SRI KRISHNA ARTS AND SCIENCE COLLEGE

Course : Subaltern Studies

Course Code : 20ENP04
Faculty : Dr. T.Ananthi
Semester :I
Unit : III
Title : The Funny Boy – Plot Summary

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
 FUNNY BOY

Pigs Can’t Fly

Aunty Radha
Shyam Selvadurai
 Outline
• Introduction: the author, the book and Sri
Lanka
• “Pigs Can’t Fly”
• I. Childhood Games and Social System
• II. Deterritorialization of spaces of Power and
Gender
• “Aunty Radha”
• I. “adults”: Radha, Anil vs. the other adults
• II. Supporters and Obstacles between Radha
& Anil
• III. Arjie’s growth from chap 1 to 2.
The Author: Shyam Selvadurai

• Born: Colombo, Sri Lanka, 1963

– Father Tamil, mother Sinhalese
– Immigrated to Canada, 1984. -- his
family forced into exile after the
1983 racial riot against the Tamil
in Colombo.
Education: York University, Toronto.
• Funny Boy: A Novel in Six Stories --read by
the Sri Lankan President and prompted a
national debate on the need to repeal the
antisodomy law in the country (Salgado 100)
 Selvadurai about Funny Boy
• “I’m gay and Arjie’s gay and both families left Sri
Lanka, but that’s where it ends.
• Arjie’s first experience and acceptance of himself
happened in Sri Lanka and mine happened in
Canada.
• My family is also much more liberal. My father is
Sinhalese and my mother is Tamil which was a huge
thing at the time of their marriage so we were
brought up differently from other kids. There was a
lot of tolerance for difference.” (source)
Postcolonial
Funny Boy

Identity
“Self-Other
-ed”
Queering

--Education: ambivalent,
“un-learning” imperialist culture
-- Growth: Protracted
displacement
-- trauma; -- diasporic &
transcultural*
 Queer-ing
• Queer: “a term that challenged the normalizing
mechanisms of state power to name its sexual
• subjects: male or female, married or single,
heterosexual or homosexual, natural or perverse.
• Given its commitment to interrogating the social
processes that not only produced and recognized
but also normalized and sustained identity, the
political promise of the term resided specifically in its
broad critique of multiple social antagonisms,
including race, gender, class, nationality, and
religion, in addition to sexuality. …
 Queer-ing
• The contingency of the term
• Remaining open to a continuing critique of
its exclusionary operations

Race,
Intersection-
Class,
ality of Gender &
Sexuality
 Queer-ing: How?
1) Disclose multiple causality and how various factors
interact with one another
2) Challenge authorities & binary oppositions by
introducing the third, or fourth roles
3) Mobilization & Deterritorialization of identities: “By
means of tactical deterritorialisation, we are able to
challenge the restrictive binary of the local/global
identity” identity/sexuality: not essence, not
timeless, it is also not fixed in place
 Tamil vs. Sinhalese
⦿ Sinhalese migrated from Northern India to Sri
Lanka since 5th-6th century BCE, while Tamil
came from Southern India around since 2th BCE.
⦿ Sinhalese -- Buddhism
⦿ Tamil -- Hinduism, more sent to Sri Lanka by the
British government and supported by the latter.
⦿ Since its independence as Ceylon (i948), the
Sinhalese (80% majority) put forth “Sinhala Only
Law” (in 1956) in support of their political power,
which causes discontent among the Tamil people
(20%).
 Documentary
1. 3:00 – Tamil imported to Sri Lanka by the
British
2. Sinhalese rise to power after Independence
3. Civil War: 4:00 the burning of the library
5:19 1983 retaliation of Tamils
4. History updated:
1983-2006 -- civil war (4 peace talks, 100,000
people dead)
2004 – striken by South Asian tsunami –about
35,000 dead
2009 -- LTTE defeated
 Funny Boy: Structure
• Funny Boy – set against the increasing
violence between a between Sinhalese and
Tamil in Sri Lank, culminating in the civil
war which lasted for almost a
decade(1983-1991).
⦿ The protagonist, "Arjie" Chelvaratnam, is the
second-son of a privileged middle-class Tamil
family in Colombo facing the need to conform
to the government’s imposition of Sinhala-only
policy and the growing racial conflicts.
 Funny Boy
Connected stories of how Arjie is continually
isolated from his family and then exiled from his
society because of his gender orientation and the
society’s racial tensions and despite attempts at
breaking boundaries and rebellion.
– "Pigs Can't Fly”-- Arjie's early childhood and
his gravitation towards the imaginative games
his female cousins play as opposed to his
male cousins' beloved game of cricket.
– "Radha Aunty" --Arjie's Aunt Radha, and her
doomed affair with a Sinhalese man.
 Funny Boy
– "See No Evil, Hear No Evil“-- his mother's
extra-marital affair with a childhood sweetheart.
– "Small Choices" --chronicles one of Arjie's first
crushes a puppy love obsession with a young
man employed by his Father
– “The Best School of All” – Arjie’s experience of
the conflicts between colonial education and
Sinhalese nativism, between his need to
conform and his love for Shehan Zoysa.
– "Riot Journal" – first-hand accounts of
anti-Tamil violence. (Black July, 1983)
 L
e
a
Childhood & Children in Chap 1 v
Ammachi/Appachi i
n
Amma/Father g
t
h
e
s
a
f
Aunt Kanthi e
h
a
r
b
o
r
o
f
c
h
Adult Characters in Chap 2
Tamil vs. Sinhalese vs. Burgher
A F
m a
t
m h
a e
c r
h
i

