Character Sketch of Jo (Should Wizard Hit Mommy by John Updike)

-
Jack was a loving father and a deeply concerned husband who constantly worried about his wife expecting their third child. He was quite conscientious when it came to maintaining a balanced family life no matter how weary and tired it made him at the end of the day.
His children mattered to him, he took on the mantle of regaling his daughter Joanne with stories. Jack was a good storyteller because he could keep not only the listener but also his own interest riveted upon the stories that he created. His stories were imaginative creations and it contained characters who had been infused with life by Jack. He told these stories in the evenings and for Saturday naps to his daughter Jo out of his own head. This custom had begun when she was two and was not nearly two years old such that he felt his stock of stories had depleted. Each new story was a slight variation of a basic tale with a small creature usually named Roger who had some problem and went with it to a wise old owl. These parables were meant to inculcate a moral and ethical value in his daughter. The owl told the creature to go to the wizard who would perform some magic spell to solve the problem, demanding pennies greater in number than what Roger Creature possessed. In spite of being fatigued or saturated with telling the same kind of stories, Jack always maintained a level of patience in animating his tales for his growing daughter. However, there is an about turn in the end of story regarding his family life where Jack finally expresses his exasperation with the repetitive quality and monotony of life. ​At the end of the story, Jack refrains from speaking, working or touching his wife because he realizes that both of them are equally responsible for the monotony of their life and this never-ending spiral of family life that they are caught in. As he watched his wife labour with utter weariness of the sameness of his days, he felt caught in an ugly middle position. He felt trapped in a cage and also felt his wife's presence in that cage. He could not communicate with her because somewhere he realized that she already knew what he felt about being caged in family pressures and daily duties.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Character Sketch of Mukesh ('Lost Spring' by Anees Jung)

-
Image
Mukesh is a young boy who belongs to a bangles maker family from Frizabad the city which is famous for its colourful bangles where almost every colour of bangles are made sunny, gold, blue, red, paddy green, yellow, sky blue, violet and many others. He lives in Firozabad with his elder brother, sister-in-laws and his father. Firozabad is famous for bangles Industries where almost 20 thousand children illegally work with adults in dingy cell at high temperature around the furnace without air and light. Mukesh's family is among them whose entire family work in bangles industry and have spent generation working around forge. But Mukesh doesn't want to work in the bangles industry. He has a dream to be a motor-mechanic and he insists to be that. though it seems not too easy to be but he does. He takes the author to his half built home through a narrow stinking lane chocked with garbage and 24 hours running water. There is no facility of proper drainage and dirty water management.
Read more

Character sketch of Saheb-e-Alam ('Lost Spring' by Anees Jung))

-
Image
  The author’s acquaintance with Saheb and many of his friends who are  barefoot  rag-pickers introduce her to Seemapuri. Saheb is such a boy who picks up rags roaming street to street many with his friends, Saheb and his entire family live in Seemapuri, it is a slum area located on the periphery of Delhi. Though Saheb and his family have come from Bangladesh in 1971 while war as being refugees and they settled here forever. Saheb’s family is one among many rag-pickers in Seemapuri. The area consists of mud structures, with roof of tin and tarpaulin. Saheb roams barefoot with his friends; they appear like flight of birds in the morning and disappear till the afternoon. There are no facilities of sewage, drainage or 24 hours running water. About 10,000 rag-pickers live in Seemapuri. Saheb has also many dreams like a common child but there is no one around him who could listen his sound of heart. He seems curious to have a pair of shoes. The shirt that he has worn looks discolou
Read more

Character Sketch of Rajkumar Shukla ('Indigo' by Louis Fischer))

-
Image
Rajkumar shukla was an illiterate poor sharecropper of Champaran, Bihar. He was born on 23 August 1875 at a village Satwaria of Champaran Bihar. During the thirty first session of the Congress in Lucknow in 1916 Shukla met Mahatma Gandhiji as a representative of farmers from Champaran who requested Gandhiji to visit his district to see himself miseries of Indigo sharecroppers there. Because most of the arable lands of Champaran was divided into large estates owned by Englishmen. They forced the Indian tenants to plant 15% of their holdings with Indigo and surrender the entire Indigo harvest as rent. After the landlords learned that Germany had developed synthetic Indigo, they asked for compensation from the sharecroppers for being released from the 15% arrangement. The sharecropping arrangement was irksome and so many peasants signed willingly. However, some of them engaged lawyers. Meanwhile, the news of synthetic Indigo reached the sharecroppers and they felt cheated, unhappy a
Read more