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ and ‘The Inheritance of Loss’

Both of these texts show how the immigration process can be a dehumanising experience but ‘The Inheritance of Loss’ does so in a more complex way and although they were both published during the same time period, they are both set in different ones. They both show how the process of immigration can be dehumanising to different people from different countries, and in different contexts of time.

‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ is told through the dramatic dialogue of the protagonist Changez to an implied American listener. The author uses both of these characters to represent a conversation which he has with himself in order to understand his emotions and opinions about the events of 9/11, around which the events of the novel takes place. Hamid uses the character of Changez to represent how the process of immigration became dehumanising after 9/11 as many of his Muslim friends ‘began to be questioned and harassed’, which he said in his article ‘My Reluctant Fundamentalist’.

One of the ways in which Changez is dehumanised is how when he is returning from his business trip back to America when he is ‘escorted by armed guards’ and is stripped searched but the fact that his choice in boxer shorts ‘had no impact on the severe expressions’ of his inspectors. This shows how Changez is dehumanised because instead of the guards seeing him as a human being and treating him as such they see him as a potential threat, represented by their lack of humour and personality. Dehumanisation through a lack of humanity and personality is also shown in ‘The Inheritance of Loss’, as they are told where to go by an ‘invisible loudspeaker’, which has connotations of detachment and lack of emotion, showing how they are being deprived of compassion from the people who are supposed to be helping them.

Another way in which Changez is dehumanised is by being asked ‘what is the purpose of your trip to the United States?’ is a clinical and detached tone and through the woman’s lack of interest when he says ‘I live here’. This again represents a refusal to show him compassion. The blunt, impersonal question is also similar to the questions on the visa form that Biju has fill out in order to be able to go to America, which are detaches them from and makes their personal life irrelevant, which would be a dehumanising experience because it is people’s personality that makes them who they are and human.

Hamid then depicts Changez sitting on a ‘metal bench next to a tattooed man in handcuffs’. The handcuffs having connotations of criminality and the metal bench having connotations having connotations of  sterility and a lack of humanity, also show how the process of immigration is dehumanising Changez because of the fact that he is being seen again as a potential threat before being seen as a human.

In ‘The Inheritance of Loss’ Biju shows the Darwinian ideal of ‘bigger pusher, first place’, representing how their desperation to get to America has dehumanised them and caused them to regress into an animalistic mindset to try to have the advantage over potential competition and to put yourself first before others. This is dehumanising because the people who were previously filling out their forms together are now trying to compete with each other. Changez is also dehumanised in a similar way he says ‘my team did not wait for me’ after he had been inspected, which would have been a very isolating experience, but his team till put themselves before Changez.

In conclusion, ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ and ‘The Inheritance of Loss’ both show how the immigration process dehumanises people through both the main characters being subjected to isolating experiences as well as not being shown compassion from the people who were supposed to help them throughout their experience. This is also shown through imagery such as the lack of humanity in the ‘metal bench’ and the ‘invisible loudspeaker’.

John McRae Notes

Scene One

• It was written less than a hundred years after the civil war
• The timing is through a 'long, hot summer'
• A lot of the scnes take place in the dark of the night
• The integration of New Orleans is more advanced at this time than any other place in the United States
• The soundtrack is the 'emotional undercurrent of music, voices, characters'
• It sets up atmosphere before the main characters are introduced
• Blanche's description is one that makes us think of a moth to a flame
• Blanche is trying to make herself at home in this society throughout the play even though she is a complete outsider
• 'We own this plae' but Blanche owns nothing anymore
• Blanche is from Mississippi which is seen as more old fashioned than New Orleans.
• Even though Blanche pretends not to drink, the audience knows that she is an alcoholic
• 'Funerals are pretty, compared to death'- funerals are made to try and make death seem more pretty
• Stanley Kowlaski is the new man in modern America and is the alpha male
• All of Stanley's possessions symbolise the new culture of America which is one of capitalism

Scene Two

• There is a pick up of speed in the second scene
• The paper work represents the dead hand of the past catching up with the future and the future is represnted by Stella's baby
• Blanche is childless in a 'end of the line' way
• Blanche is the product of her history
• She latches onto the doctor and the nurse because they represent another chance at the future
• 'I was flirting with your husband!'- it's the only thing she knows to do and she thinks that's what men want

Scene Three

• Steve's joke is about sex and it shows how it is a priority for them over food
• The first conversation between Mitch and Blanche is one about physical need
• 'Gallantry' - old fashioned, echoes the old-south

Catharsis

Tragedy- Int its pure form a character from high social position (king) falls due to their fatal flaw. The end result should be dead.
The release of these emotions is called catharsis.

Key Quotes in 'Streetcar'

Key Quotes in 'A Streetcar Named Desire'

Blanche

'Whoever you are -  I have always depended on the kindness of strangers'
'I want to be near you, got to be with somebody, I can't be alone'
'Stella, you have a maid, don't you?'
'You have to watch around the hips a little'

Stanley

'Stanley carries his bowling jacket and a red-stained package from the butchers'
'[He sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifications, crude images flashes into his mind and determining the way he smiles at them]'

Stella

'But of course there were things to adjust myself to later on'
'[dutifully]: They haven't slipped one particle'
'[She laughs but her glance at Blanche is a little anxious]

 

Notes on Context of 'A Streetcar Named Desire'

Notes on Context of 'A Streetcar Named Desire'

Southern Belle

The southern belle is based on the young, unmarried, upper-class women of Southern society. They were expected to find suitable husbands, raise families and retain the social status of the family by socialising. The character of a southern belle represents the expectations of southern women to be dedicated to community and family and to have a 'flirtatious yet chaste demeanour.