Disillusioned about
wedding
 The title
⦿ Funny --either humorous or strange (17); disgust

⦿ But Meena also crosses gender boundaries in

playing the cricket game.
⦿ The other girls do, too, in the bride-bride game.
⦿ The mother’s purpose in allowing Arjie in her room
when she dresses herself?
⦿ Arjie’s view of being a bride (5) and jewel and sari
(15)
⦿ “Pigs Can’t Fly” the story is about the ideological
system (the sky), and the power struggles within it.
⦿ the mother’s use of the phrase twice, the 2nd time
sounding weary
“PIGS CAN’T FLY”
 I. Children’s World and Their
Views of the Adults
• Avoid Mamachi (2) and Janaki
• Fear: The dark corridor (2) chap 2:
the great grandfather’s photo (59; 85)
• Territoriality and leadership (3)
• Girls’ territory potential for free play of
fantasy (4)
 The Girls’ Game
⦿ Arjie as the leader because of “the force of his
imagination”(p. 4)
⦿ His imagination– allows him to "leave the
constraints of [his] self and ascend into another,
more brilliant, more beautiful self" (5).
⦿ Still conditioned by the goddesses of the
Sinhalese and Tamil cinema (breaking the racial
boundary). chap 2: his images of wedding
(43)
⦿ A world for girls – the groom the most useless
(p. 6) Arjie’s role as a groom (31)
 The Boy’s Game—Cricket
• Competition -- with winning as the goal;
• trading players
– less powerful ones: e.g. Sanjay
– girlie-boy: Arjie
• the batting order – p. 26
– Numbers marked in the sand for the players to step
on;
– The older and better ones play first (rule of tradition)
 II. The Children’s Struggle for
Power

⦿ Her Fatness – in need of attention

› An outsider pp. 6-
› Kanthi Aunt – her anger (pp. 7-8)
⦿ Wins attention
› by lying about not having a friend & appealing
to adult authority (7)
› by showing off the dolls (p. 8) –which is less
powerful than the bride-bride game;
› by playing a loud groom (9)
› by appealing to traditional gender boundaries
(11) “A girl must be the bride.”
 Arjie’s Fight back & Failure

•Play by the rule: Insisting on the rule to be the

first one to play so that he becomes offensive
and can run away
•His use of the sari:
• Kept in the bag as a weapon
• later his Sari is gone – so is his power.
•In chap 2, his “sari” (bed sheet & curtain) looks
pitiful (51)
•Agrees to play the groom, and then attracts the
other girls’ attention.
•Chap 2: finds that he’s left this world far behind
 Ending: The Sea vs. the System
• Amachi and her cane p. 38
• The seaside and the tall building as a
mirage p. 38
• Exiled, facing the sea waves as a sign of
fluidity
“RADHA AUNTY”
 Discussion Questions
I. The Adults’ world:
• What roles do Ammachi, Amma, Aunt Doris, Aunt
Mala and Aunt Kanthi play respectively?
• How are Radha and Anil different, as adults, from
the others?
• Why is Radha close to Arjie? Why does she
distance herself from Anil?
II. Arjie’s growth: How does Arjie grow up and
change in this part of the story?
– His view of Radha; of bride-bride;
– His knowledge of racism; fear for the future
– His being an accomplice of Radha
– His view of wedding
 Ammachi & Amma
• Ammachi
– Supporter of Tamil tiger (60)
– rigid discipline of her daughters, keeping them within the
racial confine of Tamil
• not wanting Radha to be picked up by a “Sinhalese boy” (56)
• going to warn Anil’s family (60)
• mad when the two are found together in a restaurant: call it
“illicit relations”(74)
• Amma
– answers Arjie’s questions but in short sentences
– Forgets when she’s supposed to pick up Arjie
 Mala Aunty and Kanthi Aunty
• see Radha in a restaurant with Anil
• Radha cries: “I’m practically married.” (71)
• their intervention bring the two closer.
• It is actually the racial riots that “normalize”
Radha and bring her back to her own
community.
 Arjie’s growth
• Changed his views of Radha and Anil
– Radha: not like a bride in his imagination (45)
changes his views because of her
friendliness(47) playing makeup and make
her “the bestest bride” (50) finds her
beautiful
– Anil: not like a lover (66)
• disillusioned, he turns away from
Radha’s wedding
Boundaries disclosed & blurred
• between men and women
• between different races (Tamils, Sinhalese and
Burghers); customs and Western culture
• The role of Western culture such as The King
and I?
 The King and I
• Arjie envies children in the play Pied Piper
because they can wear makeup and
costume.
• no mixed-race marriage, according to Amma
• brings Radha and Anil together
• also the performance (of Radha as a slave
girl) shows they are broken apart
• See No Evil, Hear No Evil
• The Best School of All
• Riot Journal: An Epilogue
Click These
 Next Class…

The Funny Boy – character Analysis

SKASC 35
Thank YOU

SKASC 36