Summary Of Funny Boy By Shyaam Selvadurai

ANALYTICAL RESPONSE

Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy tells the touching story of Arjie Chelvaratnam, a young Tamil boy living in Colombo Sri Lanka, struggling to understand his homosexuality. Throughout the story’s six chapters Arjie makes many discoveries about what it means to be a homosexual, however, this analysis will focus on the last chapter of the book, “Riot Journal”, in which Arjie is suddenly thrust into a whole new world which comes with fear, sadness and realization. Within “Riot Journal”, Arjie’s life takes a sudden turn when the riots occurring near Colombo reach him and eventually lead to the destruction of his home and in turn, his immigration to Canada. The main themes discussed within this chapter are immigration and becoming a refugee.

Through the use of this chapter, Selvadurai manages to convey to us the panic and rush that comes with becoming a refugee. He does this mainly through the use of frequent breaks not only within the text but also within the timeline of the story, these breaks speed up the pace of the book and

His whole life, Arjie has been fairly ignorant as to what life without wealth is really like since he was raised in an upper middle class family. However, since the Sri Lankan government won’t let his family take their money to Canada, they would only have “five hundred pounds each” (309) in terms of money, “[t]he thought of being this poor scares [Arjie]”) (309). Therefore, this realization makes Arjie more humble in terms of wealth, and allows him to see the world from a new light. For example, Arjie, while watching a beggar run from car to car collecting money wonders if this “would be [his] plight in Canada,” (309) however, before the news of the lack of money he will have in Canada, the woman would have been just another poor person on the side of the street