Critical Summary of An American Brat by Bapsi Sidhwa

Critical Summary

Coming of age is never easy. Coming of age as a woman is even harder. But coming of age as a female immigrant in a foreign country may be the most difficult of all. For many women born into societies with restrictive social and political codes, however, immigration may be the only real way to come of age. In An American Brat, Pakistani-born novelist Bapsi Sidhwa reveals with a humorous yet incisive eye the exhilarating freedom and profound sense of loss that make up the immigrant experience in America.

Sidhwa begins her novel in Lahore, Pakistan. Feroza Gunwalla, a 16-year-old Parsee, is mortified by the sight of her mother appearing at her school with her arms uncovered. For Zareen Gunwalla, Feroza's outspoken 40-something mother, it is a chilling moment. The Parsees, a small sect in Pakistan, take great pride in their liberal values, business acumen, and—most importantly—the education of their children.

It's 1978 in Pakistan and 16-year-old Feroza Ginwalla, the heroine of the novel, An American Brat, is beginning to worry her relatively liberal, upper-middle-class Parsee parents. She won't answer the phone; she tells her mother to dress more conservatively; she sulks, she slams doors, she prefers the company of her old-fashioned grandmother; she seems to sympathize with fundamentalist religious thinking. What to do? “I think Feroza must get away,” says Zareen, the girl's mother, to her husband, Cyrus. Feroza is packed off to visit her Uncle Manek, a student at MIT. But as Zareen waves goodbye to her daughter, she cannot know that in America Feroza will become more independent than Zareen ever dreamt, or hoped, was possible. “Travel will broaden her outlook, get this puritanical rubbish out of her head.”

And indeed it does—although to a disastrous degree, from Zareen and Cyrus' point of view, for Feroza's three-month sabbatical with her uncle in Massachusetts turns into a three-year sojourn in many parts of the United States.

By the time Zareen decides, toward the end of the book, to reassert parental control by flying from Lahore to Denver—where Feroza has become a hotel-management student—it's too late. Her daughter is already an “American brat,” a woman with a mind and opinions of her own, able to relish the ability to choose.

An American Brat is an exceptional novel, one of such interest that the reader's reservations, while significant, are ultimately of little consequence. Bapsi Sidhwa, author of three previous works of fiction and frequently referred to as Pakistan's most prominent English-language novelist, has produced a remarkable sketch of American society as seen and experienced by modern immigrants.

America, to Feroza and her Uncle Manek, is in many ways a paradise—as indeed it appears to be for Sidhwa, a Parsee who has lived in the United States for many years—but An American Brat is nonetheless a measured portrait, often reassuring and discomfiting at the same time.

It's both wonderful and startling, for example, to hear the fully Americanized Manek say to the newly arrived Feroza, as she grapples with some well-wrapped container, “Remember this: If you have to struggle to open something in America, you're doing it wrong. They've made everything easy. That's how a free economy works.”

In style, An American Brat is nothing like Henry James' The Ambassadors, being straightforward, humorous, easygoing and unpoetic. In plot, though, it bears some similarities, with travelers finding themselves unexpectedly transformed by their encounters in a new land. Feroza soon realizes that Manek's years in the United States have changed him: He is now “humbler and, paradoxically, more assured and quietly conceited, more considerate, yet … tougher, even ruthless.”

One of the first things Zareen notices about Feroza at the Denver airport is her gaudy tan: “You'd better bleach your face or something,” she tells her daughter, “before you come home.”

But even Zareen proves vulnerable to America's charms:

Although she has come to break up Feroza's engagement to a “non”—a non-Parsee—she glories in the shopping and amenities of Denver life, “as happy as a captive seal suddenly released into the ocean.” Zareen, her American mission at least partially accomplished, returns to Pakistan but wonders momentarily whether she has done the right thing. And that's the issue lying at the heart of this novel—the competing loyalties immigrants feel toward family, culture, heritage, self. The problem only flashes through Zareen's mind because she is too old to be fully taken with American ways; Manek can almost ignore the contradiction because, being male, he will be celebrated for living in the United States so long as he takes a Parsee wife.

Feroza, by contrast, feels the brunt of the conflict, newly aware of the severe sexism in Parsee culture—men can marry outside the faith, for instance, while women cannot—and thrilled at the idea of having her own money, her own career, her own identity. Feroza has come to America, she discovers moments after first landing in New York, to be “unself-conscious”—to be free, once and for all, of “the thousand constraints that governed her life.”

