Jas, the ultimate faker.

To put it mildly, Jas is undergoing a severe identity crisis. Although we do not know it until later in the book, he is a white boy trying to fit in with a bunch of immigrants trying to fit in in a new country. That is pretty weak. I really can find no way to explain why a white and, I assume, non foreigner who does well in school and seems to have a bright future ahead of him would throw everything away to try to fit in with a bunch of good for nothing troublesome thugs with no hopes for a future anywhere other than jail.

To me, this question is so hard to explain that I almost wonder if Malkani, in an attempt to finish the book once it started to drag on, went back in the book and edited out some of the parts about him being of Indian descent so as to allow for the "shocking twist at end." I know that sounds ridiculous, but to be perfectly honest I just don't see how Jas being white can fit into the story. It was a little out there to begin with, but I still was able to justify most of what he was doing. A story about immigrant children trying fit in is one thing, but with the turn of Jas being white, everything he had convinced me of just went out the window. I do not know his intents, but whatever they were they ruined the book for me.

Girly man Flory

For some reason, Flory really irks me. I am not sure why, but he seems to just seems to some think he so much bigger than he is. For example, he imagines that he "saves" Elizabeth from the water buffalo, even though it was just drinking water from a pond. Similarly, he seems to somehow pride himself as the man in the relationship, but when he takes Elizabeth hunting, she scores on her first try, even after he explains to her how difficult it is, as if he were some sort of master. Because of this, she makes him look kind of silly when she, a woman, hits on the first try. Flory just seems to be a rather weak man who imagines himself somehow superior to everyone else.

While I am thinking about people I hate, I strongly dislike Mrs. Lakersteen as well. I certainly do not like Elizabeth, but I don't really hate her. Rather, I view her as the object of Mrs. Lakersteen and therefore can only consider her guilty by association. Mrs. Lakersteen is the most scheming and selfish person I have seen in the book. She tells Elizabeth who she has to pretend to love, simply based on that person social status, or even a title. I don't like anyone in this book, but she might be the worst...

So why did we all hate Christopher so much?

During class discussion, many of us, myself included, didn't really like Christopher's dad that much. He killed Wellington, he hid Christopher's mom's letters, and he loses his temper at poor Christopher. On top of that, Christopher always talks about how scared he is of his father. No wonder why I didn't like him. But when you really think about it, his father is actually a pretty good guy. In fact, his mother left Christopher with his father because she knew he would take better care of him than she could. Christopher's dad takes care of him, makes him food, and obviously cares deeply about him. I find it easy to forgive him because to be perfectly honest, Christopher is a total pain in the butt. He constantly whines and complains, he runs away, and he has an entire page of his "behavioral problems," and he is a constant worry.

Christpher's dad isn't perfect, but I really don't see any way to justify considering him a terrible person. Rather, Christopher is a very difficult problem to deal with and would make anyone's life a living hell. On account of this, I hold his father excused...

Lyndall's fire and ice

Lyndall has to be one of the most extreme characters in the book. While everyone in A Story of an African is an extreme in some way, Lyndall could be the most out there. As a young girl, she passionately expounds her theories on feminism and takes a viscous attitude toward any dissenters, or anyone who is different for that matter.

We later find a partial explanation for her behavior. When she tells her real boyfriend that she intends to marry Gregory Rose, she refuses his offer of marriage because she says that she fears losing herself to a stronger man. Instead, she is marrying Gregory Rose because she needs to marry someone and he is weak, and, in effect, will basically be her servant. However, she has to marry someone because is pregnant and does not want to be alone. Naturally, Gregory Rose fits her requirements.

Personally, I find Lyndall to be a strange character. For all of her stuff about independence, I somehow find it interesting that she "needs" to marry a man, although I will give her that she is marrying one of the weakest men alive. In any case, she, as well as many other characters in the book, seem rather unhappy and, quite frankly, unlikeable. No wonder why everybody dies.

Waldo's World

Waldo is an interesting character. Of all the characters in this book, I find him to be the most interesting. While i got the feeling in the beginning of the book that most of the characters had too many drastic flaws to make it through without dying, Waldo seemed like he was going to die for a different reason. He seems to be the dreamy sort of character, a man of the mind so to speak. However, somehow he seems to be too morbid of a person. What i find most interesting, however, is the progression of his religious beliefs. As the story sets out, he is highly religious and seems to willingly accept all of his struggles, even the abuse of Bonaparte. However, as he matures, he begins to lost faith in the bible, becoming more of a realist, but he still remains he remains a rather morbid and mysterious character.

Considering this dark and gloomy feeling that I get from Waldo, his end seems very appropriate. Just as he never lost his temper or had any other explosions, he doesn't go down in flames or become a serial killer or go out in any flamboyant way. Rather, he simply goes to sleep under a tree and never wakes up. In the same way that he never really seemed to exist, he never really seems to die. Instead, he remains this sort of foggy character and fades away through the end of the book.

Tipping the velvet...

Just had to get that into a title somewhere here. But on a more serious note, the book as a whole really does render itself well to the whole gender issue in several ways. To me, the most interesting thing to think about is way Nan changes over the course of the book with regard to how she perceives herself. In the beginning, she seems to be pretty much an innocent girl who just happens to have a thing for Kitty. However, as the story progresses we see her experimenting and gradually developing her own persona based on what she learns. After she catches kitty cheating on her, the dreamy fairytale-like feel quickly disappears. When we see her under the strict rule of Diana, she is going through a transitional phase. As a pretend male prostitute, she does seem to reach some satisfaction through her ability to pass as a male. However, she soon moves on and as she progresses, she begins to achieve a certain level of self confidence that allows her to finally become an independent woman as opposed to a kind of subject. I guess if I had to point out what about this process interests me most I would have to point to the section where she poses as a male prostitute. It just seems interesting to see how she plays the role of a man in such a nonchalant manner, almost as if she just decided to see what it would be like to be a man. This book, more so than any of the others we have read this semester, gives an interesting incite into the issue of gender relations, performance, etc...

Regarding the issue of outsiders...

While it seems natural that outsider would play a heavy role in novels as well as most other literature, at times I have to stop and think, "so what?" Of course outsiders are prominently featured in novels, because most people would not be terribly interested in reading a book about an everyday life that he or she witnesses on an every day basis. But here is where my reasoning reveals the misconception. We tend to view outsider as people who are different. However, when you think about it many people have some particular trait that makes them very different from others, yet we rarely classify them as outsiders: even though they may have different or religions, colors, or behavior, these people usually live basically the same live that "we" do. This is where the problem lies: we frequently are too generous about granting outsider status to anyone in a novel, thus cheapening the idea of an outsider and making the answer to the "so what?" question an equally useless "dunno."

I do not have the one single solution to the problem of classifying the outsider, but I would think it should require something severe, something that actually forces a character to be severely disconnected from everyone else in the world or at a minimum, his or her surroundings within the book. Someone who just speaks more slowly than others, or has a receding hair line, or has 7 freckles on their body is not an outsider because of it.

Damn outsider impersonators...