CHAPTER-II
Nationality and Racial Identity
in the Selected Works of
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and Bapsi Sidhwa
The views of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. on nationality and racial identity are expressed in
his works. An intensive study is made to collect some details about them. Two of his
books selected for it are Mother Night and Slaughterhouse-Five. It is earnestly hoped that
this study would provide details about his American nationality and racial identity as a
Jew. Vonnegut’s fictional works suggest the influence of his early work in journalism.
There is a little flourish, elaborate description and a prolonged psychological
characterisation. His prose is compressed and functional.
Mother Night, Vonnegut’s third novel, was published in 1961. It differs from its
predecessors in having no emphasis on technology or use of a fictional future. It is the
first to be written with a first-person narration. It highlights the characterisation of the
protagonist through intensifying the soul-searching, both on his part and the author’s.
Mother Night is also the first of his novels to have an autobiographical introduction added
to its 1966 edition, in which Vonnegut remembers his own wartime experience and his
German origin. He notes: “If I’d been born in Germany, I suppose I would have been a
Nazi, bopping Jews and gypsies and Poles around, leaving boots sticking out of snow
banks, warming myself with my secretly virtuous inside. So it goes.”1
Vonnegut thus describes the thought which illustrates the moral of this novel:
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be”(vii).
The pretence in this story concerns Howard Campbell, an American playwright living in
Germany. He lives with his German wife Helga when World War-II breaks out.
Campbell is persuaded to remain in Germany, cultivate the Nazis and become an
American agent. He gets success as a Nazi propagandist. He sends coded information
important to the Americans through his broadcasts. At the war’s end, he is shifted back to
New York to conceal his secret role in Germany. He is generally thought to be a Nazi and
not an American agent. He is hunted by the patriots who want to take revenge and by the
Israelis, to whom he is handed, over. Campbell’s narrative is written in an Israeli prison.
He searches himself for the answers to the question of whether he was really the Nazi he
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pretended to be or the secret spy. He realises that he did much to further Nazi crimes. He
shrivelled to think what he would have done if the Germans had won. He had always
believed that his propaganda was too attractive to be believed. He could remain detached
from the horrors around him. Hence, many Nazis found him inspirational. What sustained
Campbell during the war was the love of his actress wife, Helga Noth. They would retreat
into a private world of love, defined by their big double bed, and become a separate
“nation of two.” But she disappears while entertaining the German troops.
Clearly, this novel raises questions about the “good Germans”, who opposed the
Nazis but never spoke out against them or their atrocities. In 1950s, the American
government was involved in a “witch-hunt” for suspected Communists. It reflects doubts
on Vonnegut’s part about his former role as a public relations person at General Electric.
It also prompts the readers to think why they remained loyal to certain values but did
nothing publicly to oppose their violation. The novel takes a hard look at how people
survived during the Nazi reign. They survived either believing themselves to be aloof, or
with the hope to start living in the world with what Vonnegut calls “schizophrenia”, in
which they use only a part of their consciousness. In the end, Campbell commits suicide,
condemning himself for the crimes against himself. He is unable to find out the pros and
cons of his public role. What he does know is that he betrayed his conscience. He
misused both his love for Helga and his integrity as a writer.
The issue of a writer’s integrity comes up in several of Vonnegut’s novels,
starting with Player Piano. His writers frequently have to decide whether to make
compromise in order to achieve or they have to determine what responsibility they bear
for actions to which they may prompt their readers. Campbell switches from being a
romantic playwright dealing in pure fantasy to a propagandist contributing to severe
atrocities. Mother Night also extends the moral issue to include all, in as much as they
may try to write about their lives. They may create illusions for themselves, and
manipulate other like characters. Mother Night, especially with its added introduction,
expresses Vonnegut’s ruminations about Dresden. It also highlights the contradictions
implicit in his being a German-American fighting against Germans. He is nearly killed by
the Americans. Further, it reflects his concerns about the Allies’ destruction of the
historic, non-military city, Dresden. It also tells about the killing of thousands of civilians
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in the name of a noble cause. It also shows him moving to a first person voice. It enables
him to examine directly the inner doubts such issues raised. The novel is especially
compelling because its questions are not easy to resolve. Howard Campbell’s dilemma is
no easier for the reader to resolve than it is for him. He remains one of Vonnegut’s
complete and haunting characters.
Mother Night is supposedly written by the protagonist, Campbell, when he is in
an open jail in Old Jerusalem. He introduces himself by saying: "My name is Howard W.
Campbell, Jr. I am an American by birth, a Nazi by reputation, and a nationless person by
inclination. The year in which I write this book is 1961" (3). In first-person narration
Campbell describes stories from the pre-war time, the incidents of the war and the
consequent happenings of World War-II. The reader learns that Campbell lived in
Germany before the war, entertaining all, including Nazis as a playwright. He and his
wife Helga had no intention of leaving Germany when war became a threat. Campbell
tells that in 1938 he was recruited as an American special agent. He was to pose as a Nazi
propagandist during the war. The reader learns that for his enhancement of atrocities
against the Jew Campbell is behind bars in Israel. He is to be tried by Israel for his severe
war crimes during the Nazi reign. However, the book focusses on Campbell's life until
the scene returns to the Old Jerusalem prison for the resolution.
The primary moral of Mother Night, as Vonnegut gives in his introduction, is that
"we are what we pretend to be"(vii) and should be “pretty darned careful” about what we
pretend to be. Its secondary moral is the less enlightening statement: when you are dead,
you are dead (viii). In the eyes of the entire world, Campbell is exactly what he pretended
to be during the war, that is, a Nazi propagandist. Apparently, he mocked and
demoralised Allied troops as well as regular citizens. But, in fact, he is a traitorous Nazi
who provided secret information to the Allies. Internally, Campbell hardly knows what
he is. He claims to belong to no country and cherishes no political values. He wants only
to live in a "nation of two" with his beloved wife once again. A series of significant
events force Campbell out of the secret shelter of his past fifteen years. There is
sometimes a vast difference between truth and fact and the individual presented before
self and society. But people try to find direction and a purpose in a world gone mad.
Vonnegut's dark humour cuts deeper than mere satire. It aims directly at some of the
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darker sections of the human heart. These are the areas which most individuals too often
ignore or refuse to acknowledge. The unpleasant humour can be quite funny on the
surface. But it is in actuality a sharp and pointed tool which Vonnegut holds to open up
the heart and soul of the reader for self-examination. The title Mother Night is relatively
short but very powerful.
Mother Night is a sharp, funny book. Its humour is both satiric and farcical. It is a
very entertaining novel, with twists and turns at almost every corner. It includes a
surprise ending that is sure to catch the Slaughterhouse-Five reader off-guard. Although
Kurt Vonnegut is more well-known for his novels, such as Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's
Cradle, Mother Night is truly an overlooked classic. It offers an entertaining story for not
just the fans of war books but also for the readers who look for a hilariously addictive and
heart-breakingly sad book. But he could not find anyone to dedicate his book. So, he said:
“…Let me honour myself in that fashion, [dedicated] then: This book is rededicated to
Howard W. Campbell, Jr., [Kurt’s mouthpiece], a man who served evil too openly and
good too secretly, the crime of his times”(xi).
Slaughterhouse-Five was Vonnegut's first book to deal directly with the Dresden
firebombing. But Vonnegut has always had a strong dislike for war and his novels clearly
reflect it. Hence, it is rightly observed: "He alludes to World War-II repeatedly in his
fiction, as if compelled to somehow come to terms with it, if not erase it. Mother Night
does not deal directly with the bombing of Dresden -- the raid has no part in the plot -but that in a sense is what the book is about."2 One of the most interesting things about
Mother Night is the way the book projects both the World War-II era and the author's
personal reflections and opinions. Mother Night's historical content includes the usage of
characters that actually once existed and events that actually took place during the war.
Vonnegut's personal reflections are exhibited through his satiric view of life and his use
of sarcasm in the novel. A perfect example is when Campbell talks with Dr. Paul Joseph
Goebbels, historically the Head of the German Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and
Propaganda, and they discuss the Gettysburg Address.
Goebbels finds the address enchanting and suggests that it should be sent to der
Fuehrer, historically Adolf Hitler, who served as the head of the Nazi party throughout
World War-II. A copy of the speech is sent to Hitler and he returns it with the following
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note to Campbell regarding the address: "A very fine piece of propaganda" (13). This
example refers to two historical people of World War-II but describes a situation which
was not true. Hitler using the Gettysburg Address as propaganda is symbolic of the
control and manipulation he tried to gain over the English-speaking population. The
example also shows Vonnegut's use of the combination of historical content and satire.
Therefore, it shows that Vonnegut's work was reflective of both himself and of World
War-II era. In the novel, it is not difficult to find other similar examples and observations.
World War-II, having a great impact on Vonnegut's life, plays quite a large role in
Mother Night and Vonnegut alludes to many of the famous names of the war throughout
the novel. The first of the names mentioned is Paul Joseph Goebbels. Campbell actually
first mentioned his name to one of his guards in the prison. Goebbels, being the Head of
the German Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, is actually Campbell's
old boss. Under him, he daily broadcast German propaganda to the English-speaking
world. The next famous name which appears in the novel is that of Adolf Hitler. The
majority of the world population knows the name, for it is one of the most powerful ones
in history. Next mentioned name is of Rudolf Hoess, the Commandant of Auschwitz.
Auschwitz was one of the largest and most feared German death camps in the history of
World War-II. Campbell met Hoess at a New Year's Eve Party in 1944.
So, the first three historical characters met in Mother Night are all notorious
persons of World War-II. But the question arises as to why Vonnegut chooses to deal
with the people who left such a negative impact on history. As observed by Jean E.
Kennard: "Mother Night is concerned with the ways men use and destroy each other in
the name of purpose."3 Perhaps that was one of Vonnegut's purposes for writing the
novel. The next person who has some sort of historical significance is the Reverend Dr.
Lionel J.D. Jones. Jones is a fictional character, but in the novel he is shown to be
responsible for publishing the “White Christian Minuteman", an “anti-Semitic, antiNegro, anti-Catholic hate sheet”(40). Even though Jones was never real, he, combined
with the mention of the KKK, is representative of the hate and racism exhibited both
during the war and during the 50s and 60s.
One of Campbell's most significant interactions with a historical character is his
meeting Adolf Eichmann, the architect of Auschwitz. It was he who introduced conveyor
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belts into crematoria. He was the “greatest customer in the world" for Cyklon-B, the gas
used in the chambers in German death camps. This interaction took place in 1941 when
both Campbell and Eichmann were in line to get their picture taken for identification
purposes. They strike up a conversation and Campbell asks Eichmann a question. He asks
him if he feels he is responsible for killing six million Jews. Eichmann answers:
“Absolutely not”. Campbell sarcastically replies: "You were simply a soldier, were
you...taking orders from higher-ups, like soldiers around the world?" Puzzled Eichmann
asks Campbell if he had seen his defence. After Campbell replies: "I haven't seen it,"
Eichmann says: “Then how do you know what my defense is going to be?"(106).
Vonnegut makes a very important statement through this conversation. The Nazis had no
defence for the crimes they committed. Vonnegut has always used literature as a means
to express himself. It seems that though many of his novels maybe entertaining, he wrote
them for expressing himself rather than to please the readers. Vonnegut expresses himself
primarily through satire and he has a lot to say about the world in Mother Night.
There is one chapter in Mother Night that seems almost misplaced. It is the
twenty-first chapter entitled “My Best Friend....” The purpose of the chapter is to explain
why Campbell had a motorcycle in his possession. He tells the reader how he had
"borrowed" his best friend’s motorcycle and never returned it. The owner of this
motorcycle is the widower Heinz Schildknecht, whom Campbell knew because they used
to be Ping-Pong doubles partners. Campbell recalls one night when he and Heinz had
been drinking and Heinz revealed something to him: “Howard”, he said, “I love my
motorcycle more than I loved my wife” (74). Vonnegut is apparently satirising love here.
Through this chapter, Vonnegut seems to imply that society is concerned more with
material possessions than with true love and compassion. As rightly observed by Mayo:
"At several levels Mother Night is about pretending, illusion, and multiple roles..."4
Campbell’s borrowing his best friend’s most loved possession and not returning it is an
example of betrayal. Of course, the most obvious illustration of "pretending, illusion and
multiple roles" is the idea of Campbell as a secret agent. As noted by Tony Tanner:
"Campbell is a special agent. But in Vonnegut's vision we are all agents, and the
perception that we can never be sure of the full content and effect of what we
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communicate to the world, by word or deed, is at the moral centre of Mother Night. It
also carries the indirect warning that our lies may be more influential than our truths...."5
Besides the theme of illusion, Vonnegut's novel satirises some of the vicious hate
groups in society. Other than the Nazi party, Vonnegut mentions the KKK, the SS, and
the Iron Guard of the White Sons of the American Constitution. It is a fictitious hate
group composed of teen-age white supremacists. Vonnegut does not support these groups
because of the strong anti-war theme in the book. These examples show the author's life,
maybe not in a literal sense, but through symbolism and satire. One can sense Vonnegut's
emotional point of view. He wishes to stress one specific point in this novel. Vonnegut
introduces it as the moral of his novel. The underlying purpose of Mother Night is, as
Richard Giannone puts it succinctly: "Mother Night lays bare for the reader the
mechanism of the self-deceiving mind. It desperately tries to keep up with the
uncontrollable distresses of life, which, for Vonnegut, are epitomized in the
encompassing threat of war with its senseless violence."6 Most likely, this novel is
Vonnegut's considered comment on war. It, however, is not a typical anti-war novel.
Vonnegut's unique style allows the reader to learn historical information from World
War-II and simultaneously see inside the mind of the author.
Vonnegut's novel historically depicts World War-II time period by effectively
describing characters and events of that era. It also expresses the author's current views
on life, politics and society. His work also expresses his personal opinions and reaction to
war and violence. A fine example is when Hitler considers using the Gettysburg Address
as a form of Nazi propaganda. Vonnegut also warns about the horrible effects of war. His
style is effective because he uses the powerful situation of World War-II and a realistic
protagonist. The moral of Mother Night is both an observation upon and a warning
against the contemporary society.
Mother Night deals with the difference between illusion and truth. Vonnegut
navigates this ethical minefield with complicated hidden problems in an entertaining, yet
sober manner. It tells the story of an American playwright who is enlisted to be a spy in
World War-II in Germany. The playwright becomes part of the upper crust of Nazi
society. He works as a radio-jokey who encodes top secret information in his pro-Nazi
broadcasts. Doing so, he helps to bring about the long awaited victory of the Allies. The
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war-time story-line of Mother Night is told in retrospection by the playwright who is
living in an Israeli prison. The reason that he earlier lived in hiding was that his Allied
contact person during the war disappeared and he had no one left to testify to the fact that
he worked for the Allies. The story takes off in grand Vonnegutian style as the
“protagonist” of the story is discovered simultaneously by Nazi-hunters, Soviet agents
and white supremacists.
Mother Night is one of Vonnegut’s most complex and intellectually stimulating
novels. Campbell’s high profile work for the Nazis was meant to provide him with an
opportunity to safely broadcast secret information to awaiting American agents. But he
was so good at his job that while working against the Nazis, he was increasing their
popularity. When Hitler fell to the Allies, Campbell was arrested as a war criminal. He
faced trial for his actions, having been disowned by the United States government.
The narrative style of Mother Night can be best described as disjointed. There is
no continuity of time or space which fly through Campbell’s stream of consciousness at a
breakneck speed. Much like the work of William Faulkner, this format allows the author
to fully explore the ambiguous motivations of his protagonist. It is without the restrictions
of a linear plot. The highest and the lowest points of Campbell’s life, his great artistic
achievements as well as his ever-increasing lust and greed, are shown. Despite the heavy
subject matter, the story depicts the sharp wit of its author. Much like SlaughterhouseFive, the novel uses humour to ease the bitterness of war.
The story is darkly humorous. It obviously attempts to analyse the difference
between intentions and actions. Vonnegut refuses to pass any judgment on Campbell. He
provides an almost scientific dissection of his life. He moves from his pre-war
experiences to his last days in prison. In the end, the reader is left to make his own
assessment of Campbell’s life. It is a choice that demands a careful consideration of one’s
own beliefs. Thus, it is Vonnegut’s deeper purpose to depict the morality not only of the
characters in his book but also of his readers. The overall story is somewhat sad,
frustrating and depressing. But Vonnegut still somehow finds ways to insert humour,
beauty, etc., into it, so that, ultimately, Mother Night in no way bogs down the readers or
puts them in a sour mood. At times Vonnegut finds gems of beauty in ugly situations.
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Mother Night is a story of how Howard W. Campbell, Jr. and his associates act.
Authors have long had a great flaw in portraying good and evil in humans. The characters
portrayed in art are always seen to be either good or evil. Vonnegut, one of the best
observers of human nature, manages in this book to portray human beings as they really
are. A man is a composite of many things. Howard is an American spy in Germany
during World War-II. He faces a dilemma. His cover is that of a Nazi propagandist. The
question is which side Campbell helped more. On the other side of the coin is an
unreasonably insane American Nazi dentist. He never writes his foolish essays about the
inferior teeth of the Jews and the blacks while he is married and loved. There is an
American war hero turned alcoholic who tries to take away the little joy that is in
Howard’s life. A camp survivor, who wishes nothing more than forgetting the whole
bloody thing, gets on with his life. His mother gains wisdom through her suffering.
The basic story of Mother Night is that of Howard W. Campbell, Jr. He
throughout the war combines the role of being one of the Reich’s top propagandists with
his other identity. That identity is his being one of the leading spies within the Nazi Party.
He uses secret codes within his broadcasts to give information about the Nazi war effort
to the Allies. He is the ultimate traitor, endlessly boasting about the superiority of his new
country. He spreads despicable lies for propaganda purposes every day for years. The
book makes clear that Campbell has a conscience and is aware of the evil he has caused.
It jumps back and forth between two times -- Campbell’s life in Germany during the war
and his post-war life in New York. There he has managed to carve out some kind of
anonymity for himself. He occasionally wonders what strings were pulled to get him to
his position. However, earlier no one discovers that Campbell is writing this life story in
an Israeli prison cell while he awaits trial on charges of war crimes. However, Campbell
is not in the business of making excuses for his life. He accepts what he did was right.
