hi everyone,
     'Ullswater' is a text of fiction that treats a bitter reality of two brothers who could not understand their differences. Victor, the narrator , whom I do blame slightly because he told me almost everything, leaving me quite saturated. I understand that his nephew should know every single detail about his father, but I,as a reader feel  a bit quenched, since fiction -according to my humbl evision - is supposed to raise questions unanswered .  Herein I am raising a question to my dear colleague readers: Should the narrator tell everything to his/her reader? Is fiction supposed to  ask implicit questions or answer the reader's ones?
     My direct response to 'Ullswater' is that the text is fantastically well wrought. The language is very poetic in the sense that the romantic moments of the past are described very beautifully. I have even the smell of flowers flirting my nose :).  The text has adopted modern poets' recourse to imagism, which makes of the story a narrative poetry.
     When Victor describes Sonia, language becomes poesy, "....in the afterglows of sunset, when parrots darted across the sky, her(Sonia's) face would absorb light and slowly become luminous like the moon". Is not this beautiful?

Looking forward to your reactions

Dear All

The following is my reading notes. I want to share this with the group. ‘I could hear sheep bleating in the field behind us. Up and down the long garden the borders brimmed with pink and blue English flowers: Senaka would have known all their names, but the foxgloves and hollyhocks out at the bottom of the garden framing 'Ullswater' in purple are the only ones I know, and those only because I asked’ (lines 14 – 17, p. 1) – I think the lake is a symbol of unknown here with fringes of the known world expressed through the reference to ‘foxgloves and hollyhocks’ as the only familiar names to the narrator.

This description, in my reading, runs parallel as a metaphor for the relationship between the two brothers - mostly unknown, may be even unexplored to them with little patches that could be explained. ‘I wanted to tell him everything’ (Ibid) – i.e. ‘everything’ from his perspective about the last day of Senaka’s life. He can’t tell Ranjit everything because he himself doesn’t know ‘everything.’ Victor came to see his brother in distress, literally after ‘years’ to mend ‘frayed family ties’ upon receiveing a letter from Sonia, his brother’s wife. His visit was prompted by a sense of duty as well as guilt for having done ‘nothing’ for his brother for so many years. Here this sense of duty is cultural, I think. In most societies in India, Srilanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, elder brother plays a very important role in family life.

In most Indian societies after father, the elder brother becomes the ‘head of the family’ and is treated as a ‘father figure.’ Senaka’s wealth and wisdom made him responsible for this socio-cultural role reversal (‘He, rather than our poor unfortunate parents, had come to represent family stability and authority’ L 123-124). Senaka’s personal distress and trouble makes the retrieval of this socio-cultural position for Victor possible. (‘Aiya’ is the Tamil word for elder brother) This cultural norm inculcates in him a sense of duty towards his brother and to sort out things in their life treating them as ‘family’ issue. There has always been a drift between two brothers in their life together. Even when they were together this mutual distance did not allow them to know ‘everything’ about each other. In his inner mind Victor perhaps held his brother responsible for their mother’s deteriorating health (see ‘she was so ill—so distant— although I think her problems really started only after his birth’ L 59-60). It is possible that a similar feeling run through the family that may have turned Seneca an introvert, seeking his refuse in the world of books. In his love for England, known through his reading, may be he was seeking a physical refuge where he can be himself. Everything’ is never everything.

It is one interpretation of one perspective, complete only from that perspective. Its like a jigsaw – only perspectives from the ‘other’ can complete it leaving out space for future interpretation through act of reading to be more enriched. I think through his narration the scope for the reader to see the world of Senaka becomes broader. Victor’s world as well as perspective is represented as binary opposites and probably mutually exclusive. Victor talks more about his perception of Senaka, off course there is no other way of talking about a person and Ranjit knows little about his father – therefore his narration is the only clue to know about Senaka.

In fact it is through these gaps in narration that I had a glimpse in the world of inner mind of Senaka. It is on the day in 1967 when Victor came to see Senaka, after so many years that Senaka granted Victor an entry to his own inner world, the metaphor for which is his study. Earlier whenever they met, generally the venue used to be the veranda. When he said ‘cheers’ at the time of taking a drink together that sounded like an irony. A man so deep in depression crying out ‘cheers’ merely as a ritual where there is no room for cheerfulness in his life. The names are also very significant: Victor, that means the ‘winner,’ is given to the survivor in the battle of life. Ranjit, also means ‘a winner in the battle.’ Both these ‘winners’ are alive in the narrative. However, the name of the main character, i.e. Senaka has a mythological significance (Jataka Stories). Senaka is the Bodhisatva, born as a brahmin to serve as a minister of king Janaka, the King of Vedaha (Benares) who is Sita’s foster father in Ramayana. Senaka, in our story, is the wise one as well. Looking forward to comments on the above observation.

Love

Sanghita

Dear Sanguita and All,

Thanks Sanguita for your comments. By reading your post I realized that our cultures are similar in relation to family issues. In my culture my elder brother represents the "head of the family" after father, even if mother is there, the elder brother can not be contradicted and when he speaks we, the younger brothers and sisters, should just listen until he gives us a chance for comments. All the talk outside the time he has given us for saying what we think is taken as gossip and incorrect, but the way he speaks with younger brothers is informative and not for discussion. The younger brother should not get married, or get his own house, etc. before the elder brother got it. If this happen the community and family considers you, the younger brother, as a careless or as someone who wants to get things quickly but will stumble. This omen will follow the younger brother for the rest of his life. And if you stumble and fall down he’s the envoy to go and check, and his mission is to tell the younger brother that “we warned you and you didn’t listen”. I have a suspicion that this might be the problem here.

I also think we say the narrator tells us everything without meaning everything about his brother’s life, but he tells us everything in the story. It is him who tells us he got a letter from Sonia, that their mother was ill, that Ranjit took him to the lake, we know how others felt about Seneka from the same voice and... we get the entire story from the same voice, the narrator, and this blocks the way for us to know more or check the truth. I feel we, as readers, will be ignorant forever of the truth until the day this narrator will lose the autonomy of telling us the entire story from beginning to end. What do you think?

Tanguene

Dear colleagues,

 Before I finished reading the last lines of the story, I had felt that the narrator made all his possible effort to convince us that his brother failed not only to lead a happy life but also to understand the meaning of this life.  The narrator told us everything he wanted us to know about the side that he didn’t like about his brother. Yet, there is another side , like all other human, which he didn’t like to tell us about. I say ‘he  did not like’ as he wanted to take revenge of his brother’s success. I believe he left us many unanswered questions.

I don’t think reliability is a part of  any fiction and that’s why we like to read fiction because it represents our weaknesses as human!

Cheers!

Hi all,

How interesting to see all these various reactions to the same text! No wonder, each of us reads the text from his/her cultural, historical,  and linguistic  prerequisites.

If I am not wrong the author is a Srilankan living in England; do you think that the text raises the issue of cultural resistance to the English one? Is there a sort of hybridity in the text's characters?

Thanks