Check In- Analysis

Check-in

1. Summary

The story is about the narrator, Mrs. Nair who was recently fired after twenty years of working in a company in Nether land. As she was walking towards the boarding gate, she had a trip down to memory lane on what happened thirty years ago on her first experience traveling to Singapore, when she was fifteen. The story lingers on the preparation that was taken care of by her loving parents, Achan and Amma. Her father, Achan, tried his best to get all the necessary and needed references and books, as well as her traveling documents. While her mother, Amma, busied herself with things that she might need or even might not need for her journey as well as her stay in Singapore, packing, unpacking and packing her things again and again into the huge suitcase. On the journey from Wadakkanchery, a small town in Thricur district, Kerala in India to Chennai Airport, then known as the Madras Airport, the readers get to feel her feeling and emotions that were so overwhelming, which at  one point showed that she had the urged to sneak out of the hotel and take the next train home. On the day of the flight to Singapore, as she proceeded to the boarding gate, she looked back at her loving parents to get the strength for her journey to the unknown world. It is the same feeling she is having at the moment, queuing at the boarding gate in KLM Airport.

2. The Plot

The Exposition

We are introduced to the narrator (Mrs. Nair) at the beginning of the story when she was on the next flight home, early Monday morning.

Introduces the setting of the story.

The Rising Action

The preparation carried out by the parents as well as the journey from Wadakkanchery to Chennai Airport, then known as Madras Airport.

The Climax

They arrived at Madras – it was the night before her departure. The writer couldn’t sleep due to her overwhelming emotions about leaving the country and especially leaving her parents to embark on the journey to the unknown world.

The next day – the day of her departure, at the airport, she tried very hard to control her emotions and feeling, at the same time trying to convinced her parents that everything would be alright.

The Falling Action

At the check-in queue she waited with two other students who were traveling with her.

She faced the grumpy old lady at the counter who was inspecting her up and down, and was summoned to proceed to the boarding gate without further delay. She looked over her shoulder to see her parents, the get the strength to pursue her dream.

The Resolution

The narrator was brought back to the present time by the voice of the KLM assistant. She realized that she was having the same feeling she had on the day she departed from India, from her loving parents.

3. The Setting

Time

Present time – 5 am on Monday morning

Flashback – thirty years ago when she was fifteen years old

Place

Present time – KLM Airport

Flashback – Wadakkanchery, a small town in Kairala, India

                    Chennai Airport, then known as Madras Airport, India

                    

4. The Conflicts

Mrs. Nair (narrator)

Internal Conflict

The reader can feel the internal struggles of the narrator on her journey from her home town to the airport, before she left her country to pursue her education in a strange country.

External Conflict

The only external conflict that was portrayed in the story was of her mother who was not so convinced that it was a good idea for her to go. However, the conflict was hushed by her father by comforting words and a stern look.

5. The Characters

The narrator, Mrs. Nair (Main)

·      present time: successful career woman, just being promoted to be the first woman CEO of a big company in Nether Land

·      past time: a young, naïve fifteen years old girl who was offered to further her education to one of the most prestigious junior college in Singapore.

Successful: She was the first woman CEO of Biacorp, a company in Nether Land , managing multi-billion dollar revenues and over 200,000 employees, or just as easily. She had served the company for twenty years.

Torn-in-between: She was torn-in-between not having the courage to leave her parents and her country to stay in a strange country or to pursue her dream to see the world, to be out in the open, to be free. The night before her departure, she woke up in the middle of the night, choking with feelings, having the urge to take the next train home.

Courageous: She was only fifteen when she left her country and parents. She tried her best to conceal her feelings from he parents, trying to convince them that everything would be alright.

Achan (Minor)

Devoted: Ensuring his daughter got all the references and books form several bookshops and trip to the city. Making proper arrangement for her traveling documents, foreign currency, and their traveling itinerary to Madras as well as convincing Amma that their daughter was no longer a small girl and it was for her own good to further her education to Singapore.

