22nd Annual Student Research Conference
Finding Equilibrium in A Fine Balance: Understanding and Overcoming Society Through Friendship
Danielle L. Schieber
Dr. Hena Ahmad, Faculty Mentor
Rohinton Mistry provides an illuminating and often traumatic recounting of Indias marginal populations during the reign of Indira Gandhi in his ambitious work A Fine Balance. His four main characters introduce the average western reader to vastly different and often tragic experiences of the 1960s and 70s India while drawing these unlikely comrades together through various circumstances. In exploring, among other topics, the gender, history, and economics behind the novel, the reader can better understand the characters that Mistry portrays. Mistry introduces his characters through their individual experiences of suffering and each bears their own personal traumas and tribulations, which influences their behavior throughout the book, both negative and positive. In attempting to appreciate the motivations of the characters, how this determines their treatment of one another, and their later affection, it is essential to understand the various factors that created them, often unknown and unconsidered by the western reader.
Keywords: Mistry, Rohinton, A Fine Balance, friendship, gender, economics, India, Indian history, Canadian author
Topic(s):English
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 25-1
Location: OP 2121
Time: 9:45