Sie starrte mir direkt in die Augen. Dann drehte sich ihr Kopf um hundertachtzig Grad und wieder zurück und starrte mir direkt in die Augen. Da hat mich die Angst gepackt.
Heute bin ich nicht mehr bei den Eulen- ich meine bei den Strigiformes. Seit Dezember bin ich bei den Leporidae. Ich war schon immer ein Halbstarker -schon von Anfang an. Als junger Bursche (ich trug Blue Jeans, ein weisses T-Shirt und eine rote Lederjacke, genau wie James Dean, der König der Halbstarken) hatte ich ein frisiertes Töffli mit dem ich Dritt- und Viertklässler einkreiste, die sich auf dem Heimweg befanden. Ja, wegen mir kamen viele zu spät zum Essen.
Therese war eine Klasse über mir. (Wenn ich nicht die zweite Klasse hätte wiederholen müssen, wären wir zusammen zur Schule gegangen.) Sie hatte lange, struwwelige Haare und eine Pigmentstörung. Ich fand sie noch nett.
Therese arbeitet auch hier, sie hat Veterinärmedizin studiert. Früher, als wir noch Kinder waren, hat sie viel über Igel zu berichten gewusst: „Igel schmatzen“ oder „Igel tragen immer viele Zecken mit sich herum, weil sie halt so klein sind und sich, wie Zecken, in Gebüschen aufhalten“ hat sie oft gesagt. Wegen einer Dummheit bin ich im Gefängnis gelandet- für zwei Jahre. Therese hat damals gerade das Gymnasium beendet. Erkennen tut sie mich nicht, die Therese, wenn sie bei den Hasengehegen vorbeikommt. Sie ist, soviel ich weiss, nicht verheiratet.
Item, Tierpfleger ist ein solider Beruf- wie ich finde. Dort, wo ich zwei Jahre lang verbringen musste, hatte es auch Hasen. Ich war für deren Fütterung zuständig, und ich habe freiwillig deren Käfige geputzt. Als ich meine Strafe abgesessen hatte, durfte ich die Hasen mit nach Hause nehmen. Die Wärter versicherten mir, dass sich bis anhin niemand so liebevoll um sie gekümmert hat und dass sie bei mir sicher bestens aufgehoben wären. Ich weiss daher mehr über sie, also über Hasen im Allgemeinen, als zum Beispiel über den Kaiserschnurrbart-Tamarin. Meine Hasen, Therese und Jan, sind recht artig, so artig, dass sie ab und zu auf mein Sofa dürfen. Wenn es mir nicht gut geht, merken das die Hasen und kommen mich beschnuppern.
Nicht Hunde- nein! Hasen sind doch immer noch der beste Freund des Menschen.

Er strömte in die Gemächer ein,
wo Dorian Gray nur konnte sein.
Wie ein Adonis sass er da,
seine Schönheit war zu sehen-
von fern und nah.

Sein Antlitz liess alle Welt erblassen-
ach, ihr Rosen,
wie musstet ihr den Jüngling hassen!

Auf dem Diwan hockte er und wich-
erst beim letzten Pinselstrich,
den der Künstler hat getan-
mit viel Liebe und stillem Wahn.

Wie sehr er auch seine Blicke hat gewendet-
es gab nichts mehr zu tun,
sein Werk, das war vollendet.

„Komm her, Dorian, und sieh dich an!“,
war der Spruch, der aus des Künstlers Munde kam.

Der Jüngling gehorchte seinen Bitten-
und trat mit federleichten Schritten
vor das prächtige Werk heran,
denn sehen wollte er,
was des Künstlers Hände haben getan.

Ein dumpfer Schrei entsprang aus ihm,
als sein Blick das Bildnis fing-
denn dem Jüngling wurde klar,
wie schön sein junges Antlitz war!

The respective volume contains the stories, Five Little Pigs, A Murder is Announced, and Taken at the Flood. When reading these stories, I asked myself whether the “modern” reader has a lead over the “old” reader of Christie; because of the possible exposure to all those crime shows on TV (provided, they expose themselves to it). This might harden the modern reader and thus, make him or her foresee the plot. If so, does that mean that “modern” Christie readers cannot appreciate these stories the same way as the “old” reader might have appreciated them? Did readers back in the 40s and 50s have a different reading experience? Were they more scared to go to bed after poring over this sort of crime fiction? Were they more excited when Hercules Poirot or Miss Marple announced who the murderer was?