Even the morality of his achievements maybe a little more twisted than usual. From his
perspective, he has done nothing wrong, but the United States Government refuses to
give evidence that will prove it. He uses his chance to tell his extraordinary story.
Beyond all that, Mother Night is also a novel about identity, revolving around the
idea how one can become what one pretends to be and how others force one into
becoming what one has only pretended to be. Not just Campbell, but all the characters in
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the book play their roles sincerely. Sometimes they pretend and draw the line to maintain
distance from others. But it becomes clear that it is just an illusion. One cannot avoid the
consequences of one’s actions even if one feels that he was not involved in them. All that
makes it sound rather complex. But the real strength of Mother Night comes from the fact
that it is an easy book to read. Like all Vonnegut narrators, Campbell is an engaging
storyteller, drawing one into his world and seemingly laying himself bare. It is a short
book, and quite possible to be completed in one extended sitting. But afterwards one
starts to think about what one has read. It plants ideas inside reader’s head and asks
questions about his own behaviour, like what would do in the same situation and
ultimately what is the difference between good and evil. It implies that one cannot be sure
of one’s judgment about anyone.
In Mother Night Vonnegut expressed his views on his nationality by saying: “I am
a better American than you are!”(x). In the opening lines by Howard W. Campbell, Jr.,
probably the mouthpiece of Vonnegut, he says that he is a “nationless” person by
inclination. He accepts that he was born in America and kept on living in America
throughout his life. He struggled, suffered and gained popularity in America but he
declared himself to be a “nationless” person. Mengel was very excited about New York
City and wanted to know about it from Campbell. Campbell had spent a long time there
before going to Israel. According to Campbell: New York might be “heaven” for others.
It was not only “hell” but “something worse than hell” for him. He lived there for fifteen
years, hiding his identity and wanted to end his endless game of hide-and-seek. Also,
when Campbell’s sister-in-law, Resi, asked him, “…you hate America, don’t you?”,
Campbell presented his views on nationality by saying: “That would be as silly as loving
it, I said. It’s impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn’t
interest me. It’s no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can’t think in terms of
boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can’t believe
that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul.
Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will”(86). It is thus
prominently shown by Kurt Vonnegut in Mother Night that he does not believe in the
concept of a nation marked by man-made boundaries. The Republic of Israel wanted
Campbell, who was not an American citizen. West Germany asked the government of
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United States if he was their citizen. They had no proof since all proof related to him had
been destroyed during the war. So, they were ready to hand him over to Israel for trial. If
he was a German, they said that they were certainly ashamed of him. Soviet Russia said
that no trial was necessary and he should be straightway killed.
Out of Israel, Germany, Soviet Russia and his own motherland America, none
was ready to accept him as its citizen. They were rather ready to throw him to the other
country for trial. They had either no proofs of his identity or were feeling ashamed of him
or were ready to crush him like a cockroach. All these nations behaved almost identically,
the only difference in them was of boundaries and locations. It is only the individual who
feels to be a patriot, within some boundaries. So, instead of talking about different
nations, one should talk about the universe as one nation. In a broader sense, all the
people of the world are living within the limits of the same universe, and under same
conditions. Hence, were about ideal America that existed only in books or imagination.
Kurt Vonnegut has not forgotten to include the Jews in his novels. The first
reason maybe that wherever he lived, the Jews were there with him. Secondly, he saw the
Jews suffering and felt strongly about them. So, he certainly had something very
pertinent to say about the Jews. Vonnegut has something to say about the Jews which
highlight, one of the major aspects of the present study. It is that he has seen the racial
prejudices in his nation. He was a German-American Jew. When he was just eight, in
1930, somebody gave him a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, supposed to be
the Jews’ secret plan for taking over the world. Maybe it was expected that he would also
contribute for it later. He had seen that people were hesitant to accept that they were Jews
and they had to produce evidence to prove that they were not Jews. His aunt married a
German and she had to write to Indianapolis for proofs that she had no Jewish blood. He
realised that World War-II was forgotten by everyone, even by the Jews who were the
worst sufferers.
Some of the Jews, in order to save themselves, hid their identities. They joined
Nazis and worked for them. One of the Jews, Arnold Marx, who guards Campbell in the
prison, knows nothing about that war in which the extent of torture of the Jews was
beyond measure. Arnold had been assigned to the Sonderkommando, which means on
special duty of killing Jews. One of their duties was to shepherd the condemned Jews into
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gas chambers and then to lug their bodies out. When the job was done, the members of
Sonderkommando were killed. The first duty of their successors was to dispose of their
remains. Not only this, the music by the Jews was forbidden in the extermination camps.
Gutman, a guard at Auschwitz, once said, “Volunteering for the Sonderkommando -- it
was a very shameful thing to do…. I never want to talk about it again”(7). Another guard
who relieves Gutman was Arpad Kovacs. Arpad was faced with the problem of being a
Jew in Nazi Hungary and did not become a briquette. Briquettes meant people who did
not do anything to save their own lives or others’ lives when Nazis took over. When
Nazis told them to go to the gas chambers, the briquettes willingly and meekly obeyed
them. Arpad believed rather: “…what is so noble about being a briquette? On the
contrary, [he] got himself false papers and joined Hungarian SS” (8). He said: “If any
member of my SS platoon had spoken in such a friendly way about the Jews, I would
have shot him for treason! And Reichsleiter Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, Head of the
German Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, should have fired you
(Campbell) and hired me as the radio scourge of the Jews and I would have raised blisters
around the world!”(9).
When the Jews were tortured, some of them were always ready to grab the
chances to take revenge. Arpad was even put in a special detachment. Its mission was to
find out how the Jews always knew what the SS was going to do next. There was a leak
somewhere, and they were out to stop it. Arpad was happy that fourteen SS men (nonJews) were shot on their recommendation. Bernard Mengel, a Polish Jew, another guard,
once saved his own life in World War-II thus: “He played so dead that a German soldier
pulled out three of his teeth [of gold inlays] without suspecting that Mengel was not a
corpse”(10). Rudolf Franz Hoess was the commandant of elimination camp at Auschwitz.
Ironically, it is fact that in his care millions of Jews were gassed. Before emigration to
Israel in 1947, Mengel helped to hang Hoess with his two big hands. He could not feel
anything and said: “Every job was a job to do, and no job was any better or any worse
than any other. After we finished hanging Hoess …I buckled it [suitcase] shut with a big
leather strap. Twice within an hour I did the very same job -- once to Hoess and once to
my suitcase. Both jobs felt about the same” (10-11).
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Dr. Goebbels wanted Campbell to write a pageant honouring the German soldiers.
They were devotedly working and had died in putting down the uprising of the Jews in
the Warsaw Ghetto. Campbell wanted to know: “…where you expect to find any Jews
after the war?” (12). Dr. Goebbels saw humour in it and remarked: “A very good
question, we’ll have to take that up with Hoess…. He’s running a little health resort for
Jews in Poland. We must be sure to ask him to save us some [Jews]” (13). The Republic
of Israel wanted Campbell for trial. Maybe, they wanted him for his complicity in the
murder of six million Jews. He said: “Jews got a country now (Israel). I mean, they got
Jewish battleships, they got Jewish airplanes and they got Jewish tanks. They got Jewish
everything but a Jewish hydrogen bomb”(97). The resentment against the mass massacre
of the Jews was so high that a man hit him right through the newspaper before he could
comment. The man stood over him and cried: “Before the Jews put you in a cage in a zoo
or whatever they’re gonna do to you. I’d just like to play a little with you myself”(93).
When the Jews got back their nation and regained their power, it scared all who tortured
them or approved of their torture.
In one instance, Campbell faced a silly situation when he had drawn a target in
about 1941. It was in the shape of a man, made by joining sandbags with pins. The target
was a caricature of a cigar-smoking Jew. The Jew was standing on broken crosses and
holding a bag of money labelled “International Banking”. In the other hand he held a
Russian flag. From the pockets of his suit, little fathers, mothers and children were
popping out and naked women under his feet cried out for mercy. Millions of copies of
the target were run off in Germany. It had so delighted his superiors that he was given a
bonus of a ten pound ham. He was also given thirty gallons of gasoline and a week’s allexpenses-paid vacation for his wife and himself at the Schrerberhaus in Reiesengebirge.
He confessed that he had drawn the monster in order to establish himself even more
solidly as a Nazi. Campbell understood its popularity for the first time. The
amateurishness of it made it look like something drawn on the wall of a public lavatory.
The people involved in the torture of the Jews did not feel that they had done anything
wrong. In Tel Aviv (Israel) lock-up, when Campbell asked Eichmann, the architect of
Auschwitz, if he felt that he was guilty of murdering six million Jews, the latter did not
accept the responsibility for it.
66
There was an article in Reader’s Digest with the title, “There are no Atheists in
the Foxholes”. Campbell, Jr. said in its response: “I should like to expand this theme a
little and tell you that, even though this is war inspired by the Jews, a war that only the
Jews can win, but there are no Jews in foxholes, either. The riflemen in the 106th
[Infantry Division] can tell you that. The Jews are all too busy counting merchandise in
the Quartermaster Corps or money in the Finance Corps or selling black-market
cigarettes and nylons in Paris to ever come closer to the front than a hundred miles.…I
want you to think of all the Jews you know. I want you to think hard about them” (115).
Nobody even repented on ill-treating or killing the Jews. Campbell expresses it by
saying: “Do you know of a single Jewish family that has received a telegram from
Washington, once the capital of a free people -- do you know of a single Jewish family
that has received a telegram from Washington that begins, ‘The Secretary of War desires
me to express his deep regret that your son…’”(ibid). Reverend Lionel J.D. Jones, a
doctor, needed more people to join him to protect the Republic to make the country
stronger. He wanted to protect it from the people who are trying to make it weaker. They
include, “…The Jews! The Catholics! The Negroes! The Orientals! The Unitarians! The
foreign-born, …who play right into the hands of the socialists, the communists, the
anarchists, the anti-Christ and the Jews!” He added smilingly: “The Jews have infiltrated
everything!” (144). All of it shows how much the Jews were hated.
Thus, Vonnegut has much to say about the racial discrimination that prevailed and
is still prevalent in America. He suffered and observed others ill-treated and tortured.
Maybe all this made him declare himself to be a nationless person. Not only this, the
feeling of being without a country was so strong in him that towards the end of his life he
wrote his last, best-selling book whose title misguides one about his views on nationality.
From the title: A Man without a Country, one gets the impression that in spite of his
praise, sincerity and patriotism, he did not have a feeling of belongingness to America.
Finally, in his last writing, he has also mentioned the shortcomings of his country, people,
administration and the administrators. But he loved his country thoroughly. He has shown
its weaknesses as he wanted to see his country flawless. He was fourth generation
German-American Jew. He has shown German-American Jews fighting against Germans
but never mentioned any of them as a traitor. Their patriotism shows their love for their
67
nation, America. Hence, they were not bothered about any nation or nationality. Their
main emphasis was on performing their duties wherever they lived.
Kurt Vonnegut is known for using semi-autobiographical characters in most of his
works. In Slaughterhouse-Five, he has used two such characters. One of them is Billy
Pilgrim, who is an American prisoner of war. The other one is Kilgore Trout, who is a
science fiction writer. Vonnegut himself was a prisoner of war and a science fiction
writer. Once he recalled:
I would hate to tell you what this lousy little book cost me in money and anxiety
and time. When I got home from the World War-II twenty-three years ago, I
thought it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since
all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen. And I thought, too, that
it would be a masterpiece or at least make me a lot of money, since the subject
was so big. But not many words about Dresden came from my mind then --not
enough of them to make a book, anyway. And not many words come now, either,
when I have become an old fart with his memories and his Pall Malls, with his
sons full grown.7
Over the years, such renowned authors as Mark Twain and J. D. Salinger have
shown how literature reflects the era in which it is written. In this regard, Kurt Vonnegut
is another author who has made significant contribution to American literature. He is the
author of well-known novels as Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle. Twenty-one days
after the Germans had surrendered to the victorious Allied armies, on May 29, 1945, a
father in Indianapolis received a letter from his son who had been listed as missing in
action following the Battle of Bulge. The youngster, an advance scout with the 106th
Infantry Division, had been captured by the Germans after wandering behind enemy lines
for several days. Bayonets, as he wrote to his father, were not much good against tanks.
Eventually, the Indianapolis native found himself shipped to a work camp in the open
city of Dresden, where he helped produce vitamin supplements for pregnant women.
Sheltered in an underground meat-storage-locker, the Hoosier soldier managed to survive
an American fire bombing raid that devastated the city and killed more than the number
of dead in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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After the bombing, the soldier wrote to his father: “We were put to work carrying
corpses from air-raid shelters; women, children, old men, dead from shock, fire or
suffocation. Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge funeral
pyres in the city.”8 Vonnegut tried for many years to put into words what he had
experienced during that horrific event. It took him more than twenty years, however, to
produce Slaughterhouse-Five, which is his most famous work of fiction. In this book,
Vonnegut fictionally recreates his traumatic experience in Dresden. However, this book
was not published until 1969, and he had published several other works before it.
In full, the title, Slaughterhouse-Five: or, The Children’s Crusade, A Duty-Dance
with Death, says much about this sixth novel of Vonnegut. It is the novel in which
Vonnegut confronts his emotional experience of having been in Dresden. On February
13, 1945, it was bombed by the Allies. It produced a firestorm that virtually destroyed the
city and killed about one hundred and thirty-five thousand people. He survived the raid in
the underground meat-locker of a slaughterhouse. He spent the following days excavating
corpses from the ruins and cremating them. For him, Dresden becomes the symbol of the
senseless horror of war, of mankind’s self-destructive propensities. It is also the symbol
of how events arbitrarily rule over the lives of individuals. “The Children’s Crusade”
comes from the wife of a wartime buddy’s remarks: “You were just babies then!”
(Slaughterhouse-Five, 11). Vonnegut reflects that they were indeed very young and the
soldiers in his novel were swept along as helplessly as the hapless children of the original
medieval Children’s Crusade. Many of them were, in fact, sold into slavery. Charles
Mackay told that the Children’s Crusade started in 1213. Two monks got the idea of
raising armies of children in Germany and France and selling them in North Africa as
slaves. Thirty thousand children volunteered. Most of them were shipped out of
Marseilles but about half of them drowned in shipwrecks. The other half got to North
Africa where they were sold.
“A Duty-Dance with Death” expresses Vonnegut’s need to encounter in words his
experience with death. In Slaughterhouse-Five, the protagonist Billy Pilgrim has
undergone the wartime experience. Billy, as the name implies, is a kind of universal manchild going through the pilgrimage of life. In this way, Vonnegut is able to portray his
personal experience in an autobiographical character. He has universalised its meaning
69
through the use of an everyman figure. Similarly, Vonnegut speaks of himself in the first
and last chapters and interjects periodically throughout: “That was I. That was me”(91). It
permits him both to express intensely personal emotions and to make detached editorial
comments.
He avails himself of the chance to be both in the story and outside it, so that he
can tell his personal experience and also perhaps achieve a catharsis. Nevertheless,
Vonnegut does not entirely want to make sense of Dresden bombing or to make his book
an explanation of it. It is, for him, an event without sense, and it becomes an emblem of
the senseless and arbitrary in life. It is underlined when the Germans shoot one of the
American prisoners as a looter when he picks up a teapot from among the ruins. Such
strict and irresponsible justice in the midst of the carnage in the war is the crowning irony
of the novel. Billy Pilgrim becomes “unstuck in time.” It means that his mind constantly
shifts between times and places, as, then, does the novel. The story recounts Billy’s postwar life upto his death, and his adventures, real or imagined, on the planet Tralfamadore.
There is a considerable disjunction. The reader is jerked from a childhood memory to the
war years, to a middle-aged Billy, an optometrist, and to the preacher Pilgrim’s death.
Similarly, the story moves from Ilium, New York, to Dresden and then to Tralfamadore.
The style of the novel also emphasises this disjunction. Each of the ten short
chapters is divided into short segments. Each segment is of three or four paragraphs,
which may themselves be no more than a sentence long. A fragment of one scene
succeeds a fragment of another. It is not ordered by time, place, or theme, but hurled
together almost as a collage. Looked at together, however, the parts add up to a moving
depiction, replete with ethical implications and emotional impact. It is shorn of the kind
of direct
moral summations Vonnegut
supplies
in
Mother
Night.
Besides,
Slaughterhouse-Five sees the return of Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut’s fictional science
fiction writer. Also, there is the return of Eliot Rosewater and Howard Campbell, so that,
in part, the novel builds upon the preceding ones. However, it is not the novel’s only
meta-fictional characteristic. It also mixes fact and fiction, history and fantasy. It includes
quotations from actual documents by President Harry Truman and Air Marshal Sir Robert
Saundby. Also, there are quotations from the fictional Trout and Campbell, as if equally
authentic. There are quotations of all kinds, from mildly off-colour jokes to the serenity
70
prayer, scattered throughout the book. There is the world of Tralfamadore, presented
along side the historical events of World War-II. An often-noticed trait of this novel is its
repetition of the phrase: “So it goes”.(1, 5, 16, 17, etc). It occurs every time anything or
anyone dies. The repetition of the phrase has annoyed some readers, who see it as
inappropriately flippant. But this repetition does drum home the amount of death there is
in this story and in the world. It constantly calls attention to that and at the same time it
reflects a weary recognition that the author can do little to change things. SlaughterhouseFive has earned an enduring reputation, despite the fact that much of its initial popularity
was related to the climate of the times.
