A Fine Balance, By Rohinton Mistry

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Kyle McCabe Canadian Literature 120 Mr. Miller 9 June 2011 The Balance of Imbalance The novel A Fine Balance, written by Rohinton Mistry, is set in India throughout the 1970’s. Being born in India in 1952, and living there for 23 years, he had gained an interesting perspective on India’s culture. At this time in history, Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, called a state of Emergency within India. This gives her full control over the state. She was guilty for political patronage, and gerrymandering in the previous election, so had to do so to keep her position. This put forth efforts against the beggars and the homeless of India, trying to eradicate them. With all of this chaos happening in India, the people experiencing it really wanted some peace. In A Fine Balance, Mistry presents that the goal of life is to achieve an ultimate balance. To do so, balance has to be reached on every level of existence. Through examination of the different characters lives, an understanding can be gained of how Mistry portrayed the value of balance, and how in most cases was failed to be reached. In India, the Caste system, which was a manor of classifying people by social standings, was very prominent during the time of A Fine Balance. The Caste system worked in the way that you were born into your Caste, which limited you to certain things, depending on which you were born into. This ultimately caused a never-ending cycle of poverty, as people that were born into the lower classes, kept rising in numbers. With the Upper Castes having such a higher amount of power than the Lower, the Emergency had many supporters. “One shout from me and they’ll come running” (113), is said before Ishvar’s mother Roopa is raped by a man watching a garden she had been stealing vegetables from. This shows the extent to which they had power. The man, not even the highest caste, with one
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