Silent Words

Irony plays a key role in Susanna Clarke’s story “John Uskglass and the Cumbrian Charcoal Burner” as it not only makes the actions happen in the story, it creates humor as well. Irony, in simple words, is a gap—a gap between expectation and the reality. In the story, this gap creates tension among characters, especially two major characters: the Charcoal Burner and the Raven King. However, this conflict is humorous one (though irony does not necessarily always create humor, it is a serious tool used by dramatists like Sophocles and Shakespeare).     The most ironic part of the story is the ignorance of both the major characters about each other’s identity. For the Charcoal Burner, the Raven King is simply “a black man” (216) who changes his pig into a salmon.   He is angry with this man also because he does not speak with him.   The Charcoal Burner goes to the priest and makes a plea for giving punishment for his “wicked enemy” (217). These episodes are ir...

I recently listened to a lecture series by John Rauston Saul and was pretty impressed with his arguments. I made some notes from his lecture and have decided to share here.   John Rauston Saul has critiqued the mainstream Canadian historiography which he argues is amnesiac as it has ignored the major and the crucial part of Canadian history, the history of the First Nations and the role Indigenous philosophy, culture and the norms played in shaping Canada as a unique country in the world. He challenges the grand-narrative that Canada is a new country which was formed after the arrival of European Anglo-French people few years ago. Though I have reservations in some of the claims he makes in this lecture, I agree with most of the arguments he puts forward. First of all, Saul makes a bold statement that Canada is not a “new country” and argues that Canada is first and foremost a M étis Nation, not an Anglo-French ‘new’ country that the mainstream historiography claims...

(Unedited first draft) The European Settlers in Canada not only appropriated the indigenous land, they even tried to break the Indigenous social structure.  Indian Act of 1876 institutionalized the European Settlers’ attempt to destroy the social and cultural fabric through different policies one of which was Indian Residential School (IRS). While most indigenous people suffered due to the Indian Act and the IRS, Indigenous women were the worst victims. By imposing the European male-centric social structure by formalizing the male-female inequalities into law, and by ‘producing’ a generation of indigenous people ‘trained’ in the Indian Residential Schools, the Indian Act completely altered the gender dynamics of the Indigenous community. Though racial, economic and other forms of discrimination were also institutionalized through the Indian Act, gender issue will be the focus of this paper.   Gender balanced social structure was one of the hallmarks of the First Natio...