“The Homecoming”, also known as “Chutti” is a Bengali short story written by Rabindranath Tagore (1892-93). This story depicts how much parental love and care is required for every child in its childhood days. It also depicts that if we abandon a child, definitely tragedy will take place.

SUMMARY

Phatik Chakravarthi was a fourteen year old Bengali boy whose father died very early. He grew up lazy, wild and disobedient. Makhan Chakravarthi, his younger brother, was quiet, good and fond of reading. Phatik thought about doing new mischief every day. One day, he and his gang of boys pushed a wooden log shaped like a boat’s mast into the river. Makhan, objecting to this and sitting firmly on the log, was thrown into the river along with the log. 

At home, when he was questioned about this, he beat not just his brother, but also his mother. His uncle from Calcutta City arrived at that time. He agreed to take the Phatik to Calcutta and educate him there. Phatik was excited to leave, but his mother was torn between relief and sadness.

Phatik’s uncle had three sons of his own, and his aunt was not pleased with the new addition to their family. A fourteen-year-old boy is bound to have his own set of challenges. He was neither a child nor a man, crossing the line in between.

He missed the meadow, mountain and river of his native village. As a result, it’s no wonder that he struggled in school. He refused to answer any questions, was severely beaten at school every day, and was mocked by everyone, including his cousins.

Despite these negative signs, Phatik begins penning a letter to his mother. At first he lies and asserts to her that everything is rosy with his life in Calcutta.  But when he starts recollecting how harshly he was treated by his aunt on the occasion of his losing his school bag, he changes his tone – he writes that he wants to return home.  He promises that he will be a good boy from now on and do whatever his mother tells him to do. 

Then Phatik goes to his uncle and tells him he wants to be taken back home. He tells Phatik that the soonest he can take him back to his home village is when Durga Puja holiday comes, which is several months away. Phatik insists he wants to go right away, but he can’t convince his uncle to listen to him. That night Phatik goes to bed and makes a decision.

The next morning his uncle learns that Phatik has run away during the night, and he notifies the police about the missing boy.  Now for the first time his uncle, aunt, and cousins feel anxiety about their own culpability in Phatik’s disappearance. 

That evening in a pouring rain, the police carry the weakened-by-fever Phatik back to the residence.  It is clear that the delirious boy is critically ill, and a summoned doctor is not optimistic.  Meanwhile, in his delirious state, Phatik has idyllic visions of his mother and little brother, evidently recalling, or dreaming of, some precious moments when he felt loved.

Soon Phatik’s mother, have been notified about her boy’s serious condition, tearfully rushes to his bedside and lovingly fondles his feverish head.  Phatik looks up at her, and in his closing words asks, “has the holiday finally come?”  Indeed it has.

The story is a sad one and reminds us that the awkward years of early adolescence, while displays the first impulses of boastful assertiveness, it also features a newly intense, but unexpressed need for love and affection. Instead of abandonment, Phatik would have survived if he had been treated with love and care. Finally, his uncle and aunt could only express their regret for failing to convey their love for Phatik.

Brave New World is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. The book presents a nightmarish vision of a future society.

In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World at number 5 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2003, Robert McCrum, writing for The Observer, included Brave New World chronologically at number 53 in “the top 100 greatest novels of all time”, and the novel was listed at number 87 on The Big Read survey by the BBC. Despite this, Brave New World has frequently been banned and challenged since its original publication. It has landed on the American Library Association list of top 100 banned and challenged books of the decade since the association began the list in 1990.

Summary

This is a story about a world where people are born in test tubes and their lives are predetermined by their social status. Mothers, fathers, children, and other social relationships do not exist, and all of the primary human needs are met by forced or fabricated social experiences.

The Alphas, the top social class, are the most brilliant and enjoy more of life, whereas the lower classes, who have been genetically stunted in a lab, perform the society’s less important chores. To further assure their future social rank, each generation of children is created in batches via cloning and suggestive conditioning.

Bernard, a government psychologist in London, is an Alpha, but he’s physically small and doesn’t like society’s artificial social aspects, such as unrestricted sex and soma, a drug that makes people feel drunkenly good.

Bernard is sent to New Mexico as a psychologist to study a “savage” reservation, a place where the “old” society still exists. He brings Lenina, a young and attractive woman, with him, and the two of them enter the reservation together. There, Bernard meets Linda, a lady who grew up in London but was abandoned in the reservation several years ago. It is also discovered that, Linda had a son named John.

This is problematic because the father is Bernard’s boss, the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, and Bernard’s society does not accept procreation through natural means. Instead, Bernard decides to bring Linda and John back to London.