As far as the first premise is concerned, I do not think that increased exposure to crime fiction, or crime TV shows, etc., transform the reader into a super-sleuth who already gets it all. What I do think is that people who lived during the time when Christie novels were published, had a better understanding of the time in which the story unfolds; a better grasp of references made about people, places, politics, etc. It would be interesting to know, what people back then were taking in when reading Christie texts. I am a reader of Agatha Christie who has no idea what it was like to live during that time in which the story unfolds, but the author leaves me hints that I then can compare to now (e.g., references about clothing/textile, social relationships, money). What seems plausible is that these references which I, as the modern day reader, need, in order to make sense about the period, might have been read and meditated on differently in the past.

In conclusion, it seems that Agatha Christie’s strongest asset was to create stories that are timeless and appeal to a vast variety of readers. What I most like about Christie, is that she gave us Miss Marple and Hercules Poirot-two entirely different protagonists that are a consistent staff in her stories. When beginning to read her novels, one never knows who is going to appear -Poirot or Miss Marple (for they never solve crimes together), and that alone can be just as exciting as getting through the last pages.

My cricket game was the one thing for which my grandmother never grudged me time away from my homework: on the contrary, she insisted that I run down to the park by the lake whether I wanted to or not. You can’t build a strong country, she would say, pushing me out of the house, without building a strong body. (8)

This example substantiates the position that studying takes up a major role in the narrator’s youth. I shall explain this in more detail, because I propose two ways of looking at this passage. Firstly, as mentioned before, the narrator’s spare time appears to be work-related. To be more precise, it is the Grandmother, a former schoolmistress, who feels that physical activities and being meticulous about one’s homework help to shape a strong personality.
The cricket game is a striking element in this sense, because it is the sort of game one would connect to British society. To make a general statement, it was the British who did not assimilate to the Indian culture. On the contrary, during the period of English colonization in India, the British people brought their traditions to India, cricket being one of them. It seems that the game has established itself in the Indian community as being a national one. Boria Majumdar and Sean Brown write in their essay ‘Why baseball, why cricket? differing nationalisms, differing challenges’ , that in India, the nationalist movement from the close of the Nineteenth Century made it crucial that cricket be taken up as a non-violent means to compete with the ruling British. The grandmother’s statement “[Y]ou can’t build a strong country […] without building a strong body” might entail the notion of a more Western society, where personal achievement seems to be credited to a stern education. Yet, it seems to be an overhasty conclusion that this form of education — that is, the combination of mental and physical education — is a British one and not traditionally Indian. To compare the traditional British school system with the traditional Indian means of education lies beyond the scope of this paper. Extensive research would have to be undertaken to adhere to such statements.
In the section above, I have offered a two-way perception of the provided excerpt. Firstly, I have discussed the grandmother’s promotion of education, and secondly, education as a means to run a nation. As discussed previously, the narrator emphasizes his grandmother’s severe ways of tutoring him. I have suggested that one way of discussing the narrator’s statement is to focus on the importance of studying and playing cricket. The narrator has the grandmother- figure explain the impact these activities have on the individual and on the country. To sum up, the grandmother’s belief that only the physically strong can build a strong country lead to the conclusion that education does play an important part in the social status of individuals in India. Furthermore, it is the educated people, in the grandmother’s opinion, who are able to rule a nation.
To make a connection between the grandmother’s ideas and the Indian nationalist idea that the game of cricket has been applied as a non-violent counterforce to Britain, it seems that there is a strong connection between the game of cricket and the nationalist point of view. To be more precise, the non-violent way of competing with a nation’s former colonizer appears to be the only way to publicize the nation’s struggle for its own identity. In turn, the only way of gaining enough strength to be able to rule a nation is through disciplined studies and playing a game that represents the nation.
So far, I have tried to highlight the importance of education in The Shadow Lines. I have substantiated my position by discussing the narrator’s recollections of his boyhood, where he clearly states that his spare time had to be reasonably spent with doing homework and playing cricket. This, of course, is a focus, which lies on one single-family structure.
The reader might find it interesting to know that throughout the novel there is but one passage that could be considered dealing with outcasts in Indian society. In the following excerpt, the narrator and his family visit a relative of theirs in the economically deprived parts of Calcutta. The narrator is watching outcastes washing their children in filthy water and collecting rubble off the slopes. Interestingly, the connection is made between poverty and education when the narrator is reminded that education is the only means to keep people in India from sliding into poverty. The construction of this connection is as follows: At first there is a narrative description with an overall focus on the setting, evoking feelings of disgust and shame towards the social outcasts. Secondly, the narrator uses the evoked feelings of disgust and shame in order to make the connection that failure in one’s education leads to poverty.