Amma (Minor)

Devoted: Ensuring her got all the necessary things for her journey and stay in Singapore – new clothes in the latest styles, food for her journey and stay in case she didn’t like the food on the flight or tired of the bland Chinese and Malay food in Singapore, home remedies for all ailments and a large collection of god and goddesses to keep her safe and away from troubles of any sort.

Worried: She voiced out her worries about her fifteen-year-old daughter traveling to a strange country on her own.

6. Tone

Nostalgic: This tone is seen (or felt) through out the plot where the narrator longed for her past.

7. The Theme

We face constant changes in our life.

Mrs Nair faced lots of changes in her life. Her changes first took place when she decided to accept the offer from one of the esteem colleges in Singapore when she was fifteen. Of course, as years passed, she also faced changes in her life; from a college student to a career woman, got married and now the big promotion. (Inferred)

Then, we can see the other main changes that took place in her life when she was offered the post of the first woman CEO in Biacorp. 

Sub-theme: Parents will always be there for us, to give us strength to face the unknown world.

This sub-theme can be seen where the narrator, when she was at the Madras Airport, kept looking at her parents over her shoulder, looking for the last beacon of reassurance. She knew everything would be alright as she kept giving them convincing smile even though she had thousands butterflies in her stomach.

Again, this sub-theme is stressed in the present time where she absently waved goodbye into the wide open space, as if she was again waving towards her parents, absorbing their strength and reassurance.

8. Point of View

1^st person point of view – the story is told from the first person’s point of view, the narrator herself.

Readers would be able to feel her feelings and turmoil as well as look into the world, present and past, from her point of view, as well as what she observed around her

                      

Jasmine's Father by Paul Tan

Jasmine's Father - Analysis

Paul Tan

Paul Tan Kim Liang has published three volumes of verse. Curious Roads (1994) and Driving into Rain (1998) won prizes at the Singapore Literature Prize competitions. His most recent collection is first meeting of hands (2006). His writings have appeared in publications like The Straits Times, The New Straits Times and Commentary.

Criticism : A Wilting Bloom
Short Stories : The Oriental Grocer
Short Stories : Jasmine's Father
Jasmine’s Father

Plot

Introduction
The story basically revolves around the flashbacks of the protagonist/narrator who essentially remains unnamed. The plot starts off with a realization by the protagonist/narrator of the irony of his present situation in the light of his daughter’s behavior and sharing with him. We are then introduced to the daughter, Jasmine ,who is the only named character in the story The story moves forward through a chronological order of the changes in Jasmine’s life as seen through the eyes of the protagonist when she first started working until the day she left for Canada.

Significant milestones in the plot are as follows:
o Introduction : The narrator recalls the irony of his present situation and that of his daughter’s current situation
o Conflict: The father remembers that the daughter’s present condition as being due to Jasmine’s workplace
o Climax: When the father was informed of Jasmine’s decision to migrate
o Resolution: Acceptance of the migration and of life alone.


Setting
The story has no definite setting; the settings that are presented are set in the mind of the protagonist/narrator and remain essentially there. The only clear setting was during the flashback to the pivotal point in the story where Jasmine breaks the news of her impending migration. The setting for this point was the garden.

Symbolism

The main symbolisms in the story are:
□ The omission of the name of the boss to represent the society that Jasmines lives and works in.
□ The entire patriarchal society of Singapore is personified as a single entity in the form of “The System”

Characterization

□ The main characters in the story is the protagonist/narrator, Jasmine and the System
□ The protagonist, who is only identified as Jasmine’s father is seen as a loving father who does open channels of communication between him and his daughter and who in the end changes to acceptance of his empty nest status in life.
□ Jasmine, the daughter, is portrayed here through the eyes of her father is presented as being:
o Opinionated
o Self-confident
o Determined Modern
□ The antagonists in the story is the personification of the patriarchal working society in Singapore in the mind of Jasmine as the System

Point of View

-First Person. Limited Omniscience
-We are introduced to the narrator’s thoughts but are only given to speculations concerning Jasmine’s rationale for her actions.

