Kamala Markandaya’s Honors World Literature

India

Journal Entry Assignment

A dialectical journal allows you to carry on a conversation with the text you are reading by recording comments, observations, reactions, and comparisons. During our Nectar unit, on assigned days, you will respond to certain groups of chapters using a dialectical journal.

You must choose any two quoted passages from the specified reading assignment and write a short journal entry about that passage in one or two well-developed paragraph(s).

You may choose to write a personal or analytical response for your entries. You can respond to a character’s words, thoughts, and actions/decisions, but just be sure to have a quoted passage as a reference for your journal entry.

For a personal response, some questions to consider…

· What did you think when you read this passage?

· What did this passage remind you of?

· Why did you choose this passage? Why did it stand out?

· What universal meaning could this passage have? How could this passage related to you personally? to today’s society?

· How did this passage make you feel? Why?

· Do you agree or disagree with the ideas presented in this passage? Why or why not?

For an analytical response, some questions to consider…

· What does this passage reveal about the speaker or other characters? (characterization)

· How might this passage foreshadow later events? What makes you think so?

· Describe Markandaya’s writing style in this passage – is there anything interesting about her use of language, phrasing, imagery, figurative language, etc.?

· How does this passage illustrate an important symbol? What does this symbol reveal about characters, theme, conflict, etc.?

· How does this passage relate to an important theme in the novel?

· What conflict (internal or external) does the passage help to develop? How? Why is this conflict important?

· How might this passage reveal Markandaya’s purpose in writing the novel?

Format

Copy the passage from the novel in bold type, single spaced. Use proper MLA citation format when copying the passage (use introductory clause to indicate the speaker). Use brackets and an ellipse […] to remove material that you do not need/want to quote (such as dialogue tags, etc.).

Skip a line and then begin writing your journal entry in one well-developed paragraph. Double-space your journal entry.


Sample Journal Entry (Analytical)

Ruku comments, “Our relatives […] murmured that the match was below me; my mother herself was not happy, but I was without beauty and without dowry and it was the best she could do. ‘A poor match,’ they said, and not always quietly. How little they knew, any of them!”(4).

In this passage, Markandaya uses foreshadowing. Although Ruku’s family whispers that her marriage to Nathan is beneath her, Ruku argues that they knew very little, indicating that her relatives are wrong about her and Nathan. Instead, from this passage, the reader can infer that Ruku and Nathan are, in fact, a good match and that they are happy in their marriage. In addition to foreshadowing, Markandaya uses this passage to reveal some of the cultural and social structures in place in India at the time. When Ruku mentions that her family believes she marries “below” her, Markandaya alludes to the caste system in which people were expected to marry within the same caste as their families. Ruku’s comment also demonstrates the importance of material wealth and beauty as commodities in arranged marriage.

Sample Journal Entry (Personal)

Ruku remembers, “This was the first time I had ever heard that my father was of no consequence. It was as if a prop on which I leaned had been roughly kicked away, and I felt frightened and refused to believe him. But of course he was right, and by the time I came to womanhood even I had to acknowledge that his prestige was much diminished”(4).

I can empathize with Ruku’s feelings in this passage. She is disillusioned; as a young child, she was naïve and believed her father was a man of great importance, but her older brother, who knows better, understands that his father had no real power anymore. I can identify with Ruku’s feelings and her loss of innocence. I think most people are in such a hurry to grow up that they don’t fully appreciate the advantage of being young when, for example, your parents were still infallible. Or you could see your parents as either good or bad, but not in-between. It is, after all, a lot easier to see your parents as authority figures rather than as complicated individuals with their own struggles. The problem is, once you know something, you can’t not know it. Ruku, since she is still a child, doesn’t believe her brother when he tries to tell her the truth; instead, she tries desperately to keep her father on a pedestal.