I could see women squatting at the edges of the pools, splashing with both hands to drive the back layers of sludge, scoping up the cleaner water underneath to scrub their babies and wash their clothes and cooking utensils. […] Running along the factory was a dump of some kind; from it the sludge-incrusted pools. […] I saw that there were a number of moving figures dotted over those slopes[…] They were picking bits of rubble off the slopes and dropping them into their sacks[…] [t]hey were completely camouflaged, like chameleons, because everything on them, their clothes, their sacks, their skins, was the uniform matt black of the sludge in the pools. (133).

The narrator constructs a situation, which evokes uncanny feelings such as disgust and shame towards the outcastes. The consecutive use of the terms “sludge”, “dump” “sludge-encrusted pools”, and “rubble” generate these feelings. To be more precise, the narrator builds up a climax of terms, which undermine the scenery that is so repulsive that it might even provoke a feeling of nausea in the reader. The depiction of mothers bathing their babies in filth is particularly strong, as those readers who might have children of their own will find themselves compelled to compare their situation with the narrator’s depiction. Moreover, all the goods that are washed in sludge are very close to one’s body. As a consequence, the clothes are never clean and the filthy water remains on the cooking utensils, and thus, indigested with the food that is eaten. Clearly, this depiction evokes disgust. Furthermore, the narrator compares these poor people with chameleons because they take on the same color as the puddles of mud that they stand in. Thus, these chameleon-like people are not to be told apart from each other, as they no longer appear as individual human beings, but as muddy creatures festering in trash. It follows that these people are not part of the nation because they are simply overlooked, as one can observe in the following citation.
In the second part of the excerpt the narrator makes the connection between failing in one’s education and sliding into poverty. Here, the reader is told that the fear of becoming one of the outcasts triggered his will to be meticulous about his studies. To be more precise, it is the mother that propagates this anxiety. She tells her son that if he doesn’t study hard enough he will end up on the slopes where all the poor people gather to collect trash.

Our relative spotted me leaning on the railing and ran out. Don’t look there! she cried. It’s dirty! Then she led me back inside. I went willingly: I was already schooled in looking away, the jungle-craft of gentility.[…] It was that landscape that lent the note of hysteria to my mother’s voice when she drilled me for my examinations; it was to those slopes she pointed when she told me that if I didn’t study hard I would end up over there, that the only weapon people like us had was our brains and if we didn’t use them like claws to cling what we’d got, that was where we’d end up, marooned in that landscape: I knew perfectly well that all it would take was a couple of failed examinations to put me where our relative was, in permanent proximity of to that blackness: that landscape was the quicksand that seethed beneath the polished floors of our house; it was that sludge which gave our genteel decorum its fine edge of frenzy. (131/132).

