Superficially Aldous Huxley’s Gioconda Smile is a straightforward story about a narcissistic womanizer who learns to his cost the meaning of the expression: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. On another level, it is a wonderful satire of the lavish, hedonistic lifestyles of upper-middle-class 1920s British society. The protagonist’s apparent lack of conscience may be due to his admitted psychopathy (not only did he not feel sympathy for the poor, the weak, the diseased, and deformed; he actually hated them). This raises the question: did he really deserve his fate? Themes: vanity, philandering, class, passion, murder, rejection, betrayal. More…
Because He Loved Them
This story by Samira Azzam highlights the catastrophic effect of the 1948 creation of Israel on the half-million plus Palestinians it displaced. A man working in a government food distribution agency is wrongly suspected of embezzlement. He documents two examples of lives ruined by the partition and the story of a “sonofabithch” camp informer who profited by it, then torches a food warehouse. He believes that if his people are hungry enough they will rise up and rebel, and claims to have done this “because he loves them”. Themes include displacement, corruption, injustice, suffering, violence, betrayal, rebellion. More…
In the Withaak’s Shade
Like a number of Herman Bosman‘s Oom Schalk Lourens stories, In the Withaak’s Shade is a satire of the life of Bushveld Afrikaners embellished in the form of a “tall tale”. It tells of a farmer’s unlikely encounter with a leopard as he was lying down under a withaak tree while busily searching for some lost cattle. Several of Bosman’s common themes (storytelling and the indolence, independence and mateship of the Boer landowners) are obvious. Two others (the mass hysteria that follows the reported sighting, and destruction of wildlife) are not. More…
Unaccustomed Earth
The major themes of this story from Jhumpa Lahiri are connection (daughter-parents, grandfather-grandson) and biculturalism (how different generations respond to belonging to two different cultures). A widowed Indian immigrant visits his daughter and three-year-old grandson. The visit triggers memories of the difficulties and frustrations the daughter experienced growing with parents who had different values and beliefs to their adopted culture. It also highlights her lonely, isolated life and strained marriage, and an inner-conflict she feels about the Indian cultural practice of a child taking a widowed parent into their home. Other themes: death and grief, moving on, independence, companionship, loneliness. More…
Subha
A central theme of this story by Rabindranath Tagore is the tendency to dehumanize those with disabilities. A deaf Indian girl is ostracized by her mother and most in her village. As she grows up, she finds solace in nature and love for her family’s two cows. Her father, shamed and faced with the possibility of the family becoming outcastes if she doesn’t marry, tricks a man from a distant village into an arranged marriage. Miserable and far from home, the poor girl’s fate is uncertain. Other themes include tradition, innocence, isolation and loneliness, peace in nature, shame, fear, misery. More…