After the completion of Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut was not satisfied;
rather he considered it “a failure”. According to him, people are not supposed to look
back. Consequently, he promised: “I’m certainly not going to do it anymore. I’ve finished
my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun. This one is a failure, and had
to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt” (16). In the late 1960s, protest against the
United States’ involvement in the Vietnam war was at its highest. Hence, there was a
large, receptive audience for an anti-war novel. The young, among whom Vonnegut was
already popular, were intensely active politically. Many students campaigned for anti-war
presidential candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy in 1967 and 1968. They were frequently
called “the Children’s Crusade” in the press, and that allusion in Vonnegut’s subtitle was
not missed by readers of the time. Slaughterhouse-Five, then, is remarkable in its ability
to evoke pathos and laughter together, to simultaneously voice anti-war outrage and
philosophical acceptance. It also fuses the story of personal experience with a broader
social commentary. The novel’s unique form, which enables it to accomplish so much, is
the culmination of Vonnegut’s experiments with narrative technique. It is used in the five
preceding novels. Also, Slaughterhouse-Five was not Vonnegut's only novel to re-create
his experience in Dresden; a strong anti-war theme can be found in his earlier work as
well. The narrator opens with an elaborate statement which explains that he is a veteran
living in easy circumstances. That he witnessed the bombing of Dresden, Germany, as a
prisoner of war and survived to tell the tale and that it would be told in the manner of the
planet of Tralfamadore where the flying saucers come from. He also tells that he went
back to Dresden with a war buddy Bernard V. O’ Hare twenty-three years later. He ends
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the first chapter saying that his war novel, his novel of looking back, is over. It is over,
since there is nothing intelligent one can say about a massacre.
He then tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, who is unstuck in time. He uncontrollably
gets flung around the scenes of his life. He was a prisoner of war, became an optometrist,
and married a rich girl who died of carbon monoxide poisoning. He was the only survivor
of a plane crash. He was abducted and kept in a zoo on the planet Tralfamadore. There he
was mated with movie star Montana Wildhack. With every mention of death in the book,
the narrator says: "So it goes". Tralfamadorians believe that time exists all at once and
not moment-by-moment like beads in a string. So, a person is never dead, since he is still
alive at some other point of time. Billy's daughter Barbara is furious at him for trying to
tell people his crazy notions. He wandered behind enemy lines with a fat, sadistic soldier
named Roland Weary and two scouts, who ditched them. Weary got so mad at Billy for
this, that he beat him. When they were captured by German soldiers, he convinced many
others too that it was Billy's fault. Before capture too, Billy travelled to, among other
places, his mother's nursing home. There she asked him weakly how she got old. He also
went to the YMCA where his father taught him to swim by throwing him into the deep
end of the pool. He also went back to the night of his abduction.
Everyone at the prison camp was shocked to see how weak the Americans were.
Billy was insane, and he flipped out quickly and was hospitalised. Edgar Derby, an older
soldier who would be shot for plundering a teapot, stayed with him. Paul Lazzaro, a
weak, hateful man, told Billy that he had sworn to avenge Roland Weary by shooting
him. Billy was not worried because he had seen when he would die. He travelled in time
to his second hospitalisation during his last year of optometry school. There he met Eliot
Rosewater, who introduced him to the science fiction works of Kilgore Trout. Billy
travelled back to Tralfamadore. He advised the crowd at the zoo to fear the power of
Earthlings. They thought he was stupid. They knew it would be them, experimenting with
a new jet fuel, who would destroy the universe.
Billy and the other soldiers were transferred to Dresden, which was a beautiful
city. Billy travelled to the airplane crash, where he mistook the people who rescued him
for German soldiers. During surgery, he travelled back to Dresden. In Dresden, he
worked at a factory that made malt syrup with vitamins for pregnant women, which
72
everyone illegally spooned. They were kept in slaughterhouse number five. About a
month later, the city was bombed, and the prisoners survived in an underground bunker.
At his eighteenth wedding anniversary party, to which he invited Trout after they met in
an alley, Billy flipped out. The barbershop quartet reminded him of the Dresden guards.
Years later, in the hospital after the plane crash, Billy met Air Force historian and warhawk Bertram Copeland Rumfoord. Rumfoord told him that the bombing of Dresden was
necessary and that it had to be kept a secret because of all the American "bleeding
hearts." Boldly, Air Marshal Saundby accepted: “That the bombing of Dresden was a
great tragedy none can deny. That it was really a military necessity few, after reading this
book, will believe…. Those who approved it were neither wicked nor cruel, though it
may well be that they were too remote from the harsh realities of war to understand fully
the appalling destructive power of air bombardment in the spring of 1945”(137).
In the same vein, Ira C. Eaker, Lieutenant General, United States Air Force
(retired) remarked: “I find it difficult to understand Englishmen or Americans who weep
about enemy civilians who were killed but who have not shed a tear for our gallant crews
lost in combat with a cruel enemy…”(136). He continued: “I deeply regret that British
and U. S. bombers killed… in the attack on Dresden, but I remember who started the last
war and I regret even more the loss of more than fifty lacs Allied lives in the necessary
effort to completely defeat and utterly destroy Nazism”(137). Whatever reasons they
gave for the senseless bombing, it just could not be justified. They were offering the lame
excuses for a civilian massacre of unthinkable magnitude.
After the crash, Billy escaped to New York, where he stuck to a radio show to
preach his Tralfamadorians wisdom. In the last chapter, the narrator tells how he travelled
back to Dresden, and how Billy and the other prisoners had been made to dig up corpses
from the ruins. Slaughterhouse-Five; or The Children’s Crusade or A Duty Dance With
Death is surely the finest piece of fiction of Kurt Vonnegut. Besides, it is one of the
most acclaimed novels in modern American literature. It is a very personal work
which draws upon Vonnegut's own experience in World War-II. He was an advance
scout with the 106th Infantry Division, and later became a prisoner of war. He was also a
witness to the fire-bombing of Dresden on February13, 1945. One hundred and thirty-five
thousand people died in the devastation of Dresden, which means that it was the greatest
73
man-caused massacre of all times, as even in Hiroshima bombing only seventy-one
thousand, three hundred and seventy-nine people were killed.
In Slaughterhouse-Five, however, the war experiences are obvious from the
beginning. Vonnegut’s books are apparently satirical and ironically funny but really they
are compassionate and extremely wise. They mostly have a very poor plot or none at all.
Instead, the emphasis is on the comic and pathetic characters. Kurt Vonnegut also very
often uses science fiction. He generally uses comic book formulas of quick action, short
dialogues, etc. He usually puts his books onto bookstore shelves marked “sci-fi".
Vonnegut, however, does not take the “sci-fi” elements with the same seriousness as do
the other “sci-fi” writers. That probably makes the difference between his works and
science fiction. In Slaughterhouse-Five, many characters from his previous books show
up: Mr. Rosewater, Kilgore Trout and the Tralfamadorians, etc. The reader can also
recognise some themes that appeared in Vonnegut’s earlier books, namely, war versus
love, life versus human understanding, etc.; so that some critics described
Slaughterhouse-Five as a summary of his previous five novels.
The book has two narratives. One is personal and the other is impersonal. The
latter is the story of Billy Pilgrim. He like the author fights in World War-II and is taken
prisoner by the Germans. He witnesses the fire-storming of Dresden. The personal
narrative is Vonnegut’s own story about writing a book about the worst experience of his
life. It appears mostly in the first chapter, and describes his temptation to write a book
about Dresden and his efforts to finally produce it. The personal view also appears in the
first and the last chapter, and surfaces twice in Billy Pilgrim’s story as well: "…I said,
I’m writing this book about Dresden”(3). It assures the reader of particular identity of the
author with Billy. Billy Pilgrim has a unique ability to become “unstuck in time"(16). It
means that he can uncontrollably drift from one part of his life to another and the trips are
not necessarily fun: “Billy was struck by what a Tralfamadorian adventure with death
that had been, to be dead and to eat at the same time” (23).
The whole book is organised in the same way as Billy moves in time. It consists
of numerous sections and paragraphs strung together in no chronological order,
seemingly at random. The whole narration is written in the past tense, so that the reader
cannot identify where the author's starting point is. This aspect of the book is identical
74
with the Tralfamadore type of books: Tralfamadorians read them at once: “There isn’t
any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen
them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is
beautiful, surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no
moral, no causes and no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many
marvellous moments seen all at one time” (64). Moreover, Slaughterhouse-Five can be
described better in the following manner as well. After having read about Billy being an
optometrist, another explanation of why the book has no frame occurs. The last sentence
of the paragraph about optometry reads: "Frames are where the money is"(18). Wayne
McGinnis has remarked at historical events like the destruction of Dresden. They are
usually "read” in a framework of moral and historical interpretation. Hence, this book
differs from other books of its kind. The line of narration is broken by many other events.
But every time a war story begins, it takes up the narrative at the moment when the
previous war story ended. It seems that Vonnegut, who had wanted to write a war novel,
now wanted to avoid writing it. The war seems to have been a great tempting magnet for
him, and Vonnegut was trying to escape its power. He managed to do so, to some extent
and for some time. But every now and then the story falls back into World War-II.
The first theme of Slaughterhouse-Five, and perhaps the most obvious one, is
the war and its contrast with love, beauty, humanity, innocence, etc. SlaughterhouseFive like Vonnegut's previous books manages to tell us that war is bad for us and that it
would be better for us to love one another. However, in it to find the war’s contrast with
love is quite difficult. The book does not talk about any couple that was cruelly torn apart
by the war. Also, Billy did not seem to love his wife very much. But Vonnegut uses
“love" very rarely, yet very effectively. He tries to look for love and beauty in things that
seemingly are neither lovely nor beautiful. For example, when Billy was captured by the
group of Germans, he did not see them as a cruel enemy. But he considered them as
normal, innocent people who could be loveable, as he puts it: "Billy looked up at the face
that went with the hampers. It was the face of a blond angel, of a fifteen-year-old boy.
The boy was as beautiful as Eve"(39). An interesting contrast in Vonnegut’s books is the
one between men and women. Male characters are often engaged in fights and wars, and
females try to restrain them from the involvement. The woman characters are often
75
mentally strong, have strong will, and are very humane and loving. A good example is
Vonnegut's dialogue in the first chapter, when he talks with his old friend O'Hare in front
of O'Hare's wife:
Then she turned to me, let me see how angry she was, and that the anger was for
me. She had been talking to herself, so what she said was a fragment of a much
larger conversation. “You were just babies then!” she said.
“What?” I said.
“You were just babies in the war -- like the ones upstairs!”
I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the
end of childhood.
“But you’re not going to write it that way, are you.” This wasn’t a question. It was
an accusation.
“I -- I don’t know,” I said. “Well, I know,” she said. “You'll pretend you were
men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and
John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And
war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be
fought by babies like the babies upstairs.”
…It was war that made her so angry. She didn’t want her babies or anybody else's
babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and
movies” (11).
Moreover, the American soldiers looked young and innocent like babies. Hence,
“Kurt Vonnegut promised her that he would not write a book that encouraged war and I
will call it ‘The Children’s Crusade’”(ibid). Another place where Vonnegut depicts the
previously mentioned qualities of women is the part where Billy becomes “slightly
unstuck in time.” He watches the war movie backwards: “When the bombers got back to
their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United
States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the
cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly
women who did this work…” (54). In reality, of course, the women were building the
weapons instead of dismantling them.
76
The most often expressed theme of the book is that people are "bugs in amber."
The phrase first appears when Billy is kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians’ flying saucer:
“Welcome aboard, Mr. Pilgrim,” said the loudspeaker. “Any questions?”
Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: “Why me?”
“That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that
matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bug
strapped in amber?”
“Yes.” Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished
amber with three lady-bugs embedded in it.
“Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no
why” (55).
The communication of Billy with Tralfamadorians shows that Billy is being
physically “stuck” in this world. One does not have any choice over what, mankind as a
whole, does and what one heads for. The only thing one can do is to think about
everything, but one cannot affect anything. This idea appears many times in the novel.
One of its other examples is when Billy proposes marriage to Valencia: “Billy did not
want to marry ugly Valencia. She was one of the symptoms of his disease. He knew he
was going crazy when he heard himself proposing marriage to her, when he begged her to
take the diamond ring and be his companion for life” (78).
This excerpt clearly shows that Billy did not like Valencia and that he actually did
not want to marry her. However, he was "stuck in amber". Or, for example, Billy knew
the exact time when he would be killed, yet he did not try to do anything about it.
However, he could not have changed it, even if he tried to do so. His death bears
comparison with mankind's fate. The main thing Vonnegut probably wanted people to
think about has something to do with wars on earth. The Tralfamadorians tell him that
everything is structured the way it is. Billy categorically remarked: “I suppose that the
idea of preventing war on Earth is stupid, too”(84). It means that there always will be
wars on earth, and that earth’s people are designed that way. There might be people
attempting for eternal peace. But those people must be very naive and probably do not
know mankind's nature. It is known that wars are bad and should be stopped, but man is
trapped in amber.
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This point of view might also explain why there are no villains or heroes in
Vonnegut's books. Hence, it is remarked: “If there is none to take the blame for the bad
happenings in the world, it can only mean that the villain is God Himself.”9 God
Almighty had to be the one who put everyone into the amber, who had created them the
way they are. There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic
arguments. Most of the people in it are sick and the listless playthings of enormous
forces. It was true. Billy saw the boiled bodies in Dresden. Shocked Billy commented:
“And I have lit my way in a prison at night with candles from the fat of human beings
who were butchered by the brothers and fathers of those schoolgirls who were boiled.
Earthlings must be the terrors of the Universe! If other planets aren’t now in danger from
Earth, they soon will be. So tell me the secret so I can take it back to Earth and save us
all: How can a planet live at peace?” (84).
Another theme of the novel is that there is no such thing as a soldier. There is only
a man, but never a soldier. A soldier is not a human being. Vonnegut expresses it most
obviously in this extract pertaining to the time when Billy was imprisoned in Dresden
with others refugees. He realises:
When the three fools [Werner Gluck, Billy and Derby] found the communal
kitchen, whose main job was to make lunch for workers in the slaughterhouse,
everybody had gone home but one woman who had been waiting for them
impatiently. She was a war widow. So it goes. She had her hat and coat on. She
wanted to go home, too, even though there wasn’t anybody there. Her white
gloves were laid out side by side on the zinc counter top.
She had two big cans of soup for the Americans. It was simmering over low fires
on the gas range. She had stacks of loaves of black bread, too.
She asked Gluck if he wasn’t awfully young to be in the army. He admitted that
he was.
She asked Edgar Derby if he wasn’t awfully old to be in the army. He said he
was.
She asked Billy Pilgrim what he was supposed to be. Billy said he didn’t know.
He was just trying to keep warm.
'All the real soldiers are dead,' she said. It was true. So it goes (116).
Vonnegut opposes any institution, be it scientific, religious, or political that
dehumanises man and considers him a mere number and not a human being. This attitude
of Vonnegut is also expressed in many of his other books like Player Piano, Hocus
78
Pocus, etc. Another obvious theme of the book is that death is inevitable and that
no matter who dies, life still goes on. The phrase "So it goes" recurs about one hundred
and six times. It appears every time anybody or anything dies in the novel, and sustains
the circular quality of the book. It enables the book, and thus Vonnegut's narration, to go
on. It must have been hard writing a book about such an experience and it probably
helped the author to look upon death through the eyes of Tralfamadorians: “When a
Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in
the particular moment. But that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments.
Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the
Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is ‘so it goes’”(20).
The book has many different themes and one may interpret them differently.
Vonnegut wanted to tell that no matter what happens, one should retain one’s humanity.
He should not let anybody or anything reign upon his personality, be it a god, be it a
politician or anybody else. One should be oneself. After World War-II, he went to the
University of Chicago where he studied Anthropology. There is analysis of the human
conditions from an uncommon perspective. It uses time travel as a plot device and the
bombing of Dresden in World War-II which Vonnegut witnessed himself.
At the time of the book’s release, the Dresden bombing was not a widely known
historical event. It was rarely discussed by veterans and historians. When they did, they
only claimed that the bombing resulted in roughly the same number of deaths as the
detonation of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima, Japan. But the book helped to increase
world-awareness of Dresden bombing and led to a re-evaluation of the attack’s
justification. However, the severely discredited Dresden casualty statistics cited in the
book were drawn from David Irving’s novel, The Destruction of Dresden. This book also
mentioned in passing that homosexuals were among the people targeted for death in Nazi
holocaust. It was something that was also not widely known at the time. The capital city
of the German federal state of Saxony is situated in a valley on the river Elbe. Citizens of
Hiroshima walk by the A-Bomb Dome: the closed building to have survived the city’s
atomic bombing. David Irving, popularly known as Hitler’s historian, is a self-taught
historian. He from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s was a leading British author on World
War-II. He was the author of controversial works, such as Hitler’s War and the
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Concentration Camp Inmates during the Holocaust. The holocaust was Nazi Germany’s
systematic genocide, an ethnic cleansing. It was the killing of various ethnic, religious,
national and secular groups during World War-II.
Published in 1969, Slaughterhouse-Five is a novel written in troubled times about
troubled times. This most famous work of Vonnegut was an iconic novel, born out of his
memories of war and its absurdities. He became a cult hero when the novel became
“number one” on bestseller lists and even more popular among many young Americans.
However, some schools and libraries banned the book for its rough language and
depiction of violence. The semi-autobiographical, anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse-Five,
was actually burned in a furnace by a school janitor in Drake, North Dakota, on
instructions from the school committee there. The school board made a public statement
about the “unwholesomeness” of the book. According to them, the abusive language used
in the novel would have adverse effect on the school children. When Vonnegut came to
know about it, he tried to explain that even by the standards of Queen Victoria, he has
used only some offensive words. These words, according to him, are essential to bring
the natural and real effect in the story. These are the words actually spoken by an
American antitank gunner to an unarmed American Chaplain’s assistant. It happened
during the battle of Bulge in Europe in December 1944, the largest single defeat of
Americans in history. Then he wrote a letter to the chairman of the Drake School Board,
explaining:
…I am among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the
now famous furnace of your school. Certain members of your community have
suggested that my work is evil. This is extraordinarily insulting to me….I am
writing this letter to let you know how real I am. I want you to know, too, that my
publisher and I have done absolutely nothing to exploit the disgusting news from
Drake….We have declined to go on television, have written no fiery letters to
editorial pages, have granted no lengthy interviews. We are angered and sickened
and saddened. And no copies of this letter have been sent to anybody else. You
now hold the only copy in your hands. It is a strictly private letter from me to the
people of Drake, who have done so much to damage my reputation in the eyes of
their children and then in the eyes of the world. Do you have the courage and
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ordinary decency to show this letter to the people, or will it, too, be consigned to
the fires of your furnace? I gather from what I read in the papers and hear on
television that you imagine me, and some other writers, too, as being sort of
ratlike people who enjoy making money from poisoning the minds of young
people.
