The Rice Mother Analysis

SETTINGS The contrast in setting that I would like to discuss is the settings in the beginning of the stories. The novel “The Rice Mother” started off with the place Lakshmi was born in a Hindu Ceylonese family, the cultural practice when they enter a jungle, the history of Lakshmi’s mother and grandmother on how Lakshmi’s family was formed, and the practice done by Hindus when a girl reaches her puberty. About the social settings, there are two kinds of culture practices by the Hindus are being portrayed Rani Manicka. The first is spirit exorcism done by the Hindu Ceylonese since before 1916’s, before Lakshmi was born. “He wore many chains of strangely twisted beads and dried roots around his neck,……”(from page 1, second paragraph

There are no cultural settings in this novel even in the beginning of the story, however, it focused more on the disaster life faced by Antoinette in Coulibri which is outside the Spanish Town in Jamaica. Coulibri is the place where Antoinnette grew up, which portrays isolation “I got used to a solitary life,….” and racial problems, “The Jamaica ladies never approved of my mother,…” and “worst still, Martinique girl”, those are the examples of a different cast people are not accepted in the society. The overall beginning part of the novel only draws on deaths (death of Mr.Cosway, Mr. Luttrell and his dog) “shot his dog, swam out to sea and was gone forever”( page 3, fourth paragraph) and inconsistent environmental care (“our garden was large and beautiful as the garden in the Bibble” and “ but it gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers….” ) As a conclusion in discovering the differences in settings, in “The Rice Mother”, although there is struggles face by Lakshmi’s mother in Ceylon, it is not obvious. However, it focused more on the cultural setting how the Ceylonese people are tied to their cultural in Sri Lanka. In “Wide Sargasso Sea”, the Coulibri only represented as a negative value like isolation, death, and clean environment turns to be bad, the focus is more on struggles compared to cultural