An American Brat suffers from a meandering, literal plot and a tone that doesn't distinguish major insights from minor ones. Page by page, though, Sidhwa keeps the reader engaged, for one can never predict which mundane American event she will display in an entirely new light.

At the hospital: A Parsee couple is presented with a ?15,000 bill for their daughter's delivery, where-upon the shocked father replies, walking out, “You can keep the baby.” At home: Feroza, gushing over Manek's vast supply of canned frankfurters and sardines, saying, “I could eat this all my life!”

At an expensive restaurant where Manek has sent back half his meal, to Feroza's horror, because he can't possibly pay for it: “If you weren't so proud,” Manek tells his niece, “you wouldn't feel so humiliated, and you'd have enjoyed a wonderful dinner.”

He has a point, however twisted, and it's moments like that which make An American Brat a funny and memorable novel.

Supernatural Element in Hamlet

SUPERNATURAL ELEMENT IN HAMLET

THE ROLE & SIGNIFICANCE OF GHOST IN “HAMLET”

Moulton comments on supernatural elements in the plays of Shakespeare as:

                  “Supernatural agency has a place in the world of Shakespeare.

                   Shakespeare’s supernatural agencies  are the  instruments  of

                   darkness”.

It was customary with the people of Elizabethan age that they were curious about the mysteries of death. As a result they promoted superstitious approach and Shakespeare effectively used this public tendency in his plays.

Shakespeare has introduced supernatural elements in his plays. Thus we have witches in “Macbeth”, the fairies in “The Tempest” and “The Mid Summer Night’s Dream” and the ghost in “Hamlet” and “Julius Caesar”. His supernatural element is not as rude and rough as that of his contemporary dramatists.

The ghost in “Hamlet” has three-fold dramatic significance. It contributes to the general tragic atmosphere of the play, motivates the entire action of the play and finally it offers a certain moral effect to the audience. Irving Ribner says :

               “The Ghost  indicates the goal Hamlet must attain, and the play  becomes

                 a dramatic symbol of the struggle man must endure in order to learn the

                 answers of faith and submission”.

Shakespeare, while introducing supernatural, provides a horrible atmosphere. As in the opening scene of “Hamlet”, we find “It is cold and dark night”, and Francisco is “sick at heart”. The ghost had appeared to them in the previous two nights and it was a dreadful sight.

The conversation about the Ghost in a dark and chilly night creates an atmosphere of tension and fear. When Hamlet is informed about the appearance of the ghost, he believes that some calamity is about to befall. As he says:

                                                           “My father’s spirit in arms!

                                               All is not well,

                                                           I doubt some foul play”.

We can see that the Ghost has a very significant role in the play. When Hamlet sees the Ghost of his father he realizes that his feeling about “some foul play” is true. The Ghost reveals the secret of king’s murder as he says:

                                       “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life

                                            Now wears his crown”.

The Ghost imposes upon Hamlet the duty of avenging his father’s murder and advises him,

                                                “Let not the royal bed of Denmark be

                       A couch for luxury and damned incest.”

Thus the ghost is certainly the motive force which puts into motion the action of the tragedy. It is solely through the ghost that an unsuspected murder is brought to light. Verity says:

             “Without the ghost’s initial revelation of truth to Hamlet, there would have

               been no occasion for revenge, in other words, no tragedy of Hamlet”.

The Ghost makes its second appearance due to Hamlet’s delay in the duty of avenging his father’s murder. The Ghost makes very clear the reason of its coming:

                                           “Do not forget; this visitation

                                               Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose”.

It appears in the closet scene. It is visible only to Hamlet and Gertrude is ignorant of its appearance and says:

“This is the very coinage of your brain”.

In the closet scene, Queen Gertrude is not able to see the Ghost. Some critics say that the Queen is not morally pure, so she was unable to see the Ghost.

           

Hamlet is doubtful about the appearance of the ghost and the story told by the ghost. Sometimes he assumes that it is a devil taking the shape of his father to tempt him to murder. There are some questions in the mind of Hamlet which prevent him from taking any hasty step. He thinks, can it be right to do it or noble to kill a defenseless man or is he deceived by the ghost? So in order to confirm the truth of the ghost’s words, Hamlet puts on an antic disposition and launches a dumb show and mousetrap to prick the conscience of Claudius.