…I am a combat infantry veteran from World War-II, and hold a Purple Heart….I
have never been arrested or sued for anything….Every year I receive at least a
dozen invitations to be commencement speaker at colleges and high schools. My
books are probably more widely used in schools than those of any other living
American fiction writer. If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as
educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue
in favour of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more
responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak
coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Specially soldiers and
hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that.
And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much, They
didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.
After I have said all this, I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, “yes,
yes -- but it still remains our right and our responsibility to decide what books our
children are going to be made to read in our community.” This is surely so. But it
is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an
ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad
citizens and fools….Well, you have discovered that Drake is a part of American
civilisation, and your fellow Americans can’t stand it that you have behaved in
such an uncivilised way. Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to
free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations
which hate books and burn them….Again: you have insulted me, and I am a good
citizen, and I am very real.
That was seven years ago there has so far been no reply.…A school board has
denounced some books again -- out in Levittown this time. One of the books was
mine. I hear about un-American nonsense like this twice a year or so. One time
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out in North Dakota, the books were actually burned in a furnace. I had a laugh. It
was such an ignorant, dumb, superstitious thing to do. It was so cowardly, too -to make a great show of attacking artifacts. It was like St. George attacking
bedspreads and cuckoo clocks. Yes, and St. Georges like that seem to get elected
or appointed to school committees all the time. They are actually proud of their
illiteracy. They imagine that they are somehow celebrating the bicentennial when
they boast, as some did in Levittown, that they hadn’t actually read the books they
banned….Here is how I propose to end book-banning in this country once and for
all: Every candidate for school committee should be hooked up to a lie-detector
and asked this question: “Have you read a book from start to finish since high
school? Or did you even read a book from start to finish in high school?” If the
truthful answer is “no”, then the candidate should be told politely that he cannot
get on the school committee and blow off his big bazoo about how books make
children crazy. Whenever ideas are squashed in this country, literate lovers of the
American experiment write careful and intricate explanations of why all ideas
must be allowed to live. It is time for them to realise that they are attempting to
explain America at its bravest and most optimistic to orangutans. And there will
be millions who are bewildered and heart-broken by the legal victory, who think
some things should never be said -- specially about religion. They are in the
wrong place at the wrong time. I will not speak directly to the rejection of my
book Slaughterhouse-Five from the school libraries of Island Trees. I have a
vested interest. I wrote the book, after all, so why wouldn’t I argue that it is less
repulsive than the school board says?10
This impressive letter by Vonnegut to the chairman of Drake School Board
expresses his deep concern for the children of his nation. Being an American, he feels, he
has the duty and responsibility to take care that his literature motivates the children to
learn something useful and that it would also enhance their knowledge. According to
him, it is un-American to neither read the book nor let others read it. It is also unAmerican to squash the ideas of anyone, specially an American with a high reputation.
As the novel was being finished in 1968, America saw the assassinations of
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. In the South, Blacks and their supporters
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were struggling to overturn centuries of racial inequality under the law. At times, the
struggle became violent. Never before had young people felt so certain in their rebellion
against their parents and their parents' values. Also, the United States was involved in a
costly and unpopular war in Vietnam. To the American people, the offensive showed that
the war in Vietnam would be far more costly. It was costlier than the politicians in
Washington had promised. Besides, America was involved in a morally dubious and
costly war in a Third World country. In the United States opposition to the war grew, but
in Vietnam the killing continued. The Americans would eventually suffer fifty thousand
dead, but the Vietnamese would pay a much heavier price. Millions of Vietnamese died,
many of them from heavy bombing. The United States dropped more explosives on
Vietnam than it had dropped in the whole of World War-II, including the bombings of
Dresden and Hiroshima.
Slaughterhouse-Five is an earnest anti-war novel. Vonnegut's own war
experiences turned him into a pacifist. Like his protagonist, Vonnegut was present at
Dresden as a prisoner of war when American bombers wiped the city off the face of the
earth. The bombing, which took place on February 13, 1945, was the most terrible
massacre in European history. In Europe's long and often bloody history, never had so
many people been killed so quickly. The novel is disjointed and unconventional. Its
structure reflects this important idea: there is nothing you can say to adequately explain a
massacre. Part of Vonnegut's project was to write an antidote to the war narratives that
made war look like an adventure worth having.
As given in the Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography: Broadening
Views, 1968-1988: “On the title page of Slaughterhouse-Five Vonnegut invites the reader
to see the book as a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of
the planet Tralfamadore.” It has short chapters and paragraphs, with small sets of
sentences or paragraphs with spaces between them. The novel has a physical resemblance
to the Tralfamadorian model. Many of the juxtaposed segments do not relate sequentially
or thematically but together build a total impression like a montage. Events from two
periods (1944-1945 and 1968) and from other points in the life of the protagonist, Billy
Pilgrim, are intermixed. His life is not revealed chronologically, by beginning in medias
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res, or by flashback. Rather, the reader knows its end from the start, and the parts are
filled in, from all segments of his life, as it progresses.
During the February 13, 1945 firebombing by Allied aircrafts, the prisoners took
shelter in an underground meat-locker. They saw that: “American fighter planes came in
under the smoke to see if anything was moving. They saw Billy and the rest moving
down there. The planes sprayed them with machine-gun bullets, but the bullets missed.
Then they saw some other people moving down by the riverside and they shot at them.
They hit some of them. So it goes. The idea was to hasten the end of the war” (131).
When they emerged, the city had been levelled and they were forced to dig
corpses out of the rubble. The following detailed description of the harrowing effort is
really heart-rendering:
A German soldier with a flashlight went down into the darkness, was gone a long
time. When he finally came back, he told a superior on the rim of the hole that
there were dozens of bodies down there. They were sitting on benches. They were
unmarked. So it goes. The superior said that the opening in the membrane should
be enlarged and that a ladder should be put in the hole, so that the bodies could be
carried out. Thus, began the first corpse mine in Dresden. There were hundreds of
corpse mines operating by and by. They didn’t smell at first, were wax museums.
But then the bodies rotted and liquefied, and the stink was like roses and mustard
gas. …The Maori Billy had worked with died [dead] of the dry heaves, after
having been ordered to go down in that stink and work. He tore himself to pieces,
throwing up and throwing up. So it goes. So, a new technique was devised.
Bodies weren’t brought up anymore. They were cremated by soldiers with flamethrowers right where they were. The soldiers stood outside the shelters, simply
sent the fire in. Somewhere in there the poor old high school teacher, Edgar
Derby, was caught with a teapot he had taken from the catacombs. He was
arrested for plundering. He was tried and shot. So it goes” (157).
Even before writing this novel, Vonnegut recalled all these incidents which were
there in his mind for twenty-three years. He had already discussed them with his old war
buddy named Bernard V.O’ Hare. He had said: “I think the climax of the book will be the
execution of poor old Edgar Derby. The irony is so great. A whole city gets burned down
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and thousands and thousands of people are killed. And then this one American foot
soldier is arrested in the ruins for taking a teapot. And he’s given a regular trial, and then
he’s shot by a firing squad”(4). The devastation of Dresden was boundless. The story of
Billy Pilgrim is the story of Kurt Vonnegut. He was captured and survived the firestorm
in which a large number of German civilians perished. Hence, Robert Scholes thus sums
up the theme of Slaughterhouse-Five in the New York Times Book Review: “Be kind.
Don't hurt. Death is coming for all of us anyway, and it is better to be lot’s wife looking
back through salty eyes than the Deity that destroyed those cities of the plain in order to
save them. It can be concluded that Slaughterhouse- Five is an extraordinary success. It is
a book we need to read, and to reread.”11
The popularity of Slaughterhouse-Five is due, in part, to its timeliness. It deals
with many issues that were vital to the late sixties: war, ecology, overpopulation and
consumerism. Appropriately, Klinkowitz, writing in Literary Subversions: New American
Fiction and the Practice of Criticism, sees larger reasons for the book's success: “Kurt
Vonnegut's fiction of the 1960s is the popular artifact which may be the fairest example
of American cultural change….Shunned as distastefully low-brow… and insufficiently
commercial to suit the exploitative tastes of high-power publishers, Vonnegut's fiction
limped along for years on the genuinely democratic basis of family magazine and pulp
paperback circulation. Then in the late 1960s, as the culture as a whole exploded,
Vonnegut was able to write and publish a novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. It so perfectly
caught America's transformative mood that its story and structure became best-selling
metaphors for the new age.”12
According to The Economist’s obituary dated 21 April, 2007, “The firebombing
of Dresden explains absolutely nothing about why I write what I write and am what I
am,” Vonnegut wrote in Fates Worse than Death, his 1991 autobiography of sorts. He
further added, “I think it had not freed me, I think it freed writers, because the Vietnam
War made our leadership and our motives so scruffy and essentially stupid, that we could
finally talk about something bad that we did to the worst people imaginable, the Nazis.
And what I saw, what I had to report, made war look so ugly. You know, the truth can be
really powerful stuff.”
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As far as “nationality” is concerned, Kurt Vonnegut has much to say about it. He
has spoken much in favour of his country America in his most popular novel
Slaughterhouse-Five. Generally, he criticised and emphasised the weaknesses of the
nation and its people. According to him, they have illogical thinking and inappropriate
behaviour. One thing he believes is that Americans are creative and hardworking. He said
that Billy Pilgrim’s mother liked so many Americans: “…she was trying to construct a
life that made sense from things she found in gift shops” (Slaughterhouse-Five, 28). But:
“The Americans, with Billy among them, formed a fools’ parade on the road outside”.
This picture of parade was widely published two days later as: “It was evidence of how
miserably equipped the American Army often was, despite its reputation for being rich”
(42). Billy’s group was joined by more Americans with their hands on the top of their
heads. The Americans did not have the road to themselves. One drunken soldier in black
was enjoying a picnic all by himself on top of a tank. “He spit on the Americans” (47).
Howard W. Campbell Jr. was an American and was known as a Nazi in Germany.
He was a fairly well-known playwright at one time. He thus wrote in the opening lines of
his supposed monograph about the American prisoners of war: “America is the wealthiest
nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate
themselves….It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a
nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but
extremely wise and virtuous…. No such tales are told by the Americans who are poor.
They mock themselves and glorify their betters” (93). He added: “Americans, like human
beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue, their most destructive
untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money…. those who have no
money blame and blame and blame themselves” (94). He then ironically added: “…many
novelties have come from America. The most starting of these,
…are a mass of
undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves. …it
is genuine expression of hatred for the poor, who have no one to blame for their misery
but themselves” (ibid).
American prisoners of war were taken to a building built as a shelter for pigs
about to be butchered. One hundred of them were going to be kept there. There was a big
number five over the door of the building. Before the Americans could enter their shelter,
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their guard told them to remember that address: “schlachthof-funf” which meant
Slaughterhouse-Five. Derby, the doomed high school teacher, also spoke about America.
He said that in American form of government, there is freedom and justice. Everybody
gets equal opportunities for everything. Everybody would like to die for “those ideals”.
He also spoke of brotherhood between American and Russian people. He told how those
two nations were going to abolish Nazism, which was harming the whole world.
As far as “racial identity” is concerned, Vonnegut has said much about it in
Slaughterhouse-Five. In one instance, Billy went to sleep with his head on the shoulders
of an un-protesting captain. The captain was a Chaplain. He was a rabbi (Jew) and he had
been shot through the hand. When Billy opened his eyes, a German was kicking his feet.
He told him to wake up, that it was time for all the non-Jews to move on while all the
Jews there were killed. A professor in the University of Chicago told him about the
concentration camps where all the Jews were tortured and killed. He also told about how
the Germans had made soap and candles out of the fat of dead Jews. He put it thus: “Only
the candles and the soaps were of German origin.”The British had no way of knowing it.
Then he added: “But the candles and the soaps were made from the fat of rendered Jews
and Gypsies and communists”(69). They were also made from the fat of other enemies of
the state. Dresden-firebombing was the basis for Slaughterhouse-Five. It was the defining
event in Vonnegut’s life and it formed the basis of the book. The book was published in
1969 against the backdrop of war in Vietnam, racial unrest and cultural and social
upheaval.
Shortly before Kurt Vonnegut’s father died, he said to him, “…you know -- you
never wrote a story with a villain in it”(6). He told his father that that was one of the
things he learned in college after war. The Dresden bombing had a strong effect on him
and it instilled war-hatred in him. It is obvious from his instruction to his sons that they
were not under any circumstances to take part in massacres. Also, that they should not
work for companies which manufacture machinery for massacre. They were told to
express contempt for people who think they need machinery like that. According to
Vonnegut, he was the only one person on the entire planet who benefited from the
bombing. He told that he had received about three dollars for every corpse. He was also
given the honour of Purple Heart for his service at Dresden. The Purple Heart is a United
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States military decoration award in the name of the President of the United States. It is
given to those who are wounded or killed while serving in or with the United States
military after April 5, 1917.
The views of Bapsi Sidhwa on racial identity and nationality are crystal clear. Her
books selected for the study are The Crow Eaters and An American Brat. She brings
together for the first time her five novels and one collection of short stories. She did a
pioneering work -- a “labour of love”, of giving her community an international voice.
She writes in the preface to The Crow Eaters that she has “a deep-rooted admiration” for
her community. She also writes of her having “an enormous affection for its few
eccentricities”. On a sociological level, Sidhwa’s work is crucial to an understanding of
the cultural complexities of post-independence Pakistan.
She was born in 1938 in Karachi in an eminent family. Her parents, Peshotan and
Tehmina Bhandara, belonged to the Parsee community. She has described her community
with warmth and humour in her novel The Crow Eaters. Soon after Sidhwa was born, her
family moved to Lahore. This city is central to her novels. In Lahore, however, there
were few Parsees. So, the Bhandara family was cut off from the mainstream Parsee life.
Their mother tongue was Gujarati, but they were also comfortable in Urdu and Punjabi
culture of Lahore. Furthermore, belonging, as they did, to Pakistan’s Anglicised elite,
they spoke English at home too. This multi-lingual, multi-cultural background is pivotal
to Sidhwa’s work.
After the completion of her novel, The Bride, Sidhwa began to write her second
novel, The Crow Eaters. The novel is named after a disrespectful slang about the Parsees,
as they are known for their talkative nature. Sidhwa belongs to this diminishing
community of about one hundred and twenty thousand people, settled mainly in Bombay.
The Crow Eaters is a comedy and, as such, it is entirely different from her previous work.
It tells the story of a family of the small Parsee Community residing within the huge city
of Lahore. This novel provides sufficient historical information and is rich with bawdy
humour. It is also made interesting by Sidhwa’s acute sense of humour. It constantly
changes from the artful to the downright unpleasant. Nothing is above this humour. It
often leaves the reader feeling guilty for laughing out loud. The main character,
Faredoon, continuously torments his mother-in-law Jerbanoo, especially about her self-
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indulgent complaints of impending death. Some of the most hilarious moments include
Faredoon’s detailed and gory description of her funeral. The Parsees practise charity in
life as well as in death, and their funeral custom of feeding the body to the vultures
reflects this belief. Sidhwa had no real English language literary ancestor in Pakistan.
Also, Pakistani English writing did not offer any literary predecessor to the bawdy
humour of her second novel, The Crow Eaters. Its ribaldry too was rare for South Asian
English fiction at the time. The focus on the Parsee Community was most unusual too.
Sidhwa’s work preceded that of other major South Asian English writers of
Parsee origin. At first The Crow Eaters did not find any publisher. In 1978 Sidhwa
herself published the novel in Pakistan and it was subsequently published by Jonathan
Cape in Britain in 1980. It spanned some forty years from 1900 to 1940. The Crow Eaters
is an enormously funny novel set in pre-partition Lahore. Sidhwa uses comedy very
effectively to describe the customs and history of the Parsee community. She also uses it
to describe the presence of the British Raj. The plot of the novel revolves around the
main character, Faredoon or Freddy Junglewalla, who is a Parsee businessman. The novel
also depicts the story of his migration. He shifted from Bombay to Lahore with his wife
Putli and his mother-in-law Jerbanoo. Freddy’s many attempts to kill Jerbanoo in Lahore
provide some of the interesting and humorous passages in the book. Freddy’s use of
inaccurate English and his habit to misquote English proverbs enhance the humour.
Sidhwa thus describes Freddy’s pointing out that Jerbanoo always takes the choicest food
at the family table:
Wagging a long retributive finger across the table, wildly misconstruing the
English text, he thundered: “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings! Yes, you
are eating out of the mouths of babes and sucklings!”
Not understanding the words but impressed nevertheless, the table waited in
nervous suspense for him to continue. Jerbanoo squirmed in her chair, hatefully
conscious of his stern, ascetic eyes and wagging finger. Whatever it was he said,
there was no doubt in her mind that the thundering sentences were meant to vilify,
condemn and annihilate her. 13
The Crow Eaters is an extraordinary tale of very ordinary people. It is a fast
moving story full of humour and life. Bapsi Sidhwa has a magical power of creating very
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strong characters in her fiction. The title refers to the Parsees of India, the descendants of
Persian immigrants. They are renowned for their generosity and good citizenship. They
are also known for their lovable eccentricities that included their propensity for excessive
talking and chattering away like crows. The novel is hilarious and touching in turn and
traces the history of one family in the early part of twentieth century. Based partly on
Sidhwa’s parents and drawing on scandals from real life, the book succeeds in exposing
life in the Parsee community. A child born of Zoroastrian parents is not considered a
Zoroastrian until he is formally initiated into the Zarathusti faith in Navjote ceremonies.
The Parsees have a peculiar way of living. They even dress themselves in a different
style. According to Sidhwa:
The Parsee women whom they ogled tied their heavy silk saris differently, with a
triangular piece in front displaying broad, exquisitely embroidered borders. The
knotted tassels of their kustis dangled as if pyjama strings were tied at the back
and white mathabanas peeked primly from beneath sari-covered heads. They
never appear in public without it. Their outward symbol of faith is the undershirt
called sudreh for men and kustis for women, which are girded to serve the Lord of
life and wisdom. The men wore crisp pyjamas, flowing white coats fastened with
neat little bows, and flat turbans. They looked quite distinctive (56).
