“Paper”
Summary
By: Catherine Lim
The story “Paper” is written by famous Singaporean woman Catherin Lim. Catherine explores the greed towards easy money making and how it leads city people to a tragic result.
Tay Soon and Yee Lian are main characters of the story. They belong to a middle class family and they have strong ambition to buy a well managed home with many perfections. They have dreamt of a beautiful house having marble floors, oval shaped sitting rooms and afantastic swimming pool. They both share their plan to all their family members including Yee Yeng, Yee Lian's sister. The mother of Tay Soon didn't pay any attention or concern to them. She was engaged in her traditional profession, i.e, vegetable business. She was completely happy. She also suggested to them that they not pay attention to their dream, but for Tay Soon. it was not only dream. He thought it could be fulfilled if he handled the money appropriately because he had saved $40,000 in the bank.
In that period, Tay was attracted to the share market because share price was rising. So, he invested $30,000 at risk in share market. Fortunately, he was able to make $100,000 within short period of time. At that time, he proudly told his mother that he was able to buy 50 houses like mother's. He further was excited towards the share and invested more money. But unfortunately, the value of shares began to fall rapidly. There was not any device to control the declining. He invested all of his money. Few remaining dollars were also invested in a last attempt, but it was also in despair. His hope of building a modern house was broken into pieces. He himself broke physically. He stopped eating and started beating his wife and children. His condition was became worse and worse and he was admitted to hospital. At last, it was his mother who ordered a beautiful paper house somewhere in the market to satisfy his son. At last, Tay Soon was dead and paper house was put on his dead body and they both were burnt together and turned into ashes.
This story is giving satire on the ambition of young generation in Singapore who are crazy for material gratification. The structure of story is divided into three parts - opening, climax, and anti-climax. In opening, we can see Tay Soon and his strong aspiration to have s modern house. In the climax, we can observe his excessive greed towards money hoarding. The anti-climax is a total ruin of Tay Soon due to the greed for paper in this story. "Paper" stands for many things such as plain paper, money, etc. The growth of the value of paper means their success. In this story, "Paper" denotes bank, cash, share, certificate, prosperity, game, etc. And on the other hand, it also indicates Tay Soon's ambition, effort, and sleeplessness, broken and deserted. Lastly "Paper" also stands for material success and failure both.
Symbol: in general terms, anything that stands for something else. Obvious examples are flags, which symbolize a nation; the cross is a symbol for Christianity; Uncle Sam a symbol for the United States. In literature, a symbol is expected to have significance.
Foreshadowing: is the technique authors use to hint at something that will happen or something we will learn later on in the book. There are two main reasons to use foreshadowing. The first is to build suspense. The second is to prepare readers for what will happen—either good or bad—and to make the story more believable