Discussing the citation, the reader perceives that the landscape, which the narrator is looking at, is so dirty that he is scolded immediately and taken back inside the apartment. Interestingly, the narrator states that he is already schooled in looking away, because he was told early on that neglecting one’s studies would lead to poverty. The way in which this fear has affected the narrator is, to use a Western example, is reminiscent of the stories that act as a deterrent in the German children’s book, Der Struwwelpeter. The stories in this book serve to make children believe that they will be punished like the protagonists if they do not behave the way their guardians want them to.
Another aspect to be considered is the word there, which is used synonymously to refer to the gutter. Therefore, one can draw the conclusion that the people in the narrator’s family are so overwhelmed with fear of sliding down into poverty that this unwanted situation is simply referred to as there. What is more, the mother emphasizes that the brain is the only weapon that saves them from ending up in that particular situation. To sum up, the narrator creates a climax when he uses the quicksand metaphor to refer to the instability of his family’s home. The narrator pictures their home on top of quicksand, and the only way to avoid being swallowed is to keep one’s grades up in school.
At this point I would like to discuss a character that does not consummate his education. Tridib is the narrator’s eccentric cousin who lives in his family’s old house in Calcutta. What makes this character so special in the context that is discussed in this paper is that he acts as a deterrent. Ironically, Tridib is by no means an uneducated person; he is one of those individuals who would fit the typical description of a bohemian. He is a bachelor and spends most of his time in his room reading and smoking cigarettes. It seems obvious that Tridib is a threat to the grandmother’s notions of education.

She would often try to persuade me that she pitied him. Poor Tridib, she would say. There’s nothing in the world that he couldn’t have done with his connections. He could have lived like a lord and run the country. And look at him – oh, poor Tridib – living in that crumbling house, doing nothing. (7)

Judging from the grandmother’s perspective, it is obvious that education is only good if one makes use of it. For her, Tridib is the perfect example of a man who will not lead a meaningful life. Apart from this, the grandmother’s belief appears to be that educated people should rule the country, and this is only possible if one implements one’s knowledge. As previously discussed, the grandmother, like the mother, makes use of the deterrent theme. Again, the narrator is lured into believing that if he does not implement his knowledge, he will end up living in a deteriorating house like his cousin. The narrator offers an interesting insight into the reasons for the grandmother’s disfavor of Tridib, namely, that he associates with people of a socially lower status.

She had deep horror of the young men who spent their time at the street-corner addas and tea-stalls there. All fail cases […] [t]hink of their poor mothers, flung out on dung heaps, starving…(7).

The passage is very similar to the one where the mother passes on to her son the fear of having to live an outcast life on the muddy slopes.
At this point I think it could be argued that Tridib has used his education to liberate himself according to his own wishes and desires. He has made a conscious decision, and seems content with his choice of lifestyle. One has the impression that the narrator cannot make this claim for himself, because he seems to be more a victim of the grandmother’s manipulation rather than the master of his own life. Also, “the deep horror” of those men, those “fail cases” (7) is justified, as the grandmother believes that it calls for strong and educated men to rule a nation. Clearly, those men will never be candidates for such a position. In addition, it is indicated that the women will suffer the consequences.
To conclude, I have mentioned in my introduction that the topic discussed in this paper is not the outstanding feature in The Shadow Lines. Yet, what I have hoped to bring across is that being an educated person inevitably contributes to a social upraise. To apply this notion to the discussed excerpts, it is fear of loosing social status and housing that is the reason for emphasizing the importance of education. Moreover, I discussed that the grandmother and mother characters function as the figures that bring this idea across. The means by which the narrator is made to take his studies seriously is by choosing social outcasts and the narrator’s cousin Tridib, who take on the functions of a deterrent. To be more precise, they are made examples of social failures, which under no circumstances should be emulated. The reasons why the outcasts became such in the first place is oversimplified, as these people most likely never had the access and means to education. The narrator is made to believe that education is the only way to prevent a downfall into poverty. But, education in the case of Tridib has a function of personal liberation – he has made educated choices – his choices, and is happy with them. One could argue that the grandmother’s insistence that education must have a practical application, such as running a country, actually imprisons the individual instead of liberating them. On the other hand, Tridib serves as an example of an educated individual who has not put his knowledge to use and is prone to slip into poverty. To sum up, to antagonize the socially deprived individuals in The Shadow Lines is a means of make-belief.

Works Cited

Ghosh, Amitav. The Shadow Lines. United States of America: Viking Penguin, 1989.
Brown, Sean, Majumdar, Boria. ‘Why baseball, why cricket? differing nationalisms, differing challenges’ In: International Journal of the History of Sport. Volume 24, Issue 2 February 2007, pages 139 – 156. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a768567400~db=all (visited on 6/1/08 11:10 AM)