Type of Document	Thesis
Author	Joseph, Anna
URN	etd-07072003-164028
Title	A Vision of the Mahatma and Other Stories
Degree	Master of Arts
Department	English, Department of
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Janet Burroway Committee Chair Hunt Hawkins Committee Member Wendy Bishop Committee Member
Keywords	Stories Vision Mahatma
Date of Defense	2003-01-01
Availability	restricted
Abstract This thesis is a collection of four stories. All the stories are set in India and have women characters as the main protagonists. The stories are about ordinary lives that are neither particularly admirable nor particularly depraved, but all the characters live through and survive experiences that change and haunt them forever. A Vision of the Mahatma is the story of a marriage between Roshini, a young woman, who does not have an inner vision about her place or purpose in this world, and John who claims to have had a vision of Mahatma Gandhi which changes the focus of his life. John wants to give up job and wife in the pursuit of a solution to India's problem of widespread poverty. Their moral power struggle ends when John gently but stubbornly insists on setting up an ashram in rural India leaving Roshini to face a future that promises to be bleak. Five Hundred Acres of Rubber is the story of Asha, a woman, who finds her life in rural India dreary and monotonous. She yearns for life in a city, is fascinated by America and believes that her salvation lies in an arranged marriage to someone/anyone with a job in USA. Asha’s family has its share of pain and cruelty, love and loneliness, security and insecurity, and it is against this backdrop that the process of arranging Asha’s marriage takes place. Nectar of Kochi is the story of a young girl who is growing up as an only child of devoted but rather insensitive parents in a Indian city. The conflict in this story moves and shifts from one between the narrator and her father who is over-ambitious for her, to one between the narrator and her mother. The narrator observes her mother's adultery even while she, as an adolescent, is growing into sexual awareness. In Nice Virgin Girl another young protagonist is terrified to discover herself pregnant. The fifteen-year old Angelique is torn between several things – between wanting to keep her baby and the shame of revealing her pregnancy, between constantly squabbling parents, and between the traditional Indian culture and the global culture that she accesses through Television. Angelique's mother forces an abortion on her, and Angelique is devastated when she learns that her boyfriend approves of the abortion. The story ends with her realizing that there are unforgivable things in the world just as there are irreversible actions -- like pregnancy and abortion.
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