120417 Comparative Literature 2DW Continuing on Toba Tek Singh: - Inversion between sanity and insanity and other

relationships that we take for granted - The insane ask the most political questions - The exchange of the people of the asylum occurs at the border - The religious identity is determining their political identity o Crossing the border marks the change - Allegory: a work of visual art that has the element of storytelling to it; has a second hidden layer of meaning - Ethnic : people are being moving across the borders because they are now considered on the wrong side - Toba Tek Singh is an allegory of the Partition - Bishan refuses to choose an identity and therefore chooses to die in the few feet of land between the two nations without any political identity (no mans land) o Manto is writing in reference to himself account of the refusal to the decision that is made for you by the political forces Bombay - Anita Desai (1937-) o Mixed parentage: Indian father, German mother o Novels include: Clear Light of Day; In Custody - German Jewish man who comes to India before the onset of the genocide o Father suicide by gassing o Irony in the novel: Germany catches up with him in the end killed by a young German tourist in a robbery o Outsider even as a child doesnt seem to belong anywhere until Bombay - The novel is about what it means to belong to a group/community and what constitutes it (paradox of belonging and not belonging) o Citizenship is a political form of belonging - Displacement - The story is based on archival research - Narrative structure is a weaving together of two different narratives o Ch 3, 5, 7 constitutes a single day of narrative last day of life o Ch 2, 4, 6 constitutes his entire life since childhood o *** mementos of Hugos life important - The time structure o Second to last chapter of the book ( Ch6): the narrative of the life has caught up with the last day of his life or life has caught up with his death (as it begins the novel) - Setting: Hugos filthy home is shared with cats - Pg 21: Hugo has smelled the German as a cat smelled and knew its death - German amnesia about that horrific past

As a young child of a minority community, Hugo has already encountered the experience of not being able to assimilate o Pg 36-37: Hugo is unable to be engaged in the activities as his classmates o Sharp sense that he does not belong to the society that he was a part of as the other children o Humans fundamental sense of belonging claiming your place in the world (different for Hugo) Pg 51, ,105: two kinds of people in the world the ruling kind and statues o Asymmetrical sense of belonging in the world Both the mother and the son spends the summer in the camp for being Jewish and for being German in the community, respectively What is implicit in the fact that the British cannot tell the difference between a German and the Jewish victims of the German state? o Notion of citizenship Holocaust: the novel deals with the actual events of the Holocaust but does not give the descriptions of the camps, etc., yet the reference to the Holocaust is important The bundle of postcards from his mother that was found with Hugo at the time of his death