Tone
Continuum of Ironic moving on to Fondness and finally Acceptance

Theme
Coping with Change, Generation Gap, Conflict between Value Systems

Her Three Days by Ousmane Sembene

Her Three Days

Sembène Ousmane
Senegalese writer and film director, a modern griot, storyteller and chronicler, best-known for his historical-political works with strong social comment. Sembène has often turned his short stories and novels into films. He is considered one of the founders of the African realist tradition. Sembène's image of Africa has been more self-critical, less romanticized that Leopold Sedar Senghor's, who more or less glorified the past.

Sembène Ousmane was born in Zinguinchor-Casamange region of Senegal in the colonial French West Africa. After a brief period of the Ecole de Céramique at Marsassoum, Sembène turned to various occupations in order to support his family. Since the age of fifteen, Sembène has earned his living. He has worked as a plumber, bricklayer, apprenticed mechanic. During the World War II he served in the French Army in Europe. Following France's official surrender to Germany, Sembéne joined the Free French forces in 1942 and landed with them in France in 1944.
After the war Sembène returned to Senegal where he participated in the Dakar-Niger railway strike of 1947. Later, he returned to France, joining community of dock workers in Marseilles. He taught himself to read and write in French and published his first novel in 1956. The work was based on his own experiences in France.

In the 1960s Sembène developed an interest in the cinema and studied film production in the U.S.S.R. His La Noire de.. (The Black Girl from...) was the first film ever produced by African filmmaker and won a prize at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival. It was a story of a girl, Diouna, who leaves her own family to become a housemaid in Antibes, France. She commits suicide, and her employees, a white retrund to Dakar, to explain what cannot explain.

As a writer Sembène made his debut as a novelist with LE DOCKER NOIR (1956, The Black Docker). It was born quite accidentally. Sembène was forced to leave work for several months, during which time he wrote down his personal experiences as a dock worker. The protagonist is Diaw Falla, who works on the docks. He kills a white woman who had tried to take credit for a prize-winning book that he himself wrote, and ends in prison in life.


Plot

- A story about Noumbe, the third wife of Mustapha, who was making all the preparations and sacrifices to welcome her husband home for her three days of having him alone. It also tells us the importance of “three days” to the narrator.
-Introduction : Introduces Noumbe as the third wife
Introduces Aida, the next door neighbour as Noumbe’s confidant.
Introduces the setting
-The conflicts : Internal conflicts - her emotions towards her husband
External conflicts - her emotions towards other characters, the village
women, her children.
-The climax : After all the preparation and sacrifices done, her husband, Mustapha
didn’t come home for her “three days”.
-The falling action: Mustapha, her husband came home.
-The ending : Noumbe’s bitter reactions towards her husband’s return

Setting

-Place : North Africa, Mali, unknown village, Noumbe’s shack
-Time : Three days durations
-Weather Condition : Very hot
-Social condition : close knit among the womenfolk

Symbol

Noumbe’s hut. “She went into her one-room shack sparsely furnished; there was a bed with white cover and in the corner stood a table with pieces of china on display. The walls were covered with enlargements and photos of friends and strangers framed in passé-partout.” The bareness of the house symbolizes her emptiness and longing for her husband’s affection.

Character
-Noumbe – the third wife (protagonist)
-Musthapa – the husband (antagonist)
-Aida – next door neighbour, her confidant.(minor character)
- Mustapha’s second wife – (flat character)
- Mactar – Noumbe’s son (flat character)

Point of View

Limited Omniscient (3rd person)
Only introduced to the narrator’s (Noumbe) thoughts

Tone

Nostalgic – when Noumbe reminiscing the sweet moments whilst the husband was around.
Sorrowful – when Noumbe expresses her thoughts on Polygamy
Anger - when Noumbe showed her unstable emotions upon her husband’s return

Theme

Gender bias among the African.
How husband is worshipped above all; children and self.