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Beyond The Beautiful Forevers Character Analysis

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In Katherine Boo’s Beyond the Beautiful Forevers, the main character Asha is an aspiring slumlord. Hoping to ride the corrupt system that surrounds her out of poverty, Asha spends most of her days taking bribes to solve the problems of her local Annawadi villagers. While Asha may not have many resources at her disposal, her cunning and abject ruthlessness in achieving her objective allows her to continuously climb up the social hierarchy of the undercity. If Asha read The Attack by Yasmina Khadra, she would likely sympathize with The Sheikh as he shares Asha’s same ruthless desire to see her dreams made into reality. Life isn’t easy for anyone who lives in the squalor and filth of Annawadi, a slum located outside of the Mumbai international …show more content…

The Sheikh himself is mostly a mystery, his thoughts and actions are only revealed through surrogates save a few chance encounters that he has with Jaafari. While the man himself may be mysterious, his actions are telling of his motivations and desires. The Sheikh, whomever he may truly be, wants nothing more than for Israel to get out of Palestine. He wants to see his people, the Palestinians, liberated from the yoke of the Jewish state. And, this man is willing to do anything to accomplish that goal. Asha would resonate heavily with that willingness to do anything. She turns to corruption and greed to further her own motivations, to get her and her daughter out of the slum. Asha doesn’t care if someone can barely afford to feed their family, except in a few circumstances money will had to change hands before she lifts a finger to help. Asha doesn’t actually care about the slum or its residents, just like the Sheikh doesn’t actually care about the Israelis or Jaafari. She wants the life she envisioned for herself and her daughter Manju to become a reality. This same drive to succeed she would see in the Sheikh and the Palestinian resistance movement in

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