Bernard, who is normally quiet, becomes outgoing, as his fame for bringing back John, “The Savage”, grows. However, when John fails to show up for a social event, his social status returns to one of an outcast.

After his mother’s death, John understands that something is wrong with society. He attracts the attention of the Controller, the regional leader of Western Europe, and then John and the Controller talk.  

The Controller explains how and why things are the way they are.  That the coexistence of truth and happiness is a balancing act and that they have chosen a life of extreme happiness with very little truth.

Bernard is sent to an island with other freethinkers like himself, and John decides to move to the countryside and live alone. In the end, after being made a spectacle, John hangs himself out of shame.

Review

There’s a lot to say about this story, but what draws my interest is the concept of predisposing individuals for a specific course before they’re even born, similar to putting them on a train track. We learn in the story that lower-level individuals learn what is comfortable to them early on so that when they grow up and have to do menial duties, they are not angry because they have been conditioned to believe that what they are doing is good. In other words, a social ceiling has been created for them.

What’s even more interesting is that the same thing could be happening today. For example, if a person is raised in a high-status social network, he or she is bound to stay in that high-status social network. Similarly, someone who grew up in a poor social network is more likely to stay in that network. Of course, these paths aren’t cast in stone, and there’s always the possibility of deviations, but for the most part, one’s environment has a significant impact on the type of person they become and the decisions they make.

What’s exciting to see are individuals, through their own talents or luck, who shift their social circumstances and assimilate themselves into other social networks. In essence, they are shifting the direction of their tracks and arriving at new destinations.

The Great Gatsby, third novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1925 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Set in Jazz Age New York, the novel tells the tragic story of Gatsby, a self-made millionaire, and his pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, a wealthy young woman whom he loved in his youth. Unsuccessful upon publication, the book is now considered a classic of American fiction and has often been called the Great American Novel.

Summary

This is the story of a man named Nick who lives in America in the 1920s. He moved to New York to work as a bond trader and discovers that he lives next to a large mansion occupied by a mysterious man named Gatsby.

Gatsby throws huge parties every night, along with loads of women and alcohol, and when Nick is invited, he learns that Gatsby served in the army as well. However, no one knows how Gatsby became so rich.

Nick reunites with his cousin, Daisy, a flirty young woman who is married to Tom, a wealthy businessman. Tom, on the other hand, is having an affair with Myrtle, the wife of a mechanic.

Nick meets Daisy’s friend Jordan, a young professional golfer, and the two fall in love. In the meantime, Nick and Gatsby become friends, and Gatsby tells Nick about how he inherited his wealth from a yacht owner.

Gatsby also reveals that he knew Daisy when they were younger and that he is still in love with her. In fact, Gatsby secretly watches Daisy from across the lake, where she lives with Tom and her daughter.

When Gatsby and Daisy finally reunite, a flood of emotions returns. They acknowledge their love for each other. To escape the heat, they all drive into town.  When Tom finds that Daisy wants to leave him, he gets upset and tells Daisy and Gatsby to drive back home and talk about it. However, Daisy, driving Gatsby’s yellow car, accidentally runs over Myrtle.

Tom then tells the mechanic that it was Gatsby who ran over Myrtle. The mechanic shows up and shoots Gatsby when he is swimming at home. Unfortunately, no one attends Gatsby’s funeral, and Nick, confused and saddened, sells everything and returns to the Midwest.

Analysis

First of all, this novel provides a historical perspective on the 1920s, a fascinating period in American history.  We get the vividness of the time, with the lights and glitz that saturated the people. Drinking and parties were to be encouraged rather than discouraged.

It should also be highlighted that expressing this energy and culture through writing  is a difficult task. It’s not only saying that there were bright lights and cocktails, but also engaging the reader in a world with subtle reminders of the culture.

Identity is another major theme, as the characters, like real people, have complicated identities that frequently involve deceit. People aren’t who they say they are, as seen by Tom and Myrtle’s affair and Gatsby’s ambiguous history, as Gatsby’s name isn’t even his real name. And as readers, we are reminded of this when Gatsby’s father shows up and corrects Nick, saying his name was “James Gatz.”

There are various theories of how Gatsby became wealthy. Readers learn early on how he had gained his wealth , but are still wondering how he kept it over the years. Even after Gatsby’s death, ambiguous phone calls seem to be coming to the house, which hints at illegal gambling as a source of income for Gatsby.

Nick makes an interesting point regarding parties that may still be relevant today. That, despite the fact that parties happen every weekend, there is a sense of emptiness experienced at parties.  This emptiness stems from how easily people may be replaced. That if you go to enough parties, they all start to look the same.

