Emma Levine Essay

408 Words2 Pages
In ‘A Game of Polo with a Headless Goat’ Emma Levine manages to underline the differences between the two completely different cultures, while making herself sound humble and modest. Levine also tries to give a fair, objective and unbiased view on everything she encounters on her trip. She is also appears as very observant, and therefore extremely aware of her surroundings and therefore is also aware of the unusual culture clash between the British and Asian societies. During the extract, Emma Levine compares many elements of the Asian culture to our own, Western culture; she does this as the target audience for her book is people back in our society, and by relating the things she sees to stuff we already know, it makes it a lot easier to understand. For example she compares the Karachi donkey race to the American Cartoon Television programme Wacky Races as shown in the quote “if we could join in the Wacky Races”. She also compares the donkey race to “Formula 1 without rules” and Formula is a western activity so she is showing the sport from a British point of view. The title of the extract is “A Game of Polo with a Headless Goat” which is contradicting herself because Polo is a very British sport while a Headless Goat is very Indian so she puts two completely different things together to show she knows that there is a clash between hers and theirs culture, and that’s what she’s trying to express. Levine also shows how the Indian culture is more relaxed on rules and safety as seen in the quote “Ahead of the donkeys, oncoming traffic…had to dive into a ditch…Yaqoob loved it”. In England tis would be thought of as a crash however in India it is just part of everyday life is very normal. Another quote to show the leniency of the rules in India is” I really enjoyed that…But I don’t even have my licence yet because I’m underage!” which is illegal anywhere in the
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