Themes of The Village by the Sea by Anita Desai Essay -- Village Sea

Themes of The Village by the Sea by Anita Desai The novel, 'the village by the sea' by Anita Desai is about how Hari and Lila struggle for the survival of their family in the absence of their drunken father and ill mother. As portrayed in the beginning of the novel, the opening scene is described to be an unstable environment. This is reflected by the setting of the waves and how they are portrayed to be 'unstable' as the author uses phrases such as 'high tide' and 'low tide' to show the instabilities of life and its changes. In relation to this essential opening scene, this novel is briefly paraphrased to be a book describing the transformations and the hardships in life. As connected to these major morals described by the author, there are several minor themes in relation to the morals as mentioned earlier. These themes are responsibility, self-control and love. The main themes of this novel are change and survival. ?Change? in this book is the way each character is able to understand things in life have to be changed in order to progress. The theme of change is portrayed when the governors decide to turn Thul into an industrial area. Other situations are when Biju starts to introduce motor boats to Thul for fishing instead of manual one and this shows that the change of boats is for the development of fishing. Desai is able to communicate to us this theme when Hari?s father is able to turn from a useless drunken man to a responsible and caring person and also how Hari?s mother is able to get better from her ill state. With this, we can see that each situation in the book is linked together by the way Hari?s father changes when his mother falls ill and is taken to the hospital. This theme is stro... ... Coconut day. One main one is the way Hari?s father out of love for the family and his wife changes from drunkard to a responsible man. Another theme shown is self-control and this shown by the way Lila is able to keep the money she earns from the De Silvas to buy food for the family and not spent on useless things.Other examples are the way Hari makes a lot of money in Bombay, but although there so many nice things in there, he does not spend it but saves it. One character that is able to show this is Hari?s father by the way he is able to control himself from drinking toddy. From what we can see in the novel, the themes are related to each other like change and survival leads to responsibility, responsibility leads to love and self-control and also responsibility relates to love. This is created by the way the user creates the setting of the novel.