Gatsby also wishes he could travel back in time to when he first met Daisy. And any character who wishes the present were the past, that things were the way they used to be, is doomed.  This is a strong literary strategy that many of the best stories use in their tragic characters. So be forewarned, living in the past is dangerous.

Fahrenheit 451, dystopian novel, first published in 1953, that is regarded as perhaps the greatest work by American author Ray Bradbury and has been praised for its stance against censorship and its defense of literature as necessary both to the humanity of individuals and to civilization.

In 1954, Fahrenheit 451 won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and the Commonwealth Club of California Gold Medal. It later won the Prometheus “Hall of Fame” Award in 1984 and a “Retro” Hugo Award in 2004. Bradbury was honoured with a Spoken WordGrammy nomination for his 1976 audiobook version.

Summary

This is a story about a man named Guy Montag who is a fireman.  However, by today’s standards, he is not a fireman. Rather than putting out fires, he starts them by burning books, which are outlawed by the government.

After talking to his neighbour, Clarisse, Guy begins to doubt his work. When he looks around, he sees a wife who doesn’t love him and a world wrapped in technology and war. Every day, people kill each other and  no one seems to care.

After learning that Clarisse died, Guy further begins to question himself whether or not he is doing the right thing by burning books. He is so enraged that he steals a book before burning a lady and a pile of books.

Beatty, his fire captain, notices changes in Guy and keeps a close eye on him. Guy tells his wife that he has a small book collection at home, and they try to read them together, but his wife seems disinterested.

Guy meets Faber, an old English professor, and the two decide to fight the government together.

Meanwhile, when Guy is at work, they receive a notification that books have been found. Surprisingly, the firemen arrive at Guy’s residence.

Guy is forced to burn all of his books with a flamethrower, but when provoked, he kills Beatty. He grabs what books he can and rushes over to Faber’s house for a final farewell. 

The government has launched a full-fledged broadcast hunt for Guy, which includes the use of a mechanical search dog. Guy escapes the city and walks down the river, where he encounters a group of runaways. There, he discovers that they have all memorized books, thus creating a human library of literature.

Finally, the runaways watch the city being destroyed by enemy bombs and prepare themselves for a grim future.

Analysis

So, why does this society dislike books? What did books ever do to humans?  In this society, people have chosen not to read books. The majority of people quit reading and instead found entertainment in the form of bite-sized  portions of educational information. 

The administration then decided that books should be forbidden because they contained contradictory views that caused debates and conflicts. Rather than creating a marketplace of ideas, the government wanted to streamline thinking so that everyone had the same viewpoint. What’s even scarier is that this doesn’t seem too farfetched to occur in real life.

Most importantly, this story tries to answer the question: Why are books so important?  As Faber discusses with Guy, books are important for three reasons.  The first is that books are excellent sources of information. The second reason is that reading books takes time and dedication. The third reason is that we have the power to react to our surroundings based on what we learn from reading. That the words in books aren’t just meaningless words, but have practical applications in our lives.

It’s not just because this old dead guy wrote some things for me to read hundreds of years later, but also because how do those words apply to our society today? 

Despite the fact that technology has progressed our society, we still tent to see the same human problems as in the past, so it seems that technology makes our life simpler but does not solve many of our most basic problems, such as war, disease, and poverty.

It’s quite scary to think that the author may have imagined some of the technology that we use presently. Fast cars, mechanical dogs, large TV screens, reality TV, bluetooth, and a variety of other technologies are included in the novel. It makes you question how far we are from a world without books.

Ender’s Game is a 1985 military science fiction novel by American author Orson Scott Card. The book originated as a short story of the same name, published in the August 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. The novel was published on January 15, 1985.

Reception of the book has been mostly positive. Ender’s Game was recognized as “best novel” by the 1985 Nebula Award and the 1986 Hugo Award in the genres of science fiction and fantasy.

Book Summary

This is a story about a boy named Ender who lives with his mother, father, and two older siblings, Peter and Valentine.  All of the children are intelligent, but Ender, unlike his siblings, seems to have the potential to be a brilliant military leader. As a result, he is taken away to be trained by Colonel Graff for the war against the buggers, an alien race looking to invade Earth.

When Ender arrives at battle school, he is put through a series of tests and introduced to various battle simulators, video game-like simulations of space battles.  He performs excellently and is assigned to one of the several armies. He is initially advised to remain out of the war games, but he discovers a superior winning strategy. Despite his success as a tactician, Ender is despised even more, but he does teach those who want to learn from him on the side.

Meanwhile, Peter and Valentine create fake personas and begin political discussions on the net.

After graduating early from battle school, Ender is trained on a dedicated battle simulator.  And when that becomes too easy, he trains with Mazer Rackham, an old war hero.

