For my term paper I want to focus on the theme of inevitability in each of the books we’ve read and how it seems to relate to a South Asian or Eastern world-view. Inevitability is more or less another word for fate and in each of the stories we’ve read fate, along with one’s hopes, desires, and willingness to change one’s fate, is an ever-present part. Fate or a sense of inevitability is also a principal piece of Buddhist and Hindu ideas and relates explicitly to Karma and caste.
In Sea of Poppies this idea of “fate” (in a broad sense) is expressed in the story’s historical setting, the ways the characters’ castes alter (along with their names), and the structure of the narrative and its focus on sensing an “impending something.” Since large portions of the novel are set aboard boats, there’s a clear implication that the events of the novel and the characters in it are all subject to nature’s (the sea’s) “will.” A particular passage on page 394 illustrates the kinds of hierarchies on aboard the Ibis. During this scene, the Captain explains that the “laws on land have no hold on the water,” and that in the face of the ship’s hierarchy “submission and obedience” are best for keeping order aboard the ship.
There’s some irony going on in the enforcement of Man’s hierarchy aboard a ship that is under the control of nature. Essentially, there’s a “higher power” acting over everyone and everything aboard the ship that seems to go unnoticed (in some ways) some how.
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