The Parsees have a compelling sense of duty and obligation towards other
Parsees. They assist each other like members of a large close-knit family. They share
success and rally to support failure. As a result, there is no Parsee beggar seen anywhere.
The rich Parsees donate a big portion of their earning to charity. They are notorious
misers but, paradoxically, generous to a cause. They worship in the Fire Temple. Fire to
the Parsees symbolises God’s cosmic creation and spiritual nature of His Eternal Truth.
Their dead bodies are taken to the “Tower of Silence”. They are kept open for the
vultures to devour, which is considered to be the final act of charity. Moreover, Sidhwa
has tried to highlight the Parsees’ belief that the “Freedom of choice is a cardinal doctrine
in the teaching of Zarathustra” (124). But in the novel, Yazdi, the son of the main
character, Faredoon, is not given freedom to marry the girl of his choice. As a result, he
devoted his life exclusively to the Almighty. Everything Sidhwa had described
beautifully about her race was difficult to be accepted by the Parsees. She also shows the
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community’s quest for an identity in the British Raj. She uses deceptively simple style
and juxtaposes incidents and characters. The Crow Eaters is a comic story of the life of
Faredoon Junglewalla and his family in pre-partition Pakistan. It is the story of a Parsee
family that moves to the bustling city of Lahore. It was founded by Luv, the son of Lord
Ram. Lahore quickly absorbed the Junglewallas in its stride. Among the unforgettable
cast were the patriarch Faredoon Junglewalla and his nemesis, his very own mother-inlaw, the one and only Jerbanoo. Their thorny relationship and the plots they devise for
each other have the reader doubled over with laughter.
Faredoon Junglewalla saw no future for himself in his ancestral village in Central
India. He decided to find his fortune in the hollowed pastures of the Punjab. He loaded
his belongings onto a bullock cart, which included his widowed mother-in-law who was
eleven-years older than him, and his pregnant wife, Putli, six-years younger. The cart was
a wooden platform on wheels. It was fifteen feet long and ten feet across. His family
lived within the covered bamboo and canvas structure on it. Their belongings were kept
on the rear of it. They travelled at night and slept soundly until dawn. They occasionally
spent the day in town. Besides the routine problems, Freddy also had two serious
problems. One of them was the “ungentlemanly behaviour” of his rooster and the other
was the unpleasant arguing nature of his mother-in-law. In order to get fresh supply of
eggs daily, Putli had kept on the cart a chicken cage including three hens and a cock.
Freddy objected to it but in vain, since Freddy knew:
The rooster was her favourite. A handsome, long-legged creature with a majestic
red comb and flashy up-curled tail, he hated being cooped up with the hens in the
rear of the cart. At dawn he awoke the household with shrill, shattering crows that
did not cease until Putli let the birds out of their coop…. Freddy’s troubles with
the rooster began a fortnight after the start of their journey. Freddy had already
devised means to overcome the hurdles impeding his love life….Sitting down by
her side, he would point out landmarks or comment on the serenity of the
landscape. A few moments later, reddening under her resigned and knowing look,
he would offer some lame excuse and leave her to partake of the scene alone.
Freddy would then race back to the cart, pulled the canvas flaps close and fling
himself into the welcoming arms of his impatient wife.
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One momentous evening the rooster happened to chance into the shelter. Cocking
his head to one side, he observed Freddy’s curious exertions with interest.
Combining a shrewd sense of timing with humour, he suddenly hopped up and
with a minimum of flap or fuss planted himself firmly upon Freddy’s amorous
buttocks. Nothing could distract Freddy at that moment. Deep in his passion,
subconsciously thinking the pressure was from his wife’s rapturous fingers,
Freddy gave the cock the ride of his life. Eyes asparkle, wings stretched out for
balance, the cock held on to his rocking perch like an experienced rodeo rider. It
was only after Freddy sagged into a sated stupor, nerves uncurled with languor,
that the cock raising both his tail and his neck, crowed, ‘Coo-ka-roo-coooo!’
Freddy reacted as if a nuclear device had been set off in his ears. He sprang
upright, and the surprised Putli sat up just in time to glimpse the nervous rooster
scurry out between the flaps. Putli doubled over with laugher; a phenomenon so
rare that Freddy, overcoming his murderous wrath, subsided at her feet with a
sheepish grin. Freddy took the precaution of tying the flaps securely and all went
well the next few times. But the rooster, having tasted the cup of joy, was eager
for another sip. (14-15).
Once again the rooster found a hole in the canvas and heard a confusing noise on
the mattress. He got the opportunity to slip in quietly. But Freddy was conscious of the
cock’s presence this time. Freddy jumped up when he heard the cock’s crow. If Putli had
not stopped him, he would have killed the rooster. Freddy decided to get rid of the rooster
as he troubled him again and he got this awaited chance soon. It was when once:
At dawn they had stopped on the outskirts of a village. Jerbanoo, obedient to the
call of nature, was wading into a field of maize with earthenware mug full of
toilet water, when out from behind a haystack appeared a buffalo. He stood still,
his great, black head and red eyes looking at her across the green expanse of
maize. Jerbanoo froze in the knee-high verdure. The domestic buffalo is normally
very docile, but this one was mean. She could tell by the defiant tilt of his head
and by the intense glow in his fierce eyes. Cautiously bending her knees, Jerbanoo
attempted to hide among the stalks. But the buffalo, with a downward toss of the
head, began his charge.
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“Help!” screamed Jerbanoo, dropping her mug. Lifting the skirt of her sari with
one hand, she fled towards the cart.
“Get to one side, change your direction!” yelled Freddy, gesticulating with both
arms. Terrified into imbecility, Jerbanoo continued to dash in a straight line ahead
of the buffalo. “Move this way, move away!” shouted Freddy, waving his arms
east and west and running to her (16).
The owner of the beast looked all this from his field, and by shouting and waving
his shirt, changed the direction of the buffalo. Jerbanoo was extremely worried and upset.
Freddy was concerned for his mother-in-law for the last time. Putli was thankful to her
husband for his timely effort and help to save her mother. Freddy got the opportunity to
remove his enemy, rooster, from his way and he said:
“God has saved us from a great calamity today,” he declared after supper. “We
owe Him thousands, nay millions of thanks for His grace in preventing bloodshed.
As soon as we are settled near a Fire Temple, I will order a jashan of
thanksgiving at our new home. Six Mobeds will pray over enough holy fruit,
bread and sweetmeats to distribute amongst a hundred beggars… but it might be
too late! We have been warned, the earth thirsts for blood! I intend to sacrifice the
cock tonight.” Putli gasped and paled. “Oh cannot you sacrifice one of the hens
instead?” she pleaded. “It has to be the cock, I am afraid,” said Freddy, permitting
his lowered head to sink sadly. “We all love charming fellow, I know, but you
cannot sacrifice something you do not care for-- there is no point in it”. “Yes,
yes,” agreed Jerbanoo vehemently. After all it was her blood the earth thirsted
after—her life they were talking about! Putli nodded pensively. (17)
But actually he wanted to get rid of the cock who was a big hindrance in his
romantic life. So, he did what he had decided. As his ox-drawn cart labours north,
Faredoon Junglewalla has no destination in mind. He just has faith, as all Parsees have,
that he will know it when he sees it. In Lahore his faith is rewarded. Inspired by the small
Parsee community rushing to greet him, he settles in then and there. He opens a store and
keeps his wife and her mother, Jerbanoo, on the floor above. As years pass and his wealth
increases, Jerbanoo’s desires also increase. But their hatred for each other is more than
anything. Still, Faredoon is a realist. His family grew, prospered and his name was
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invoked in all major ceremonies performed in Punjab and Sind. He spent his leisure with
his seven children and young visitors of the evening talking to them about history,
practicality of life and religion.
The Junglewallas left Bombay four days after the wedding of their son Billy with
Tanya. The celebration was so grand that people could not forget it. It is described thus:
It was a memorable wedding. Years after people still talked about it. Five
thousand guests had assembled to witness the wedding ceremony that took place
on a flower-bedecked stage. Hedges had been levelled in the compound of the Taj
Mahal Hotel to clear parking space for carriages and limousines. Openings were
dug in the walls dividing the banquet rooms, reception rooms and lobby of the
Hotel to accommodate guests. It was to facilitate the flow of service. Flowers
were commissioned from Banglore and Hyderabad, cheeses from Surat, and
caviar from the Persian Gulf. There was lobster, wild duck and venison. There
was a bottle of Scotch and Burgundy for each guest. The ambulances and their
motors idling stood ready to convey the inebriated or overstuffed to their homes
or to the hospital. Two hundred Parsee families, living in a charitable housing
scheme, were not invited to the party. They were each given a sack of flour, a tenpound canister of rarefied butter, lentils and a box of Indian sweets each. There
was a police band, a naval band, a dance orchestra and an orchestra that played
chamber music. There was singing (224).
The celebration continued till morning. Tanya and Billy left their wedding
reception. They collected their luggage and went to the station. They were seen off by
their immediate families. Everybody and everything at home was the same. The morning
routine changed when the thunder box was replaced by the flush system. One morning
Jerbanoo, hoisting the curtain, announced, “Have you heard? I just heard on the radio;
England and Germany have made war! We are going to fight!” (277).
Billy got the iron-scrap deal within an hour of the news. Everybody in the house
relaxed with Billy’s departure to the office. The children started talking and enjoying.
The servants shouted to each other. And his wife, Tanya, went for her routine tasks.
Freddy governed his house with the aid of maxims, putting his foot down only if
someone’s conduct was absurd or destructive while Billy always kept his foot down. He
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tyrannised his house, governing chiefly through Tanya. His commandments were directed
at her. They were, in order of preference:
Thou shalt not spend money!
Thou shalt not waste.
Thou shalt give me a minutely detailed account of expenses.
Thou shalt obey thy husband and jump to his bidding.
Thou shalt bring up thy children to obey and to love me more than they do you.
Thou shalt never require anything.
Thou and thy children shall not disturb me.
Thou shalt switch off all lights and fans. (278)
Billy had many commandments. It was because he like few other people wanted
to dominate his family. Tanya had a tough time ensuring that her husband had no
complaints against her. She was more concerned about Billy because he had been the first
man to satisfy her. He was her first love. Besides, Billy was rich beyond her imagination.
She thought that she was the wife of the richest man on the land.
The story takes twists, turns and goes from one generation to the other. The
descriptions are lively. The pace and humour make a perfect combination to transform
the story. There is a magical change in the story. This change is as in a tale of love. In the
end, however, the importance of family ties comes through in a way that is not touching
and amusing. The Crow Eaters is a comic novel, stuffed with rich, spicy characters.
Sidhwa makes every step of Faredoon's journey through time a joy to read. Sidhwa’s
most formidable asset as a storyteller is her comic imagination. One daily aptly put it:
“Her first published novel, The Crow Eaters, is a triumph in revelry. There is a very little
that Sidhwa’s deft pen misses as she creates an array of delightful, idiosyncratic Parsees.
The result is a gallery of vivid, lovable rogues, with pragmatic hero Freddy Junglewalla,
and his mother-in-law, the riotous Jerbanoo, head the list of unforgettable characters.” 14
Writers like Bapsi Sidhwa enriched the English language in their search for new means of
expression. She adapted native proverbs and phrases. She wove them into her writing, so
that the whole language seemed to receive a new rhythm. Bapsi Sidhwa must be hailed as
a trailblazer and The Crow Eaters a minor masterpiece. It should make the readers realise
the proper role of English in India. It is not merely that of “a window on the world” but as
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a medium through which everybody could look in. It could also be assimilated and
enjoyed slowly in order to appreciate what this sub-continent has to offer.
When The Crow Eaters first came out, it sparked a lot of anger towards her from
the Parsee community. Even those who had not actually read the book were angry.
People were offended by the title. They just were not happy that Sidhwa had written
about the Parsees. Since then, of course, opinions have changed. As a wonderful writer,
today she is a source of pride for the Parsees as well as for all Pakistanis and Indians. The
Crow Eaters is a lively and humorous story about the Parsee community of Pakistan. The
title of the book is translation of a term used for Parsees who are stereotyped as being
excessively loud and talkative. But she did not become successful overnight. She wrote
her first two novels in Pakistan where none of them was published in English at the time.
So, after receiving many rejections, Sidhwa decided to publish and distribute herself The
Crow Eaters and The Bride. She said that it was very frustrating to peddle her own books
as she did in Lahore. She went from bookstore to bookstore requesting to read The Crow
Eaters.
Bookstore owners showed little interest, often criticising the title of the book. This
process was so discouraging that Sidhwa stopped writing for about five years. After two
years, in 1980, after receiving a copy of the book published by her, The Crow Eaters,
Britain’s Jonathan Cape decided to publish it. An agent showed The Crow Eaters to
Jonathan Cape. This time around, their editor Liz Colter wrote a delightful letter of
acceptance within two weeks of receiving it, recalls Sidhwa. This novel, The Crow
Eaters, brought Bapsi Sidhwa recognition. It was at this time that Sidhwa felt encouraged
enough to pick up her pen and write again. She believes that The Crow Eaters also has
some degree of autobiographical element. She based the parents’ characters in it on her
own parents.
Marriages in Parsees are allowed in their own community only. They did not
allow their sons or daughters to marry non-Parsees. In The Crow Eaters, Yazdi, the son
of Faredoon, tries to convince everyone in his family that it hardly matters if his beloved
is not a Parsee. That she is a human being and a fine person. He tells his father that she is
better than any Parsee. His father, Freddy, who did not agree with him, said: “You are too
young to understand these things…. Maybe I am too old to understand you. But there is
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one thing I would like to explain to you… it is what our ancestors professed; and our race
will go on believing till the end of time. You may think what I have to say is non-sense,
but once you are past a certain age, you will see the wisdom and truth of these thoughts, I
promise you”(128). Freddy is a spokesman and leader of the Parsees scattered over rest
of Punjab, etc. He strongly supports the beliefs and traditions of his community. He has
his reasons for it. He said that he believed in “some kind of tiny spark”. It is passed on
from one generation to another through their parents. It means that it is a “kind of
inherited memory of wisdom and righteousness”(ibid). Zarathustra then passed it on to
Magi and then Mazdiasnians. It is tenderly nurtured and perfectly preserved as it is.
Faredoon is a good leader and representative of his race. He knew how to put
forward his thoughts convincingly without hurting the feelings of others. But he did not
know that his own son, the true lover, had no effect of his father’s rich experience and
strong abilities and was hurt deeply. His father further said to him: “I am not saying only
we have the spark. Other people have it too: Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists…
they too have developed pure strains through generations. But what happens if you marry
outside our kind? The spark so delicately nurtured, so subtly balanced, meets something
totally alien and unmatched. Its precise balance is scrambled. It reverts to the primitive”.
And he praised himself saying that he has passed on all good qualities like compassion,
honesty creativity, etc., in inheritance to his children. He explained to his son that by
marrying a non-Parsee against the wishes of the family, he would not harm himself only
but also the honour of the family. Freddy warned him that his future generations would
not have any of his qualities. Finally, the boy did not have any option but to forget his
love. Freddy realised that Yazdi was irreparably wounded. As a result, the boy dropped
his education and Freddy’s worst fears came true. He (Yazadi) completely devoted
himself to the charity(129).
Ferdoon’s son Soli died of typhoid after suffering for about a fortnight. An
elaborate death ceremony, typical of the Parsees, began amidst deep grief. The body was
bathed and dressed. Reciting prayers, a kusti was wrapped around his waist. The body
was taken to the Fire Temple as there was no “Tower of Silence” in Lahore. The pallbearers and priests took special pains to see that each detail of the ritual was correctly
observed. The other people went to their homes in the evening except the family,
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relatives and friends. All through the night, the priest chanted and recited the Aveston
scriptures. In the morning again the people kept coming to have a last look and bow
before it.
Once the sacred rites are performed over the body, people of other faiths are not
permitted to look upon it. When Freddy saw it, he said: “They had stood all this while to
see my son: let them. What does it matter if they are no Parsees? They are my brothers;
and if I can look upon my son’s face, so can they!”(179). So, people were allowed to pay
their last tributes to the boy. The ceremony went on for another four days. It ended with
Freddy’s announcement of constructing a school in Karachi. All the family members
visited the grave on the fifth day. Due to the less number of Parsees, there are no
professional pall-bearers. So, their own relatives had to volunteer for the lot.
In The Crow Eaters, Bapsi Sidhwa has expressed her views about her tiny
diminishing community of Parsees. It has a legend of honesty, sense of honour and
tradition of humour. There are hardly a hundred and twenty thousand Parsees in the
world. But they still maintain their identity. One thousand and three hundred years ago at
the time of Arab invasion, they were booted out of Persia. Some of their ancestors fled to
India. They brought with them their sacred fires. Here the prince Yadav Rana provided
them shelter. But his conditions for the shelter were: not to eat beef, not to wear rawhide
sandals and not to convert the susceptible masses. The Parsee [ancestors] meekly
promised to obey him. As a result, to this day there are no conversions or mixed
marriages in the Parsees. The Parsees also had good compatibility with the Britishers and
enjoyed high posts with them. Faredoon frankly told his family: “…For us the sun rises -and sets -- in the Englishman’s arse. They are our sovereigns! …Next to the nawabs,
Rajas and princelings, we are the greatest toadies of the British Empire! These are not
ugly words, mind you. They are the sweet dictates of our delicious need to exist, to live
and prosper in peace. Otherwise, where would we Parsees be? Cleaning out gutters with
the untouchables -- a dispersed pinch of snuff sneezed from the heterogeneous nostrils of
India!” (12).
Freddy further told his children about the Parsees: “…in looking after our
interests we have maintained our strength -- the strength to advance the grand cosmic
plan of Ahura Mazda -- the deep spiritual law which governs the universe, the path of
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Asha”(ibid). The Parsees’ important ceremonies are thanksgiving and death anniversary.