The Ghost is not the product of Hamlet’s mind. In fact, it has also been witnessed by others. Thus, the reader is convinced that the Ghost is not a vision of imagination.

           

Careless of being Shakespeare himself as a believer or non-believer of supernatural, he can rightly be attributed for making an effective use of it in his plays. Hamlet was written in an age when people had faith in ultimate power of the supernatural. Thus Shakespeare’s play Hamlet abounds with the same. It is obvious that Shakespeare knew that:

“There is a divinity that shapes our ends.”

           

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Hamlet as A Tragic Hero

HAMLET AS A TRAGIC HERO

Coleridge says:

“All that is amiable and excellent in nature is combined in Hamlet”.

Hamlet is one of the most popular tragic characters of Shakespeare. In fact, the play, “Hamlet”, is popular for its main character, Hamlet. He is one of the immortal and unforgettable characters. He plays a role of vital significance and confuses the readers, critics and viewers by his complex personality and contradictory actions.

The character of Hamlet has been discussed by the various critics but still no one claim that he has understood this character fully.

Like other tragic heroes of Shakespeare, he is endowed with extraordinary qualities like royal birth, graceful and charming personality and popularity among his own countrymen. He has a high intellectual quality. In spite of all his qualities, the flaw in his character leads him to his downfall and makes him a tragic hero. The tragic flaw in Hamlet’s character is that he thinks too much and feels too much. He is often disturbed by his own nature of ‘self-analysis’. Hamlet’s soliloquies are the true reflection of Hamlet’s character.

Several causes account for Hamlet’s delay and inaction. By nature, he is prone to think rather than to act. He is a man of morals and his moral idealism receives a shock when his mother remarries Claudius after his father’s death which was later proved murder.

Character is not the only factor which is responsible for Hamlet’s tragedy. Hamlet has been made a tragic hero by some strange strokes of fate and chance. A number of things take place by chance. For example, Hamlet kills Polonius by chance. Hamlet’s ship is attacked by pirates. His mother drinks poisoned wine by chance and dies. Thus, chance and fate influence the whole situation. Fate puts the hero in such circumstances in which the hero has to say:

                                          “The time is out of joint. O cursed spite,

                                        That ever I was born to set it right!”

Like other tragic heroes, Hamlet too has to face conflict, both internal and external. The internal conflict is within his mind while the external conflict is with Claudius and Laertes. Hamlet is a hero whose tragic role is to punish and be punished, to do evil along with good.

In a tragedy, the hero normally comes to the realization of a truth of which he had been hitherto unaware. In the beginning of the play, Hamlet is in the state of melancholy and depression and sees Denmark as an “Unweeded Garden” but he becomes a truly philosophical and noble soul by the end of the play. He had once been an ideal personality as Ophelia told us, by the time of the final act of the play, he is before us with a greater stature than he even had before. Just before the fatal fencing match, he says:

“The readiness is all”.

In the beginning, he laments that he was born to set right what was out of joint but in the end, he realizes that there is:

“A divinity that shapes our ends.”

To conclude, we can say that Shakespeare with his creative imagination and artistic skill could not make Hamlet a conventional avenger. Hamlet has to become a different kind of avenger as the play proceeds, Hamlet becomes gradually mature and dies before our eyes as a great man. Hamlet has all the qualities of tragic heroes. Shakespeare has shown his artistic skilled heroes.

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Hamlet's Delay or Tragic Flaw

HAMLET’S DELAY OR TRAGIC FLAW

Harold Wilson says about Hamlet’s delay:

                  “The question of Hamlet’s delay in avenging himself upon Claudius

                      is not different, essentially, from the question of  Claudius’ lack of

                      success in coping with Hamlet”.

“Hamlet” has been a subject of endless speculation to the critics and the students of literature and the main interest has been almost fixed on the problem of delay.

Out of all Shakespearean tragedies, “Hamlet” is the most appealing where the hero hesitates to kill the murderer of his father immediately. This delay costs the lives of his mother, his beloved Ophelia, her father Polonius, her brother Laertes as well as Hamlet’s own friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and above all his own life. Critics have divergent views on Hamlet’s delay. Some critics are of the view:

“There is no delay at all”.

But A.C. Bradley strongly objects to the critics’ view and says:

                                                          “Certainly there is delay

                                                         Two months elapse and

                                                         Claudius still lives”.

Hamlet himself realizes that he is guilty of delay and irresolution:

                                         “How all occasions do inform against me,

                                           And spur my dull revenge!”

