Many writers use a country setting to establish values within a work of literature. For example, the country may be a place of virtue and peace or one of primitivism and ignorance. Choose a novel or play in which such a setting plays a significant role. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the country setting functions in the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot. (2006a)
Thrity Umrigar, the author of the novel The Space Between Us, has used her childhood city of Bombay, India, as the setting of the story. “This city, riddled with contradiction and paradox, the strange tug-of-war between intimacy and unfamiliarity; between awareness and blindness” sets the perfect stage for the novel to take place. The novel’s theme of intersection of gender and class by the lives of women from the working class and the middleclass that seemed so connected and so removed from each other was able to develop because India’s class system allowed it to happen.
The novel tells the story of a house servant’s life in India. The whole story is based on Bhima and her middle class employers for whom she works for a low wage bearing sweats and aches. For India, this employment of servant is a very common thing since labor is cheap and any middle-class family can afford for someone to come and help with household works. Since Bhima is from a lower class, she is constantly being reminded of her state when she isn’t allowed to sit or eat on the same table with her employers. However, this dehumanizing tradition of the East is a very unlikely thing for the West, where all humans are thought and treated equal. In addition, Bhima’s life in a one roomed house in a city slum portrays the sufferings of her life. The head-touching ceiling, the narrow streets with hardly enough room to walk between the mud and human excrements, the communal toilet all represent the poor and unfortunate condition of Bhima’s personal life. For example, just like the low ceiling, she can’t...