They were celebrated by ancient Persian kings and saints, and all those who have served
the community since the Parsees migrated to India. Faredoon Junglewalla rescued his
mother-in-law from the attack of a buffalo. He wanted to thank God for it by distributing
fruit, bread and sweetmeats amongst a hundred beggars. He intended to sacrifice their
loving cock too, though his actual motive was to take revenge from the cock for having
disturbed his love life.
The Parsees always live like one family. They do the charity by building schools,
hospitals and orphanages. They provide housing, scholarships and finances to the needy.
As far as their dressing habit is concerned, ladies always cover their heads with
mathabana. It is a white handkerchief wound around the hair to fit like a skull cap. A
holy thread circling their waist austerely displays itself beneath the short blouse. Jerbanoo
slept in a tight-sleeved, scoop-necked blouse and sari petticoat which is a long cotton
skirt gathered at the waist with a tape. The most interesting thing is that: “She blackened
her eyes and pressed two large spots of soot on her temples to protect herself from the
envious and evil eye”(41).
The Parsees were treated as untouchables in the ancient time. For example, one
Brahman priest cried: “Watch your step, babooji, and side-stepped nimbly to avoid the
preoccupied Parsee’s contaminating touch”(35).“Tower of Silence”, a bizarre graveyard,
is titled so by the British. Since the Parsees consider earth and fire holy, they do not bury
or cremate corpses. Instead, as a last act of charity, they leave the dead bodies exposed to
the sun and the birds of prey, mainly vultures, in these open-roofed circular structures.
There is the marble floor which slopes towards the deep hollow centre. The bones and
blood are collected there, and underground passages from the hollow are connected to
four deep wells which are outside the Tower. There are lime, charcoal and sulphur in the
wells which are an excellent filter. Its outer part is spacious enough for fifty male bodies.
Then there is space for fifty females. The dead children can be accommodated in the
innermost space, around the hollow. The height of the Tower is such that the vultures
trying to take away any part of the dead body crash against the wall. The hungry birds
hurriedly strip the body of all flesh. Not even the close relatives are allowed to go there to
see it. Only the professional pall-bearers are allowed to witness it. This custom of
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disposing of the dead originated in the rocky region of Persia and they considered it both
practical and hygienic. The Parsees live in great numbers in Bombay [Mumbai] because
there are four “Towers of Silence”. But the “Parsees who choose to settle in far-flung
areas have to be content with mere burial”(46). For instance, in cities like Lahore, where
there are too few Parsees, the community buries its dead.
Jerbanoo had been worried when she came to know that there was no “Tower of
Silence” in Lahore. Now when she was old and close to death, this worry troubled her all
the more. All Parsees want to feed their dead bodies to the vultures. Jerbanoo said, “It is
the final act of charity.” But “Those vultures were so fat they could barely fly. One of the
pall-bearers told me that your beloved Jehangirjee Chinimini’s right leg was still sticking
out heavenward -- uneaten a month after he was placed in the Tower! After all there’s a
limit to how much those overfed birds can eat!”, said Faredoon to his mother-in-law (47).
Generally, these vultures were found on the top branches of the sheesham.
Sympathetically, Jerbanoo commented, “…these poor birds are permitted to starve
despite all the Parsees we have in Lahore.…all these vultures are going to waste--such a
pity” (50).
Fire, for the Parsees, represents the Divine spark in every man, a spark of the
Divine Light. It is worshiped and symbolises the creation of God. Smoking is believed to
pollute the purity and holiness of fire with spit. So, it is strictly prohibited. It is regarded
to be a cardinal sin. Even the smell of tobacco is not allowed. The candles were put out
with pinch of the finger. The cooking fire was never permitted to be extinguished. It was
delicately preserved in ashes at night and rekindled in the morning. They believe that
blowing upon fire is sinful and the priests tending the temple fire have to take care that it
is not polluted by their spittle. Hence, they wear masks. The Parsees worship in Fire
Temple and also start the New Year with a visit to the Fire Temple.
The Parsees note down the time of the birth of their infants with the exactness of
Olympic Contests with help of a stop watch in hand at the time of delivery. It helps the
Hindu pandits to prepare the exact horoscope. Their other peculiarity is that they rarely
visit any place but when they pass away city station, the community celebrates the event.
It ends with a grand farewell, with the participation of the whole community. The Parsee
strangers, passing through the city, are also presented gifts.
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During the partition of India, all the communities felt involved in it except the
Parsees. Faredoon summarised the resolve of his community by saying softly: “We will
stay where we are… let Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, or whoever, rule. What does it matter?
The sun will continue to rise -- and the sun continues to set -- in their arses…!”(283).This
comment of his indicates that the Parsees tried to develop good relations with all, as they
felt insecure. Hence, they did not involve themselves with any community. Fardoon
explained to his family members sitting around him that if a Parsee involved himself in
any agitation, he would not get anything. He said that: “…The fools will break up the
country. The Hindus will have one part, Muslims the other. Sikhs, Bengalis, Tamils and
God knows who else will have their share; and they won’t want you!”(ibid). He meant
that the Parsees would not get any share. Due to this sense of insecurity regarding their
business, they were always indifferent. They kept themselves aloof and isolated like an
island. They remained neutral, not joining any side. That is the reason why they were not
bothered by the partition of India. Also, they were not troubled or tortured by any
community.
Bapsi Sidhwa is one of the renowned Pakistani writers in English. Her books have
been liked in Great Britain and the United States as well. In 1993, she published her
novel An American Brat. It is a comical reflection of the confusing friction the different
cultures impose upon the Pakistani girl, Feroza Ginwalla, in the United States. Her
lightest and least characteristic novel, it is also, in a strange and destructive way, her most
daring. It primarily deals with issues of dual nationality and questions of cultural identity
and racial difference, despite its being seemingly a completely harmless portrayal of the
adventures of its young protagonist Feroza in the United States of America. It also
describes the painful process of losing and breaking homes. Besides, it presents, in the
passing, an indirect metaphor for the uncertain position of so many diasporic writers
today. And though its heroine is a Parsee, she could be a young woman of any of the
subcontinent’s religious minorities. She has to choose between rampant sectarianism at
home and the experience of more hidden prejudices abroad.
The story of An American Brat opens in Lahore, one of the most historic and
beautiful cities of South Asia. Then it shifts to the United States. It revolves around a
Parsee girl and her life. It is about Feroza Ginwalla, the great-granddaughter of the
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Junglewalla family portrayed in Sidhwa’s previous novel, The Crow Eaters. An American
Brat is a coming-of-age story, a sensitive portrayed of how modern America appears to a
new arrival. In fact, it has an immense impact on her raw sensibility. The story also
highlights the political instability in Pakistan. It depicts the time when Bhutto
government was overthrown by martial law. Pakistan is a diverse country with different
people speaking different dialects. The Pakistanis adhere to different faiths, and are loyal
to many a political ideology. But it is also a country where, despite constitutional
safeguards, diversity is suppressed. Despite it, the people of Pakistan have shown
tremendous ability against assimilative and centralist forces. Out of one such resilient
community, the Parsees, comes Bapsi Sidhwa. She is Pakistan’s acclaimed English
language novelist. Her unique position in Pakistan is reflected in her work. For the
purpose, she draws upon her unique and rich experience.
It is the tale of a young Parsee girl Feroza, set in the late 1970s Lahore. It was a
trying time for Pakistan. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s popular Prime Minister, had
been overthrown and an army dictator had taken his place. The army dictator, Zial-ulHaq, was credited with or blamed for Islamisation of Pakistan. The rise of rigid thinking
in the country, of which Zia stands accused of being a proponent, disturbed the Parsees.
Zareen, Feroza’s mother, is weary of her daughter’s growing conservatism. She considers
it an anathema to the Parsee values which are, in her opinion, modern and progressive.
The dialogue between her husband, Cyrus, and herself in the first chapter reveals the
sentiments of the people prevalent at the time. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto clearly comes across
as a hero to the Parsee community, the representative of liberalism and progress and the
champion of women’s rights. Zia and his supporters, the Mullahs, are shown as exact
opposites. In the backdrop of this intense political environment, Zareen realises its impact
on Feroza’s personal life. Any political news, like Bhutto being ill-treated in the prison
and that he had grown thin, made their daughter Feroza depressed. Zareen wanted Feroza
to get out of even the belief that self-control and hard work are important. She wanted her
daughter to enjoy life like the Parsees do. So, she convinces her husband to send Feroza
to the United States for a few months. She faces opposition from her family and the
Parsee community in Lahore. But, in spite of it, Feroza, a sixteen-year-old Parsee from
Lahore, is shipped off to the United States. She has to oppose the effects of an
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increasingly intolerant Islam in late 1970’s Pakistan. She stays with her uncle Manek, a
graduate student at MIT. He is although only six years her senior, yet he is a crafty
veteran in the ways of America. It is mainly because of him that her planned threemonths’ visit turns into a four-year stay. Her youthful uncle, Zareen’s youngest sibling,
welcomes her. Her landing at the New York airport is not without an unpleasant incident,
though. She is stopped at immigration, and her bags are searched. Embarrassing
questions are hurled at her and her indignation is obvious in her response. Feroza enjoyed
her travel to America throughout the flight. But when she was in space, she felt it bad to
leave her country and friends behind. The feeling of self-respect was there with her
permanently and it increased her fear of the unknown.
At the airport, Feroza finally gathered the courage to ask a woman from where
she had taken her cart. The woman pointed out to the carts in line. Feroza was struggling
to hire one cart but she was confused and did not know how to go for it. She moved
hurriedly and came in front of the box and said: “It is my turn!”, though she realised that
she was being strange and rude. She caught hold of the cart handle. “I do not know how
to get this,” she exclaimed apologetically, appealing for help: “Can you show me?”15 She
held some dollar bills of different denominations out for the inspection. A youth came
close to her and showed her how to insert the dollar bill to hire a cart. Feroza kept her
suitcases and hand-luggage on the cart. She wished she could have talked to that fellow in
the same way like friends, but she was too self-conscious. In this way, she was trying to
define her new experience and none stared at her, as they would have done in Pakistan.
A sort of strange feeling was there in Feroza as she pushed the cart. She knew
none there. She was a complete stranger to others. She was happy to be suddenly so free
of the restrictions imposed on her in her country. She could further get relieved of them
with Manek’s help, who was barely six years older than her. In the beginning, Manek’s
constant efforts to prove America’s superiority over Pakistan to Feroza do not go down
well with her. She considers herself to be a patriotic Pakistani. Manek’s ridicule of Z. A.
Bhutto as the “socialist bastard” irritates Feroza. After a while, however, Manek and
Feroza come to terms with each other. Finally, Manek convinces Feroza to go to a
college in the United States. A convenient college with conservative Mormon values is
found in Twin Falls, Idaho and Feroza is packed off to it. This is where Feroza, the well-
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mannered and proper Pakistani Parsee girl, comes across her roommate, Jo, a fat, illmannered all-American girl.
Feroza’s uncle Manek, a student at MIT, guides her through a breathtaking
carnival of glossy magazines, designer jeans and deodorants. Although shy, Feroza is
temperamental, strong-willed, eager to learn and adjusting. Soon, Feroza and Jo become
close friends. At this juncture, the reader is made aware of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s hanging
in Pakistan. In many ways, one can describe it as the turning point for Feroza. After it,
she is gradually, but steadily, disillusioned by Pakistan and the Pakistani culture. Feroza
gets transferred to Denver, Colorado, with her friend Jo. Here she makes new friends,
including an Indian student whom she briefly dates but is not attracted to. Her extracurricular education includes learning how to cope with apartments in bad condition,
furniture from the Salvation Army and a libidinous roommate. She also learns to cope
with a friend who has strange habits. He steals from her to support his drug habit. He
loves bland cooking and uses street language. Soon enamoured of all things American,
Feroza persuades her family to let her stay long enough to complete college education.
She also convinces them that she will return to Pakistan to find a suitable husband. But
she falls in love and wants to marry an American Jew. Then she realises the extent of her
break with Pakistan and her family’s values.
To avoid religious fundamentalism’s effects on the young Parsee girl, Feroza was
sent to America. But it is said that someone is made for you somewhere and the girl finds
her soul-mate in America, a non-Parsee boy (Jew). This news shocks the family in
Pakistan because unlike America, religion is an issue in South Asia. One can see how a
simple girl moves to “gimme coke” from “May I have a Coca-Cola?”(154). Bapsi Sidhwa
demonstrates her remarkable ability to express adolescent emotions. She paints an
entertaining, often hilarious, portrait of sixteen-years-old Feroza Ginwalla’s adventures in
the United States. Feroza’s parents, members of the family from The Crow Eaters, send
her to America from an increasingly fundamentalist Pakistan. They are hopeful that the
exposure to American advancement will soften the girl’s conservative attitude. The
mullahs in Pakistan curtail the freedom of the individuals. They have imposed various
restrictions on ladies. Zareen never likes them to be imposed on the Parsees, who are not
traditional and orthodox. She tells her husband to imagine if Feroza can cycle to school
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then “…the mullahs would tell her to cover her head”(10). She is also doubtful if her
daughter will be allowed to wear any frock. If it continues, she is afraid Feroza will not
be able to mix up with the Parsees of Karachi or Bombay.
Feroza tries to adjust between the different cultures of Pakistan and America. She
was used to the smell of garbage and poverty that the poor in Pakistan had become
habitual of. But those were smells and sights she was used to and hence could tolerate
them. But this was different, filth of America, the smell of alcohol and of some neglected
old sick man. She realised that they personified the unkind heart of the rich country that
does not bother about the people who are ignored or neglected. She could not tolerate this
foul smell. Manek said, “...so, you have seen now, America is not all Saks and
skyscrapers”(81). She then feels, that all this shows the richness of the life and experience
she had come to America to explore. But Manek found that Feroza was finding it tough
to cope up with the life there. He said tauntingly: “...if Pakistani girls taught by nuns were
so vicious, what about the rest of the species?”(98). He wanted to taunt Feroza to make
her realise that though she was taught by nuns in the convent school of Pakistan,
supposed to be the most advanced and modern school, Yet she was unable to adjust
herself in America. Manek’s timely advice helped her adjust. Once he told her that there
is one thing Americans would not stand and that is being interrupted. It is considered
impolite and hateful. One has to learn to listen to others and one cannot cut into
conversation whenever one likes. He also told that in America, one does not get
something for nothing. Nothing is given to anyone on a plate. There in America,
everyday is Sunday. If one wants to be independent and enjoy life, one has to get into the
habit of working.
Manek explained to Feroza that people in America work much harder. Both
husband and wife earn to run their family. It is further explained to her that: “Every
minute is organized. A wife will say, ‘dear, put the clothes in the washing machine and
come back in ten minutes to take our son to baseball practice. I will be back from grocery
store in thirty minutes to put the clothes in the dryer and take our daughter for ballet
lessons’” (124). That is the reason that more money changes hands in America in one
hour than in a whole year in Pakistan. He then concluded that a true democracy demands
“free and competitive economy”. Hence, America is prosperous and the Third World is
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backward and poor. Manek pointed out to Feroza that it was a “Third World
carelessness” whenever she committed some silly mistake. He suggested to her to rely
on herself, and not on anyone else, if she wanted to live in that advanced country. He
further added that they had come from the conservative background of Pakistan and she
had to stop eating with her fingers as it makes Americans sick. Americans referred to
even Harvard and MIT as “schools”. Finally, he suggested, “...you have got to skim what
you can off the system, otherwise the system will skin you. I learned this the hard
way”(144). There is no business for anyone in New York if the person has no sense. But
Feroza could not help drawing comparisons. She concluded that there were so few
women, veiled or unveiled, on the streets of Lahore. Women stared at other women, as
she did, as if they were abnormal. She unconsciously indulged her Lahori habit of staring
at women. She considered herself fortunate for an extravagant bonus, her visit to America
had provided. She found that canned foods like olives, mushrooms, asparagus and
condensed milk were as precious and rare in America as they were in Pakistan. They
were served only on special occasions.
According to Manek, Zareen, his sister, and brother-in-law, Cyrus, were stuck in
the Third World and their vision was limited. They thought that a short visit of their
daughter, Feroza, to America would be sufficient to make her sophisticated. But it was
not possible to note the progress and culture of the country in a couple of months.
Americans will never waste their time on useless things. Only illiterate natives from the
Third World countries waste time. Generally, only rich Pakistanis prefer to send their
sons to America. But Feroza promised to him that she would adjust there soon to be selfsufficient, industrious and independent. Sometimes, she sounded mannered even to
herself. It was the only way she knew to speak English with foreigners. She used to speak
English to her friends in Lahore which was the mixture of Urdu and Punjabi words tossed
in for emphasis, expression or comic effect. When she talked to Manek, her intonation
and accent also changed and it had Gujarati idioms also. But she could hardly speak to
her American friend Jo that way. Jo would understand neither the syntax nor the
pronunciation. She would find her even more “foreign” and tedious. It was almost like
learning a new language and both friends sometimes wondered if the other knew enough
English.
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Bapsi Sidhwa has projected the difference between the two nationalities, i.e., of
America and Pakistan. She has not only highlighted differences in behaviour, thinking,
speaking and eating but also in their dress habits. Feroza’s Pakistani outfits and out-dated
accessories were locked in her suitcase, and now her wardrobe had another pair of jeans
to supplement the pair she had purchased at Bloomingdale’s. For a change, “She also had
some T-shirts, sweaters and blouses. But in spite of her friend’s remarks, she could not
bring herself to wear skirts. Instead she bought a pair of pleated woollen stocks for more
formal occasions”(151). Her friends would often tell her that as there was nothing wrong
with her legs, why she was hiding them all the time. Feroza used to explain her culture to
them in response to it and said that it was not decent to show legs in Pakistan. Jo, her
friend, helped her to understand Americans and their culture. In one nation, Pakistan,
strict purdah system was there. Girls had only girls as friends and boys had only
boyfriends. But in America there was total freedom in this regard. But it was painful to
her to be among so many young people and she did not know how to respond to them,
specially, boys. Manek had left Pakistan for higher studies and had settled well in
America. He was helping Feroza also to settle there but he was not ready to marry any
American or non-Parsee girl. He married a Parsee Pakistani girl of his family’s choice.