Whereas Verity says:

                                      “As Hamlet thinks too much, so he feels too much;

                                        Thinking less, he would have more power to act”.

Tragic flaw plays an important role in the sufferings of a character in Shakespeare’s tragedies. Hamlet’s tragedy is mainly due to a defect, irresolution in his character. He is capable of impulsive action but not preplanned action. The consequence is that he avenges his father’s murder at the cost of his own life. If Hamlet had killed Claudius at the time of prayer, he would have avoided his tragic death as well as the death of others. There would have been no play at all. So the dramatist is bound to delay the hero’s revenge.

In this regard, the critics who believe that there is delay in ‘Hamlet’ say that both external and internal causes account for Hamlet’s delay. The internal causes are within his character while the external causes are the physical difficulties he encounters. As Earnest Jones says:

                                  “One   part   of   him   tries   to   carry  out   the  task, 

                                  the other flinches relentlessly from the thought of it.

                              This paralysis arises from not only physical or moral

                                  cowardice but also from the intellectual cowardice.”

The external causes of his delay are as under. First of all we see that Claudius is not a weak king. He is very cunning and shrewd person and has made all the possible arrangements for the protection of his life from unseen attacks. He is not only surrounded by courtiers but there are also Swiss body-guards to protect him. So it is very difficult for Hamlet to meet his enemy alone.

The second reason according to Earnest Jones as he claims in “The Disciple of Freud” is that the Oedipus complex accounts for Hamlet’s delay.

Hamlet hesitates to kill his father’s murderer when he is offering his prayer because he wants eternal damnation of his enemy. So he decides to kill him at the time.

                                               “When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage;

                                              Or in th’ incestuous pleasure o his bed;”

The third reason, according to the critics, is that Hamlet is an intellectual man and he is not confirmed about his uncle’s offence. He does not have any proof of Claudius’ guilt except the Ghost’s story and he wants to confirm Ghost’s information saying.

                                                “The Spirit that I have seen

                                                 May be a devil; and the devil hath power

                      T’ assume a pleasing shape.”

He does not have any hope to win people’s help in deposing the king with Ghost’s words. The question is that when Laertes can easily raise the people against the king why not Hamlet. So it seems that Hamlet gets the play enacted to get the proof against Claudius not only to convince the people but also to convince himself of the Ghost’s words. Therefore, the external difficulties do not account for his delay. As A.C. Bradley says:

                                    “Nowhere in the play, Hamlet makes the slightest

                                      reference to external difficulties”.

Internal causes of Hamlet’s delay are within his own character. Some critics say that Hamlet’s procrastination or delay is chiefly due to his own self. They have formulated certain theories.

First of all they say that Hamlet’s cowardly nature is the cause of his delay. He prevents himself from taking revenge because he fears of the consequences. But it does not seem true because Hamlet has proved himself bold and courageous man through fearless acts of heroism in the face of danger and difficulty e.g. when the Ghost beckons him to follow it, Marcellus and Horatio try to detain him but he warns them saying:

                                        “Unhand me gentlemen.

                                       By heav’n, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me.”

Again he is not timid when he sarcastically and insultingly talks to Polonius and Claudius. He kills Polonius, sends his school fellows to their deaths, boards the pirate ship, returns to Denmark to meet his tragic end, rushes on the king and kills him with the poisoned sword.

Another class of critics including Schelegal and Coleridge views that the cause of Hamlet’s delay is his irresoluteness which is due to over reflective and over-speculative habit of mind. He wastes his energy in thinking rather than taking action against the king. Hamlet himself confesses his excessive thinking and says:

                                       “And thus the native hue of resolution

                                        Is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought.”

The fourth and the most important cause of his delay is the theory of melancholy according to which Hamlet suffers from “melancholia” a mental disease, a depressive, indecisive and irresolute state of mind. It means Hamlet is not in his normal health. He suffers from nervous instability. His father’s murder, his mother’s hasty second marriage, his beloved’s changed attitude and his unintentional killing of Polonius are some of the important elements causing a burden on Hamlet’s sensitivity and throwing him into a melancholic inactive state of mind. As A.C. Bradley says:

“Melancholy accounts for Hamlet’s inaction”.

To conclude we can say that every critic has his own interpretation of Hamlet’s delay. But until now, the critics have not reached a single point which can be the only cause of his delay due to the complex nature of Hamlet.

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