To fully appreciate this story and the book it came from, The House of Hunger, one needs to understand the troubled life of its Zimbabwean author, Dambudzo Marechera. A central motif is the “ape in the mirror,” which increasingly dominates the protagonist’s psyche. This could represent Marechera’s personal demons (mental illness, alcohol, drugs and violence) and/or be a thinly disguised metaphor for the devastating “guerrilla war” that brought Robert Mugabe’s ANU government to power. The latter is symbolized in the penultimate paragraph by the rain (that) sounded like the microscopic commotion of six million little people fleeing a national catastrophe. More…
The Station
In this story by H. E. Bates, a stop at an all-night café run by an attractive young woman has a disturbing effect on an eighteen-year-old truck driver’s assistant. The young man is new to the job, and driver had warned him that he shouldn’t take any special attention by woman the wrong way: She won’t have it. She’s nice to (all) the chaps because it’s business, that’s all.. Despite this, the assistant is spellbound by the woman. She senses this and flirts a little, raising sexual tension in the naïve young man. Themes include innocence, female sexuality, desire. More…
The Romance of a Busy Broker
This humorous but unlikely story by O. Henry is set in the office of Harvey Maxwell, a busy New York stockbroker, over the space of a single morning. When Harvey sits down at his desk, it is as if he changes from a man into a machine. He puts everything else out of his mind. It is a bad day on the stock market and, when things get quieter at lunchtime, he realizes that he has forgotten something more important than making money. Themes include the pressure of ‘modern’ business, love, preoccupation, workplace conflict, gender roles. More…
The Paper Menagerie
The central message of this poignant story from Ken Liu is in these lines: You know what the Chinese think is the saddest feeling in the world? It’s for a child to finally grow the desire to take care of his parents, only to realize that they were long gone. An American high schooler rejects his heritage and distances himself from his poorly educated, non-English speaking mother. After her death, he finds something that changes his outlook and brings back the magical world she had created for him as a child. Themes: struggle, cultural assimilation, identity, resentment, motherly love, imagination. More…
The Mystery of the Missing Cap
It is evident from Babu Virkishore’s absurd ministerial title that this Manoj Das story is a political satire. The comment about the cap’s disappearance being a deep-rooted conspiracy with possible devastating political effects suggests that it is a “Nehru topi” (pictured above). The main themes, comically highlighted when Jhandoo the monkey tries on the cap and then hands it back to the bemused Minister are: 1) many officials of the day weren’t ready to govern; and 2) the general population was too poorly educated and reverent towards those in power to see this. Other themes: innocence, elitism, hubris, honesty, disillusionment. More…