But, on the other hand, he used to boast about the wonders of America. He was outwardly
changing with the advancement of America but could not change his mentality to entirely
accept American cultural values.
According to Manek, even the poor people of America had higher standard of
living than the rich in their country. Accordingly, he told his family members and friends
in Pakistan: “What the Americans throw away in one day can fill the stomachs of all
hungry people in Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan for two days”(197). Also,
that there is “...inexhaustible supply of gas, water and electricity in America. ...drinking
water is always pure and there is no shortage of it. The landlords usually pay for water
and electricity. They keep the lights and air-conditioners on all the time. Huge football
stadiums, offices and shopping complexes are air-conditioned all summer. ...one forgets
what summer is and one feels as if one is at a hill station. The same is true in winter,
everything is centrally heated...”(ibid). Hence, Manek tried to convince his family
members in Pakistan that: “America is Paradise!” (198). He was interrupted and told that
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they had also been to the United States, and that Manek was reacting like a new convert,
exaggerating the good points and ignoring the faults. They agreed that there are good
facilities, manners, etc., in America but school girls and boys have no restrictions on their
conduct and behaviour.
Feroza did not like the lifestyle of America in the beginning. She was struggling
to adjust to the fast and advanced life. She had subsequently changed herself and her
opinions totally. Even the concept of what age looks like is entirely different in America.
Seventy-two- years old jogged like athletic young men. She had started understanding
better. She told her family and friends about blacks, the poverty and the insecurity about
jobs prevailing among even the whites in America. It was a surprise for them. She knew
that there was no restriction on thinking in America. But in Lahore the pressure to marry
at an early age was too much. They could not think independently. She wanted to make
her career before marriage. She believed that if she was well-educated and working, her
husband would respect her more; while in Pakistan nobody would marry a girl if she was
highly educated. Hence, in her mother’s view, she had turned an “American brat!” (279).
Her uncle Manek and his Pakistani wife Aban had difference of opinion regarding
Pakistan and America. Manek, as usual, supported life in America while Aban discarded
it completely. She candidly confessed: “I thought coming to America was such a big deal,
so wonderful -- my Prince charming carrying me off to the castle of my dreams.
Everybody back home in Pakistan thinks I am lucky, but I am tired of coping, tired of
doing everything on my own. There is no one I can turn to for advice. Oh, I miss home. I
am longing to see my family and my friends and longing to talk to them. Just sit and talk
to them. Sometimes I wish I had never come here” (315). But Manek told her that once
she was in Pakistan, she would miss everything she had in America. Manek tried to
explain that she could not get in Karachi all the facilities and comforts like thirty-one
channels on television, washing machine, dish-washer and other gadgets. Also, that she
could not get special healthy Gerber food and Pampers for their daughter, Dilli. Besides,
the pollution of Karachi would give her asthma, and impure water there would give her
diarrhea, and due to them she would be worried about her. Even if she arranged all the
gadgets they had, they would not work there. There is always the shortage of water and
electricity. But for Aban, whatever she wanted was only in Karachi. Therefore, Manek
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and Aban had sufficient examples to support his or her point of view and oppose each
other’s.
According to Feroza, there is no other country which can open its arms to the
destitute and rejected of the world, the way America did. She accepted that it had its
faults and shortcomings but it had God’s blessings also. She also realised that she had
now become a misfit in Pakistan, where she had once fitted so well. Earlier, she was
extremely satisfied with her life in Pakistan but her mother compelled her to go on a short
vacation to her uncle in America. She was not prepared for it. But when she was in
America, she tried her best to adjust herself to that totally changed life, people and
environment. Finally she got success in it. Maybe Bapsi Sidhwa adjusted in both the
nations equally well like her lead character, Feroza, in An American Brat. But it does not
mean that she had forgotten her origin. She still remembered her own nation, people,
relatives, friends, religion, customs and basic education. So, she is equally comfortable in
both the nations. Maybe she is incomplete in any one nation, as Manek tells his wife also.
Whatever Aban had in Pakistan was not there in America and vice versa.
Hence, the views of Sidhwa regarding “nationality” can be somewhat inferred
from the description of Feroza’s condition in An American Brat. She has tried to show
that all the nations have their own advantages and disadvantages. America has more
facilities, advancements and a fast life. People like Manek, loving fast life, love the
nation. On the other hand, Pakistan has less facilities, comforts and advancements, but
the people are intimate to each other there. They share joys and sorrows. People like
Aban are comfortable in Pakistan and find it tough to adjust in America. Finally, Feroza
falls in love with David Press, a Jewish student, whom she wants to marry. Her decision
is not received well by her family and the Parsee community in Pakistan.
Zareen receives a letter from her daughter, Feroza. She holds it and the indecent
photograph which was there has already slipped on the floor. She cannot believe that
Feroza has decided to send that photograph to them. It is of a man with his bared legs.
Surely, she should have taken care that the feelings of her parents are not hurt. Feroza is
preparing her parents for big news about to come. But Zareen certainly does not expect
this change in her daughter. A change of this magnitude is unbelievable to her. She has
read only the first few lines of the letter, and she cannot believe in whatever she is
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reading. She is completely in shock. Her heart sinks and she is about to faint when she
gathers her strength and somehow reaches the phone at her desk. She immediately dials
her husband at office and begins to cry. Her husband wanted to know the reason for it and
asked:
“What is the matter?” Cyrus’s panicked voice asked.
“I got a letter from Feroza,” she said haltingly, sniffing between her sobs.
“Feroza?” Cyrus shouted, “What’s happened to Feroza?”
Zareen blew her nose, swallowed, and with a supreme effort of will, suspended
her weeping to gasp, “she wants to marry a non” (266).
When Cyrus came from his office, he found his wife crying bitterly on their bed.
He hugged her and, without wasting any time, went through the letter silently. He found
the sentence he was looking for. Feroza wrote that she wanted to marry a handsome and
shy non-Parsee boy she met at the University. She knew that different religion of David
would upset them as he was a Jew. But it did not matter much in America. They had
already decided to solve the matter by becoming Unitarians. She pleaded with her parents
thus: “Please, don’t be angry, and please try to make grannies understand. I love you all
so much. I won’t be able to bear it if you don’t accept David” (ibid).
Zareen almost fainted. She picked up the photograph and showed it to her
husband, Cyrus. They were not impressed by the personality of the Jewish boy. Cyrus did
not like his fat hairy thighs which appeared as a goat’s legs. They looked odd and ugly
from denim shorts. “You’d better go at once,” Cyrus said. “He can't even afford a decent
pair of pants! The bounder's a fortune hunter. God knows what he's already been up to”
(267). Zareen did not give up. Ten days later, she went to Denver, Colorado, to make her
daughter realise that her choice for marriage was wrong.
When romance with an American Jew misfires, Feroza realises that she alone can
heal herself. She has grown to love her new country despite its flaws. It is not just another
immigrant’s tale. It is the predicament of a young woman’s emotions caught in the crosscurrents of different cultures. After learning that Feroza, a Pakistani Parsee girl, and
David, an American Jew, intend to marry, her mother sets out for America. She was hellbent on changing her mind. Zareen, equipped with cash and good wishes form her
community, is immediately shipped to the United States on the mission to dissuade
Feroza from her decision. The battles fought by mother, daughter and boyfriend are
handled skilfuly and cleverly, illuminating the difficulties that arise when culture takes a
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back seat to the search for self-definition. Zareen, in spite of her better judgment,
develops a liking for David, and begins to consider a possibility there. She soon revises
her position and sets herself to get rid her daughter’s life of David, the original mission
she had set out for. In the end she succeeds in scaring David away with over-exaggerated
picture that she paints of ethnic Parsee life.
An American Brat arouses all familiar emotions that are bound to surface up due
to various opposing forces and undercurrents within any educated Pakistani who has
lived or studied abroad. They are modernity versus tradition, isolation versus
assimilation, tolerance versus bigotry, etc. The hidden and conflicting emotions, which
Feroza faces, are highlighted since she comes across as the microcosmic image of
Pakistan or its sole representative in her college. Zareen’s concern for her daughter’s
growing conservatism highlights much of the debate on Zia-ul-Haq, the army dictator,
who is depicted as the epitome of bigotry. Bhutto comes across as the champion of
liberalism, despite his shortcomings. Mullahs, religious extremism, and growing
intolerance of society in general are attributed to the political changes in the country.
Bhutto’s hanging is seen as the democracy’s final defeat to fanaticism, and the unleashing
of a Dark Age for Pakistan. Consequently, the overall impact is in favour of Bhutto, the
man who is “heroic and handsome”, and has paid with his life for the poor people he tried
to emancipate. The failure of the popular struggle and the control of the dictator on state
machinery, bureaucracy and the media are aptly described by Zareen when she says that
she realises that there is no such thing as a spontaneous uprising unless it is sanctioned.
After taking to task the surrender of Pakistani society to extremism under the
army dictator, the author moves on to the second issue in the book. That issue is religious
isolationism. Feroza like the author belongs to the Parsee community, a small and
isolated community. In fact, they are aptly described as a minority within minorities.
There are merely one hundred and twenty thousand adherents of the Parsee faith all over
the world. They are usually doctors, engineers and paid professionals. Despite having a
relatively progressive outlook, the members of the community are loyal isolationists.
When it comes to the matters of religion and marriage, they are very strict. A Parsee man
can marry a non-Parsee woman, invoking only disregard from the community. But a
Parsee woman cannot marry a non-Parsee man without being excommunicated from the
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faith. By making Feroza fall in love with a non-Parsee, Bapsi Sidhwa dares to question
this discriminatory religious law. But the law is held sacred by the holy men of the faith.
In the end, Feroza loses her love, David. But the reader is left with an impression that
Feroza is determined more than ever before. She decides to marry outside the faith, even
as she is determined to remain in it herself.
The twist at the end is surprising and impressive. The end certainly summarises
the whole theme of the novel. It is that a pampered young Pakistani girl matures into an
independent Pakistani American in the United States. It allows her to choose the best of
both the worlds, the motherland and the new land. She also learns that she can fly only
when her wings strengthen, as they do throughout the novel. And Manek’s character
provides a bird’s eyeview of what maybe in store for Feroza. Perhaps it is a male’s
account of being a Pakistani immigrant. According to Pakistani culture, Feroza could not
have been sent off alone to America. Manek, her uncle, was young enough to provide
comic relief through their sarcastic banter. He is also somewhat of an authority figure for
her. Any other relation, such as a cousin or family friend, may not have provided both
aspects of the character. Finally, the last issue that is taken up in the book is of the culture
shock. A student from the Third World faces experience of culture shock in the United
States. The story starts with a shy, soft-spoken, shalwar kameez dressed girl, whose
mother thinks that she is too conservative. At the end of the novel, there is the portrait of
a self-confident, independent girl. She has no hang-ups about her individuality, sexuality,
nationality or racial identity, etc. Gone are her shalwar kameezes and the saris, though
she might wear them to feel ethnic. Jeans and shorts have taken their place.
By 1983, Sidhwa’s three grown-up children were living in the United States. She
spent increasingly more time there. In 1985, she was appointed Assistant Professor of the
Creative Writing Programme at the University of Houston. Between 1986 and 1987, she
was Bunting Fellow at Radcliff, Harvard. In 1987, she was a Fellow for the National
Endowment for the Arts. In an interview in 2000, she said that being in America has
given her access to an entirely different and dynamic culture and she feels that she is a
much more confident, self-reliant and cosmopolitan woman. As a consequence, An
American Brat evolved out of her and her family’s experiences and observations in
America. She visited it at least once a year. In the novel, she has projected that one’s
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values do not change because of travel, but perceptions do. One becomes more tolerant of
other cultures or religions. Feroza is philosophical in the end, when she had to start her
life once again. The New World appeared to be paradoxical to her and she brooded:
“...the future in microcosm, the melting-pot in which every race and creed was being
increasingly represented, compelled to live with and tolerate the “other” and she would
play her part, however miniscule it was, in shaping the future” (313). In America, Sidhwa
misses many dear friends and the sights, sounds and smells she has grown up with. When
she is in Pakistan, she misses the energy and the events connected with writing that are a
part of her life in America. She was invited to London for production of a stage play,
Sock them with Honey, which was based on parts of her novel An American Brat. It was
about the young Feroza who goes from Pakistan to United States to study. “The
geographical location of my writing changed after I moved to the United States and I
wrote the book after I moved. I wrote of my experiences of my encounter with
America,”16 rightly says Sidhwa about An American Brat.
Bapsi Sidhwa’s novels are different from one another as well as from those of
anyone else. She is also a Pakistani writer, though she belonged to her own Parsee
community. An American Brat is the novel in which Sidhwa has expressed a lot about the
concepts of “nationality and racial identity”. The main character of the story, Feroza,
belonged to Lahore in Pakistan. Her parents, specially her mother, sent her to America to
bring about a change in her appearance, thinking and behaviour. Zareen wanted Feroza to
be “modern” and advanced like Englishmen and not reserved and orthodox like
Pakistanis. But Feroza said: “Lahore was her city and she would miss it” (47). Manek, the
brother of Zareen, was a student at MIT, America. He guided Feroza about the lifestyle
there. In America, Feroza suddenly felt free of thousand constrains that governed her life
in Pakistan. She was told by her uncle, Manek, to learn to control her temper, otherwise
nobody was there to bail her out. Manek came to know that Feroza had argued at
Kennedy Airport for her own honour. He told her that in America one has to learn to
stand a lot of things. The things like “honour” or “self-respect” have no value or meaning
in America.
Feroza felt that it all represented a rich slice of the life and experience she had
come to America to explore. When Manek had gone to Pakistan for his marriage, she had
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been exposed to with the American culture. She had grown shockingly bold and
independent in his absence. Her behaviour before his friends was improper. Feroza also
realised that unconsciously she had again indulged in her Lahori habit of staring at
women. She found her lucky regarding food in America and understood well that canned
foods were precious and rare in America also. They are served only on special show-off
occasions.
It is also difficult to know about its progress and culture in a couple of months.
Lifestyle in America is entirely different from that in Pakistan. In America, everybody
enjoys to work hard in order to raise one’s standard of living. Husband and wife do not
mind assisting each other in household tasks. They work like machines whole of the
week and enjoy the weekends. But in Pakistan it is not so. They enjoy every day like a
Sunday and do not work on their own. Instead, they depend on the servants. Manek
supported his statements by giving examples: “In the afternoon they trim a hedge or clean
the swimming pool for relaxation. Then the husband cooks a barbecue dinner while the
wife vacuums. There is no ‘cook, bring me soup’ and ‘Bearer, bring me whiskey-pani’.
At night they go to a movie or to a disco and enjoy life. They know how to work hard,
and they play hard. But they do this only on Saturdays and Sundays. On working days
they are so busy they have to regulate…”(124). In the process of her adjustment with the
American way of life, Feroza’s Pakistani outfits and accessories were replaced by
American modern dresses.
Feroza did not have any experience about socialising with boys. There is no such
thing as dating in Pakistan. She was rather uncomfortable in their company. She did not
know how to respond to their behaviour. Her friend Jo helped her realise the importance
of rights, which were enjoyed by everyone in America. In Pakistan they were given by
their constitution, but were otherwise comatose. Manek told his relatives in Pakistan that
living standard in America was much higher than that of Pakistan. Even the poor eat like
the rich. He told that there is never shortage of household commodities. There is no
worry about impure water. One of his relatives accepted that there are good facilities,
manners, etc., in America but: “…what about their shameless morals? What about
schoolgirls and boys having sex as casually as if they are shaking hands?”(197). Manek
parted with his breathless secret about America and tried to convince all of the truth of
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his statement. Rohinton, Feroza’s uncle, interrupted Manek and told him that he was
overreacting by exaggerating the good points and ignoring the faults of America and its
people. But Manek did not agree with him and said that maybe due to his old age he
could not adjust and learn new tricks. And that he was like a fish out of water and old
people like him “loose all their money like thousands of other middle-aged and muddledheaded ‘desis’ already have!”(199).
Manek further remarked that most of the people of Asian countries like Pakistan
and India are not ready to do petty jobs for money in their own country. But they would
not hesitate to take them up in America. The Asians boast of their relatives working in
America, without knowing about the nature of their work. For instance, it is very tough to
survive on the amount the State Bank of Pakistan gives to a student. Manek knew that it
was a handsome amount by Pakistani standard and his family thought that he was
enjoying his life with it. Instead, he worked as a Bible salesman there. It was somewhat
duplicitous task of being a Zoroastrian and selling Bibles. Feroza’s concept of what age
looked like also changed in America. She, although in America, was always eager to
know about the happenings and changes in the politics of Pakistan. Hence, she asserted:
“...after all, it is my country!” Zareen was confounded and mused aloud: “...the
insinuation that her patriotism was questionable, or that she was not a proper Pakistani
because she was not Muslim. What was she then? And where did she belong, if not in the
city where her ancestors were buried? She was in the land of the seven rivers, the Septe
Sindhu. It is the land that Prophet Zarathustra had declared as favoured most by Ahura
Mazda. What if, on the strength of this, one hundred and twenty thousand Parsees in the
world were to lay claim to the Punjab and Sindh?”(237-238). Zareen realised that
Feroza's change of nation and attraction towards America had not reduced her patriotism.
She was still worried about political and social disturbances in Pakistan. Pakistan was
still her nation. Zareen, on the other hand, thought that she spent more time in that
country than her daughter. Her ancestors were also buried there in the land of the
Prophet. But she was not as patriotic as her daughter. She also blamed Zia for spreading
fundamentalism, because of which minorities like hers were encouraged to think about
their own religion. Also, they harboured ill-will towards their nation. But her daughter
was away from all this.
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Feroza’s family and friends were surprised when she told them about the similar
problems in America also. But after looking at the extremely poor conditions in the
jhuggies in Pakistan, she realised that poverty had spread like a disease there and every
kind of poverty in the United States was less miserable in comparison. But it did not
mean that the poor in America were treated well or the injustice there was less
uncontrolled. According to Feroza, America welcomes everyone including destitute and
discarded from anywhere. Hence, for her, America has its faults and shortcomings, but it
also has God’s blessings.
