Photostory, click here

Nectar in a Sieve

            The author of this novel is Kamala Taylor, who wrote under the pseudonym of Kamala Markandaya was born in the town of Mysore in Southern India in 1924 to a Hindu-Brahmin family. In 1940, she went to study history at the University of Madras. During this time, she also worked as a journalist and published short stones in Indian newspapers.  In 1948, Markandaya moved to England; she married Bertrand Taylor, an Englishman, and made England her adopted home although she continued to visit her homeland regularly. The couple had one daughter, Kim. Her husband died in 1986 and Markandaya died on May 16, 2004 at her home outside London, England. One of her favorite works is novel Nectar in a Sieve which is published in 1954.

            The book can be catalogued as a social, love and pastoral fiction with and story takes place in a village in rural India and an unnamed Indian city in the mid 1900s. From the early 1800’s until 1947 India was a British colony. Under colonial rule, the Indians had little authority and most remained poor and uneducated. Under this circumstance, the story describes the life of an Indian woman as an individual, wife of a farmer and mother for her kids.

            Rukmani, an Indian woman, tells the story of her life in the first person, narrating her own direct observations, motivations, and feelings and describing other characters through her own eyes. Different people appear and become a part of Rukmani’s life such as Nathan (her husband), Kenny (her friend), and her children.

            The major work of this book is based on the description of poverty life of Indian people, effects of the changes such as farming village changed into industrial town. The tannery symbolizes the first change of the village and a small picture of industrialization. Nathan told Rukmani when she can not bear the change of the village: “There is no going back. Bend like the grass that you do not break”, this quote discovers one of the major themes – adapting to change. Ruku, in this book, must learn to deal with change in her life. The arrival of the tannery is one of them, but there are others: the marriage, motherhood, the fate of her children, moving to the city. If one can not adapt changes, one can not survive in the brutal world, one will be “break” When readers follow Ruku’s step and experiment her bitter and poverty life, one personality of her is obvious expressed: strong hope. No matter what hardships tear at her resolve, Rulu neer entirely loses hope for the future. She enjoys life and has the ability to find happiness among small things such as her pumpkins. She is a strong woman with hope inside to support her.

            The most important thing which causes everything and keep happening through out the book is poverty: poor people everywhere, poor family and the poor country. From reading the life of normal Indian people’s life, the problems of India is plain. Old Grammy’s death, Ira became a prostitute, the sons live their parents for better job, children beg on the streets of city… They are all caused by the poorness.

            Most of all, this book is realistic and sad which narrates the life of an Indian woman, fill with bitterness, hardships and a few happy memories.      

My best entry was:
The ones I put my thoughts in, such as “why could Meursault dare to commit a murder”. Those entries that I thought for minutes before I write them down help me the most, so those are the best entries in my blog.

The blog I though were most effective are
Wendie’s blog is the one I always visit because we read the same book and it is a really thoughtful blog. Every entry in her blog has thoughts in it. She also offered musics which is good and is collected to the book.

What I learnd from my blogs and reading others’ blogs:
I learnd that writing and thinking when reading a book is really helpful for understanding, and sometimes, it brings me other thoughts of the book which I never thinks about. Blog is a good programm to use.
By reading others blogs, I find out that different person has difference thoughts. Some of them always consider issues positivly, some think as a darker way. There are ideas and opinions that is really good and thoughtful which help me to understand the book better and know more stuff I do not know. Some of the blogs are funny which I enjoyed.

The stranger photostory

 The link above is connect to the photostory of the novel Stranger. It inclubed the themes, characters, plots, setting and three quotes. It is a overall review for the novel.

Themes: indifference, importance of physical world, lonliness…
Characters: Meursault, Marie, Raymond, Salamano, Meursault’s mom…
Plots: Execution, Raymond’s plan, son and mom’s relationship…
Setting: Time and Place.
And three quotes.

LITERARY/HISTORICAL INFORMATION        

        The Stranger, published in 1942, captures the feeling of man’s alienation in a cold, cruel world. After enduring the hardships of World War I, many European writers lost hope and began to ask philosophical questions about life. The existential writers, like Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, and Albert Camus, became to question man’s very existence. Since they did not believe in God or an afterlife, they viewed life as largely meaningless, hopeless, and absurd. They judged that most of life was dull and monotonous and that nothing that man did on earth made a difference. These existential ideas are clearly developed in the character of Mersault.  

Quotes

For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

I had only a little time left and I didn’t want to waste it on God.

Gentlemen of the jury, the day after his mother’s death, this man was out swimming, starting up a dubious liaison, and going to the movies, a comedy, for laughs. I have nothing further to say.

Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter.

Throughout the whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people’s deaths or a mother’s love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we’re all elected by the same fate?

Everybody knows life isn’t worth living.

It doesn’t much matter whether you die at thirty or at seventy, since in either case other men and women will naturally go on living–and for thousands of years.

I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. 

Meursault

        Meursault is an indifferent man. He has no strong feeling to surroundings and people around him. To life, he has no enthusiasm. To death, he has no fear. Does he always have no feeling for living? I think he does. On page 104, in the prison, he said: “ I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn’t mine anymore, but one in which I’d found the simplest and most lasting joys: the smells of summer, the part of town I loved, a certain evening sky, Marie’s dresses and the way she laughed.” This quote proved that Meursault loves and enjoys his simple love. After be arrested in a prison, Meursault discovered his desire for freedom. Therefore, he is not a totally indifferent man. He has a complex personality, for example, his habit of describing people around him or the weathers expressed his sensitive. Most of all, Meursault is a man with simple life and less desire.

      In the courtroom drama that comprises the second half of The Stranger, the court symbolizes society as a whole. The law functions as the will of the people, and the jury sits in judgment on behalf of the entire community. In The Stranger, Camus strengthens this court-as-society symbolism by having nearly every one of the minor characters from the first half of the novel reappear as a witness in the courtroom. Also, the court’s attempts to construct a logical explanation for Meursault’s crime symbolize humanity’s attempts to find rational explanations for the irrational events of the universe. These attempts, which Camus believed futile, exemplify the absurdity Camus outlined in his philosophy. 

Marie

           Marie is the major female character in The Stranger, but we only know a little about her trough Meursault’s narration.          

          Basically, she is an uncomplicated middle-class young woman. She wants marriage, stable relationship and children. She, like Meursault, enjoys swimming, movies, and outings to the beach. She likes to laugh loudly. Like Meursualt, she has unimportant job; he is a clerk, she was a former typist. She had great hope for her new life in Paris with Meursault. She is much more of a romantic and passionate person than Meursault.

Meursualt—Physical World            

          Throughout The Stranger, Meursault’s attention centers on the physical world much more than his focus on emotional and social aspects.       

          The narrator, Meursault, in this book, shows a great passion on observing people, nature and environment around him. For example, the heat during the funeral procession causes Meursault far more pain than the thought of burying his mother. The sun on the beach torments Meursault, and during his trial Meursault even identifies his suffering under the sun as the reason he killed the Arab. These are examples of description of weather. Meursault also pay many attentions on people. Such as, when Meursault watches people on the street from his balcony, he does so passively, absorbing details but not judging what he sees, and when Meursault watches the woman at Celeste’s. Observation is kind of a habit of Meursault.        

          From reading the book, I think Meursault is a quiet, indifferent and weird person. He has no passion for life, no strong feeling for death and no desire for relationship. Most of all, he is a cold person. However, the example of his description of surroundings inside is sensitive.  It proves that Meursault has complex personality.  

        He dares to murder someone, even though it may sentence him death, because he doesn’t care that much of death.