Under this new training, Ender is pushed to the limit and nearly breaks down as his battle simulations become increasingly more difficult.  

Ender finally has one last battle simulation that involves a planet and several thousand ships.  He wins the game, but then is told that all of it was real.  That he was commanding real ships in what he thought was a simulation.

Ender is proclaimed a hero, but still fears Peter, who has great political influence on Earth.  In the end, Ender finds a bugger cocoon and takes it with him as he travels in space with Valentine.

Analysis

There’s a lot to say about this story, but what draws my interest and attention is the idea of using children in intergalactic war.

Throughout the story, it is sometimes difficult to remember that most of the main characters are children.  In Ender’s society, children are often forced into maturing quickly for military endeavours.  

But why children?  Isn’t it more practical to train more physically mature people to fight? The explanation given is that the military wants individuals who are willing to react to situations without thinking about the consequences.  Children are able to act this way because they haven’t lived long enough to understand the scope and bigger consequences of their actions.  

While cruel, this type of thinking is valuable and necessary in the battle against the buggers because of how the buggers learn and adapt.

Also, a lot of the battles are battle simulations, or at least perceived as battle simulations to the children.  It’s this perception of a game that allows the children to learn, strategize, and take risks that would not be possible had they known it was happening in real time, which says a lot about how children learn and how humans learn in general. 

Bridge to Terabithia is one of the most classic books you may ever read about friendship, imagination, and loss. And, with all of these elements, the book won Katherine Paterson her first Newbery Medal in 1978 (she won another for Jacob Have I Loved in 1981). The novel won a lot of other honors, too, including being named an ALA Notable Children’s Book in 1977 and a School Library Journal Best Book of 1977.

Summary

This is a story about a boy named Jessie who lives with his family in a small town called Lark Creek and has a hard family life. He likes to draw and to run, and is kind of lonely; he’s out-of-place in his family and the only person he really gets along with is his little sister May Belle. He’s about to enter the fifth grade and has been training all summer to be the fastest runner in school.  

The Burke family moves in next door.  Their daughter, Leslie, is creative and smart and becomes Jessie’s classmate.

When the big day of the race arrives at school, however, Jessie gets beaten by Leslie. And, at first Jess is crushed, but later he and Leslie end up becoming good friends.

Since they’re both outcasts, Jess and Leslie spend a lot of time together. They take over a part of a nearby forest that’s only accessible by swinging on a rope over the creek, and name it Terabithia. In this imaginary land, they are king and queen. They can escape from the bullies and the boredom of fifth grade, and dream all they like. When Janice Avery, the resident bully, takes May Belle’s Twinkies, Jess and Leslie get revenge by writing her a fake love note and humiliating her.

The most of the school year has passed. Jess gives Leslie a puppy for Christmas, and she becomes a member of their Terabithia kingdom. They also assist Leslie’s father with the construction of their new home. When they discover Janice the bully is truly upset, they work together to comfort her.

By Easter, it’s been raining continuously for a month and crossing the creek to Terabithia has gotten more difficult. Leslie attends Easter service with Jess’s family. After the service, Leslie and Jess, along with May Belle, debate whether people who do not believe in the Bible go to hell.

One day after Easter, Jess thinks it’s too dangerous to go to Terabithia, with all of the rain that’s been coming down. But he forgets about it when Miss Edmunds, the school music teacher, calls and invites him to a museum with her. He goes and has one of the best days of his life. However, when he returns home, he discovers that Leslie had gone to Terabithia without him and died while attempting to cross the creek.

At first, Jess refuses to believe it. In meeting with Leslie’s parents and spending time with her dog, he slowly begins to understand what he’s lost…but also what he gained by having Leslie in his life at all.

He goes to Terabithia to try to figure out what’s going on, but his younger sister follows him and nearly drowns in the water. In rescuing her he realizes that  he has gained some of Leslie’s bravery.

Later, Jess returns to Terabithia and constructs a bridge across the creek. When May Belle follows him again, he welcomes her to Terabithia and guides her across the bridge.

Review

Despite portraying the power of imagination and the innocence of childhood, this is not really a children’s book in my opinion as it touches upon various adult-related themes and challenges many of the social conventions established in society.  It displays unusual relationships that children may not understand.  Of course, by that fact alone, it does not make the book false or bad, just, shall we say, unique.  

And of course, there is death.  One of the main characters in the story dies.  How is a child supposed to react to this?  How do children react to the death of someone they know?  There doesn’t seem to be a real answer presented to us from the author, but maybe the lack of an answer through Jessie’s struggles to come to understand his situation is relatable enough for children. 

All of these may fly over the heads of children. I do not know how children would take the book or what they would think but other than that it is a great read!