Feroza was unhappy to discover that she was so changed that she had become a
misfit in her own country. She wanted to settle with a career but then she doubted if she
had any career. When she remarked that if she could earn a living, her husband would
respect her more, her mother retorted, “...respect you? Nobody will marry you if you are
too educated. I am not educated and I do not have a career but I would like to see your
father disrespect me! Or your uncles disrespect your aunts!” (240). When Feroza wanted
to marry a Jewish boy of her choice, her mother came to America all the way from
Pakistan. She tried to suggest to her: “…after marrying David, his family would not get
involved with ours. But that does not matter so much… What matters is your life – it will
be so dry. Just husband, wife and maybe a child rattling like loose stones in this huge
America!”(278). Feroza realised that her thinking and behaviour had changed in
America. In Lahore the pressure to marry would have made such thoughts unthinkable.
Aban, Feroza’s sister-in-law and Manek’s wife, on the other hand, was not at all happy in
America and with the lifestyle of Americans. She all the time missed her relatives and her
nation, Pakistan. Manek tried to convince her about the facilities they were getting in
America. But Aban did not agree with him and believed that everything she wanted was
in Karachi. So, both of them had their own way of looking at the same thing.
Surprisingly, one of them was satisfied with the American lifestyle while the other was
not.
In An American Brat, Bapsi Sidhwa, being a Parsee herself, could not help
describing her race. The family selected for the story is Ginwalla, the Parsee, an orthodox
one. They dress differently and mostly converse in Gujarati mixed with English. Cyrus
and his wife were opposed to their daughter marrying outside the faith. She did not even
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like her daughter, Feroza, taking part in a play in college. She believed that her daughter
would come out of the affair without any harm to marry a suitable Parsee boy at the
proper time. Every Parsee girl, when she grows, is warned not be friendly with nonParsee boys and thus avoid the catastrophe that follows it. If she marries outside her
community, she is thrown out of it and certain restrictions are imposed on her (17). In An
American Brat, Feroza was not following the Parsee trend as she was trying to be friendly
with non-Parsee boys. Zareen was worried for her. Khutlibai, the mother of Zareen,
scolded her daughter saying that Feroza was not following their tradition because her
mother could not guide her properly. She said that she (Zareen) herself had stopped
wearing her sudra and kusti and she preferred to show her skin at the waist. So, she was
unable to set any example for her daughter, Feroza. Zareen told her mother: “We
[Parsees] do not care much for old-fashioned thinking, you know that” (35).
The Parsee boys were basically believed to be intelligent until they did something
unexpectedly silly. They had to make money and get recognition within the Parsee
community. The girls were not allowed to study abroad. Sometimes they were sent to
finishing schools in Europe, either to prepare them for marriage or divert them from
marriage. As far as Parsee religion is concerned, it is interesting but tough to follow.
Most Parsees know very little about their religion. Feroza visited the Fire Temple about
four or five times a year. The Parsees celebrate their three New Years, according to
different calendars. One New Year that they celebrate is the Christian New Year on
January 1. They also celebrate March 21, the day of Equinox, as New Year. Their third
New Year is Pateti, which keeps shifting because it follows an ancient lunar calendar.
Tandarosti prayer is chanted by the priest in white robes for good health. He speaks the
names of all the members of the family for their good health. He feeds the fire offerings
of sandalwood from a long-handled silver ladle.
The Parsees have special dishes on auspicious occasions. They include sweet
vermicelli with fried raisins and almonds, thick slices of spicy fried salmon and fruit and
sweet yogurt as firm as jelly. Plain yellow lentils and rice, served on auspicious
occasions, is known as dhan-dar, and it forms the main course. The aroma of the fried
fish and spices increases appetite.
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Before a Parsee leaves for a long journey overseas, all the relatives pop a lump of
crystallised sugar into the mouth. Then they give her/him a coconut and bestow a long list
of specific blessings. They also wish for his/her safe and sound return. They hug the
person and present him/her envelopes decorated with the auspicious red paste and thick
with cash. The elders expertly crack their knuckles on their own temples to remove the
envious and evil eye from their lovely outgoing relative. They go through the prescribed
seven Yathas and five Ashem Vahoos for the benefit of the traveller. These celebrations
highlight the concern the Parsees have about the well-being of everybody in their
community.
Good Parsee boys are scarce and so they are quickly snapped up. Regarding
Parsee girls, Manek said: “Our elders used to say, keep the girls buried at home. Do you
know your grandfather would not allow even our pigeons to stray? If one of the birds
from our loft spent the night on another’s roof, we'd have pigeon soup the next day. He'd
have its throat slit” (121). It shows how strict the rules were for girls, once they left
home. They were confined to the four walls of their homes. Parsees adopted Gujarati
language almost fourteen hundred years ago, when they fled to India as religious refugees
after the Arab invasion of Persia. They never smoke as it is against their religion. They
worship fire. If somebody smokes, it is regarded “a cardinal sin”. Once, Feroza
committed the cardinal sin by taking a few puffs from a cigarette at Jo’s guitarist
boyfriend’s insistence.
The Parsees believe that if somebody goes abroad for higher education, he can
have whatever fun he wants, except marrying. Marriage must be to a Zarathust as he will
be happy only with a Parsee girl. They very frequently are ready to make the traditional
circling motion with hands on the head of the other person. They crack the knuckles on
their own temples to ward off any evil to the paragon. On coming back home from
abroad, certain rituals are performed. A ceremonial silver tray is held and an egg is
circled seven times round the person’s head. Then the egg is sacrificed by cracking it on
the floor. Its contents are neatly spilled on the newspaper. It is placed to one side of the
threshold. A coconut is gifted to the person and his/her forehead is anointed with the red
paste and some grains of rice are pressed on it. It is believed that the person is thus
blessed by Ahura Mazda. Then a lump of crystallised sugar is popped into the mouth.
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The circles are drawn with hands over the head of that fellow. Then knuckles are cracked
loudly on their own temples, invoking more blessings. Also, a little water from a roundbottomed silver mug is poured onto the tray. It already has those shells of egg, coconut,
sugar and remaining of the rice. This tray is circled seven times over the head of the
person to banish the envious eye and its contents are tipped on either side of the door.
Finally, each one of the family members gives that person an envelope with some money
and anointed with red paste and some grains of rice.
In An American Brat, all the above-mentioned ceremonies are performed on
Feroza when she comes back to her nation, Pakistan, on holiday. Breaking bread and
sharing salt are some of the concepts that belonged not only to the Parsees but also to
Christian and Muslim traditions in Pakistan. But when Feroza was asked a few questions
about her religion, Parsee, answering them she was quite nervous. She also realised for
the first time that David’s religion was different from hers. She loved David without
thinking that he was a Jew, and that the difference between the Jews and the Parsees will
be so wide that they would never be able to unite. Manek understood Feroza’s problem
and tried to explain to her: “But marriage is something else: our cultures are very
different. Of course I’m not saying it can’t work, but you have to give it time”(263).
Feroza knew that her grandmothers would be more upset as she wanted to marry a nonParsee whose parents were Jews. But this difference did not matter so much in America.
Moreover, they had tried to solve the problem by becoming Unitarians. But she wanted to
marry David only with the consent of her family members. So, she also added: “I won’t
be able to bear it if you don’t accept David”(266).
The issue was not just Feroza marrying an American. It was much bigger than
that. The Parsees believed that mixed marriages affected the survival of their community.
So, it was the concern of the entire Parsee community. They were scared of it because
there were only one hundred and twenty thousand Parsees in the world. The low birth
rate, the rate at which their youngsters were marrying outside the community and their
rigid no-conversion laws: all contribute to the Parsees becoming an endangered race. The
youngsters informed their parents of the changed time. They also requested their parents
and relatives to widen their thoughts and adjust as per the changes in the society. They
must realise that they send their children to study in the New World where mixing with
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the strangers and mixed marriages are inevitable. She was also warned by her Frenny
auntie: “…Parsee girls are not allowed into the Fire Temple once they marry out”(269).
Feroza told her mother that they would prefer a civil marriage in any case. That
way she could keep her religion, if it mattered so much to her. Also, David and she are
Unitarians. The mother replied that her Judge’s marriage would make no difference to the
priests. They would not allow her into any of their places of worship, agyari or Atash
Behram. She continued that she would not be permitted to attend her parents’ and
relatives funeral rites as well. Zareen convincingly said: “Do you know how selfish you
are, thinking only of yourself? …It is not just a matter of your marrying a non-Parsee
boy. The entire family is involved -- all our relationships matter”(278). It was not merely
a generation-gap but the difference between the cultural and individual values. The
interesting thing is that not only Feroza’s parents but her distant relatives and other
members of the Parsee community were also concerned about it. One such distant
relative, living in Parsee Colony in Pakistan, burst out: “What do you expect our girls to
do? Our boys go abroad to study and end up marrying white mudums. You can’t expect
our girls to remain virgins all their lives!” One Soonamai stroked her boy’s bony thigh
and in her quiet way said: “You won’t marry a parjat will you? You must marry a nice
little Parsee girl of your own choice. And don’t let any one tell you otherwise. Marry the
girl you like”(271).
Once married, Parsees have to be together forever. It has been believed for five
thousand years: “that a wife only left her husband’s house feet first” and that too in her
coffin. Even to talk about divorce is insensitive and cruel to them. For them marriage is
auspicious and married couples are considered lucky. Once Manek jokingly told his wife,
Aban, that if they got divorce, according to American law, she would get half the house.
After listening to it: “…she wept and prayed for three days. She carried a small silver fire
altar, fragrant with sandalwood and frankincense, to the four corners of every room in her
house, including the bathroom” (259). She was scared of the thought of divorce and the
partition of the house; hence, she prayed to keep it intact. She did not want even
bathroom to be divided, hence, carried fire altar there also.
Feroza was given several examples of mixed marriages. One Perin Powri married
a Muslim. She could not wear her sudra or kusti after her marriage to a non-Parsee. Also,
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till the day of her death, she was not allowed any connection with the Parsee community.
She died of hepatitis four years after her marriage. She got infection due to blood
transfusion during surgery. But the Parsees saw it as a punishment by the God. Her dead
body was not only refused entry in dokhma in Karachi but even the Parsee priests did not
perform the last rites. It is believed that without the uthamna ceremony, the soul cannot
mount the Chinwad Bridge and as per the actions of the dead person: “…that bridge
either expands to help the soul to reach heaven, or it contracts due to which the soul
plunges into hell.” So, finally Perin Powri’s body was buried in a Muslim graveyard.
That poor woman was an example of the evil effects of such a marriage. Another
misguided Parsee woman, Roda Kapakia, had married a Christian. She wept when she
was not allowed into the room where the dead body of her grandmother was kept.
Feroza’s grandmother also blackmailed her emotionally by saying: “…if you do not
attend my last rites, my child, my sorrowful soul will find no peace and it will haunt this
world till the Day of Judgment” (270). She also requested her to promise that she would
not disappoint her.
Zareen also told her daughter that the family would get immense joy meeting with
your Parsee-in-laws. It would mean more parties, more friendships and more interaction
within the community. And that she was snatching all that from her family. Feroza tried
to bridge the distance between them and said that they would have to see the things in a
different way due to difference in the cultures. Her mother said, to settle the argument,
that she should think about her family. And that was her culture also, and she could not
throw her culture away like that as she was not brought up like that. Zareen, however
traditional and strict she maybe, but she is also a mother. She was strictly against
marriages outside their community. She also told about her decision regarding it and
discussed in detail about its consequences. But she also wished that David could have
been a Parsee or that the Zoroastrians would permit conversion in some such situations.
Feroza and David Press had a long discussion after Zareen left. They analysed her
visit. They were surprised that they had already decided not to let their “religious
disparity” spoil their relation ever. But they could not stick to their decision. They found
that Zareen had made David realise that it would be very tough for him to adjust with a
Parsee girl after marriage. She also insulted him. He started feeling helpless. As a result,
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his feelings for Feroza had changed. Her beauty and simplicity, which had attracted him
earlier, frightened him now. All the Parsee rituals that he was earlier ready to accept
appeared tough and unimportant to follow now. Finally, David completed his Master's in
Computer Programming, joined a firm in California and left Feroza for ever. Hence,
David’s “Zoroastrian-American Princess(ZAP)” could not become his “Jewish-American
Princess(JAP)” (302).
For the first time Zareen seriously thought about the prohibition on conversions
and on mixed marriages in her community. She realised that justice was not done to the
girls in their society. The Parsee boy marrying a non-Parsee girl is acceptable. But a
Parsee girl marrying a non-Parsee boy is not only unacceptable but she is also excluded
from the community for ever. Even her near and dear ones do not accept or help her in
difficult circumstances. Also, her children could not practise the faith denied to their
mother. Zareen also realised that it was wrong on the part of any religion or faith. Their
Prophet urged the followers to spread the truth of his message which is there in the holy
Gathas that include the songs of Zarathustra. They are to be spread. So, a girl married to
some other faith will also spread the message of truth in the other families. But there was
restriction on the girls’ inter-race marriage and they were thrown out of the community if
they did so. She also thought that after all her community was educated and progressive
and she would accept their decision. She recalled that the teenagers in Lahore were right
in thinking that the Zoroastrian Anjuman in Karachi and Bombay must change with the
times that was sending them to the New World.
Finally, Zareen concluded: “...the various Anjumans would have to introduce
minor reforms if they wished their tiny community to survive”(288). But it was
meaningless to think about it at such a crucial time when she could not even speak it in
front of anyone. Moreover, she was also conservative and for a while Zareen was too
confused to take any decision regarding the marriage of Feroza. She found David to be
admirable, appealing and natural. But, then, she realised that he would deprive Feroza of
her faith, heritage, family and community. The picture of Feroza cut off from her culture
and community, “like a fish in shallow waters”, helped her revise her decision (289).
Finally, Zareen completed her mission successfully. She could do it following her
maxim: “…if you can’t knock him out with sugar, slug him with honey” (272,). Feroza
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also realised that she was helpless and she had to follow her faith only. Again praying
eleven Yathas and five Ashem vahoos, duty-bound Feroza landed at the Denver airport.
The first evening when Feroza returned to Denver, she took out her sudra and kusti. They
had been hibernating for the longest time. Before going to bed, she said her kusti prayers
and stood, hand joined, invoking Ahura Mazda’s blessings and favour. All at once she
thought of the holy atash in the Fire Temple in Lahore which gave her sufficient strength
to start her life once again.
Hence, Feroza left her wishes, desires and love for the sake of her own
community. Girls in her community are born not to think and live on their own but to
follow the tradition. Feroza had understood all this very well and surrendered herself to
her family. She had decided to follow their instructions. Hence, “an American brat” has
again become a Pakistani desi girl because there was no scope for “brat” to be an
American. She had to be a Pakistani in America, sticking to her Parsee faith.
In the end, Feroza was feeling calmer than before. She knew that there would
never be another David. Maybe some day she would again find someone, Parsee or nonParsee, suitable to be her life partner. But she would not let anyone interfere in this
matter. She said: “It really wouldn’t matter; weren’t they all children of the same Adam
and Eve? As for her religion, no one could take it away from her; she carried its fire in
her heart. If the priests in Lahore and Karachi did not let her enter fire temple, she would
go to one in Bombay where there were so many Parsees that no one would know if she
was married to a Parsee or a non”. She wanted to: “soar to a self-contained place from
which there was no falling”(317). But she was doubtful if there was any such place in the
world. Hence, she decided to live her life in her own way, without letting anyone
interfere with it.
She summarises her views about nationality and racial identity when she says that
she could think freely because she was in America. In Lahore the pressure to marry
would have made such thoughts impossible. As far as the facilities and comforts are
concerned, America is more advanced than Pakistan. But Americans are not satisfied
with their possessions and achievements. They work hard, earn handsomely and spend
lavishly on fulfilling the requirements of their small families. They keep on working
endlessly for the fulfilment of this unquenchable thirst. Hence, everybody is working
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harder to achieve more. Also, there are people like Aban and Zareen who are satisfied
with whatever they have in Pakistan and do not want to be in the race for more and more
material possessions. Manek and Feroza adjusted themselves with the fast life of America
and are happy there. The racial identity is a matter of individual thinking, irrespective of
education or nationality. Manek, though living in an advanced nation, had the same
opinion about it as his sister in Pakistan and did not support Feroza marrying a Jew and a
non-Parsee. They still believed: “…the Zoroastrian faith forbids intermarriages, since
mixing physical and spiritual genes is considered a cardinal crime against nature”(306).
But Feroza decided not to follow any restriction in future.
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REFERENCES
1
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Mother Night (London: Vintage, 1992) viii.
All the subsequent references to the text are from the same edition and page numbers in
all such cases have been given within parentheses immediately following the quotations.
2
“Mother Night Essay”, June 10, 2009.
<http;//www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/viewpaper/67130.html>
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid.
7
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five (London: Vintage, 2000) 2.
All the subsequent references to the text are from the same edition and page numbers in
all such cases have been given within parentheses immediately following the quotations.
8
“Indiana Historical Society”, Dec. 22, 2009,
<http://indianahistory.org/our-collection/library-and-archives/notable-hoosiers/kurtVonnegut>
9
Markvit, “The Themes of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.”, Dec. 22, 2009,
<http://www.reocities.com/hollywood/4953/themes.html>
10
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Palm Sunday (London: Vintage, 1994) 319, 321.
All the subsequent references to the text are from the same edition and page numbers in
all such cases have been given within parentheses immediately following the quotations.
11
“At last Kurt Vonnegut’s Famous Book”, The NY Times, 31 March, 1969. Dec. 24,
2007, <http:/www.vonnegutweb.com/sh5/index.html>
12
Ibid.
13
Bapsi Sidhwa, The Crow Eaters (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1990) 24-25.
All the subsequent references to the text are from the same edition and page numbers in
all such cases have been given within parentheses immediately following the quotations.
14
Raj Kumar, The Tribune (Nov. 29, 1980).
15
Bapsi Sidhwa, An American Brat (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1994) 57.
125
All the subsequent references to the text are from the same edition and page numbers in
all such cases have been given within parentheses immediately following the quotations.
16
Valentina. A. Mmaka, “Bapsi Sidhwa” Dec. 24, 2007
<http://www.valentinammaka.net/sidhwa2.english.htm>
126