Themes Throughout A Handful of Dates
The short story A Handful of Dates, by Tayeb Salih uses many different themes and literary techniques to tell a story of an innocent young boy discovering life's hardships. The story begins with three introductory paragraphs which contain background information about the grandfather, and a boy from whose perspective the reader receives the story. These paragraphs reveal that the boy is young, innocent, very intelligent, and possesses a great love for nature. His grandfather is a man of power, who is very tall and has a beard which is described to the reader as being beautiful and soft. The story then moves on to the neighbor Masood, who inherited a large sum of land from his father, but gradually was forced to sell the land to the boy's grandfather due to an excessive number of wives. The action of the story describes a day of harvesting in Masood's date field, where various people from the town appear and help the effort as well as eat some of the dates. When the harvesting is done, the grandfather as well as four other men divide the product and take their share away. This sickens the boy, who runs into the forest and throws up the dates which he had eaten. Salih uses different literary techniques as well as various them
Obviously this piece portrays a blatant tale of a child being exposed to the reality of mankind in the harshest form. This is another point where the theme of conceit is 3 brought out. es in order to describe the loss of innocence. This sentence is the first time that the reader experiences the boy questioning his grandfather's motives. The paragraphs following the introduction begin with a similar theme, but change throughout the course of the action. After the dates collected have been split up between the five men, the them of conceit is brought up again when the grandfather states "You're still fifty pounds in debt to me. Afterwards, the boy describes a scene in which he portrays Masood wearing rags, along with other items which would indicate Masood as inferior to the boy's family. The boys speaks of "The mosque, the river, and the fields- the landmarks in our life. Salih also expresses the boy's mind by 2stating "I loved to give rein to my imagination and picture to myself a tribe of giants. The first three paragraphs exhibit many examples where Salih attempts to illustrate the blissful, pure youth of the boy as well as his love for nature. The image of the boy throwing up is the last and the most apparent theme, the loss of innocence. " This literary technique of personification could lead the reader to conclude that Masood is a very compassionate man who cares about his property greatly, due to the comparison of a tree to a human. The story contains two distinguished extremes, and the author presents them in such a fashion that could be looked upon as startling for the reader. An alternate ending is not something that would be easy to create, because the story tells precisely what it wants to say.
Common topics in this essay:
Tayeb Salih,
introductory paragraphs,
,
loss innocence,
tree human,
introductory paragraphs author,
paragraphs author,
literary techniques,
family theme,
grandfather boy,
love nature,
boy comments,
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Acceptance Essays