New Orleans and Immigration

In the 1940s there were more immigrants than ever in New Orleans and although people tended to gravitiate towards people of their own ethnicity, New Orleans remained very intermixed and multicultural.

Tennessee Williams' Other Plays

The Glass Managerie was the play that catapulted Williams' career and has strong autobiographical elements. It features characters that are based on himself, his mother and his mentally fragile sister.

Williams' Life and Times

Tennesse Williams spent the first ten years of his life living at his grandparents' home as his father was a travelling salesman. He then moved to St. Louis with his family when he was twelve, a town similar to New Orleans in Streetcar, and the nastiness of city life left an impression on him, which can be shown in many of his plays.
It was in St. Louis that his older sister, Rose, failed to cross over from a child into adulthood, inspiring the character to Laura in The Glass Managerie.
Williams attended the University of Missouri for three years, until his father got him a position in a shoe factory. He suffered a nervous breakdown two years later and recuperated in Memphis, Tennessee , with his grandfather.

Goblin Market Summary

The poem Goblin Market, written by Christina Rossetti and dedicated to her sister, begins with two sisters, Lizzie and Laura, hearing the calls of goblin men trying to entice people to buy their fruit.

Despite Lizzie's warnings not to, before Lizzie ran home, Laura approaches the goblin men and trades a lock of her hair for some fruit and proceeds to gorge herself and then return home.

After Laura eats the goblin men's fruits she begins to waste away, causing Lizzie to eventually go and see the goblin men in the market. /Despite the goblin men trying to tempt Lizzie like they did Laura, Lizzie stands firm, casuing them to try to fill her mouth with their fruits but as she squeezes her mouth shut, she instead just gets covered in the juice. When Lizzie gets home, Laura kisses the juice causing her to be painfully cured.

Lizzie and Laura become wives and mothers and tell the story to their children, as a cautionary tale.

Maude Clare - Notes

Summary- Maude Clare was in love with a man who she couldn't marry because he was of a different social class to him even though she is like a 'queen' to him.
He marries someone else through an arranged marriage and Maude Clare interrupts the wedding.

Nell

She feels superior to Maude Clare, 'Me best of all Maude Clare'
Is jealous of Maude Clare because her husband wants Maude Clare and not her.
Is satisfied that she's married and that she's secured her future by marrying someone with wealth, which Rossetti uses to show the shallowness of arranged marriages and how they are not for love but for wealth and status.

She rubs it in Maude Clare's face by saying that even though she's 'more wise and much more fair', she's better because she married the Lord. Rossetti does this to show how poeple use thier status and social standing to distract from their flaws and insecurities, and also use them to feel superior to others.


Nell also gets the last word, showing how she has more power than Maude Clare due to her status.

The Lord

The Lord as a character is more of a title than a character.
He reperesents how even though you may have a title and social standing, it does not mean that you have control over your life and don't have to obey society's expectations of you.

The Mother

Starts off as quite proud at the fact that her son has reinforced thier social status, and is not interested in the fact that he may not be happy with Nell, which is how Rossetti agains shows that shallowness of marriage.
There's a hint that she went through the same thing, 'your father thirty years ago had just your tale to tell' and he didn't love her but someone else who he couldn't marry.
Rossetti uses the mother to show how deep these kinds of loveless marriaged run through victorian society.

Maude Clare

She rises above the fact that she isn't able to get her own way.
She may be saying that Nell doesn't have a heart and so should take hers, 'Take my share of a fickle heart, mine of paltry love.
Maude Clare could be a represntion of Rossetti, swowing how she want to disrupt order.




The Lord's mother speaks first, showing how hse is trying to influence what happense and is trying to control her son, representing society's expectaions of what he should do and how is is controlling his decisions. She also represents the aritstocratric part of society.
Maude Clare speaks secons to help show how she has disrupted the wedding by interrupting the mother. This also shows the amount of power she has depite her class.
The Lord speaks third, showing how even though he is the one with the title and the power, he doesn't have much authority or control over what is happening.
Nell speaks last and has the final word, showing how she comes out of it above Maude Clare and gets her way in the end, despite how everyone else feels.

Views of Death in 'Song' and 'Remember' by Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti wrote the poems ‘Song’ and ‘Remember’ during Victorian times, which was when people had a fascination with death, and by this time people had reasonable expectations of living to old age, which is why death at a young age was considered tragic. Funeral and burial arrangements became more extravagant at this time as well, and loved ones were expected to mourn for a long time. Christina Rossetti’s poems ‘Song’ and ‘Remember’ contradict the Victorian views on death in many ways.

Firstly, both poems are about the speaker, who is going to die soon, telling a loved one that they should not mourn them. ‘Song’ contains the line saying that they do not want a  ‘shady cypress tree’, which is a tree which lives for a very long time and is used as a way of saying that a person’s spirit lives on, also allowing people to remember them for a long time. By saying that they do not wish to have one of these trees, they are implying that they do not wish to be mourned and remembered, and would rather their loved ones moved on. This goes against what the Victorian attitudes towards mourning, and is Rossetti’s way of saying that the traditions have to change.

‘Remember’ builds up to the climax of ‘Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad’, which show how Rossetti rejects the Victorian ideal of mourning and not being allowed to be happy for a certain amount of time after someone has died, as she would rather her loved ones be happy rather than be obligated to feel sad. Christina Rossetti also uses a euphemism in the poem ‘Remember’ for death which is, ‘when I am gone away’ as oppose to in ‘Song’ when she uses the line ‘when I am dead’. This gives the impression that the speaker in ‘Remember’ hasn’t come to terms with their own death as much as the speaker in ‘Song’ has.