Post #12: A Look into the mind of Santha Rama Ray
Word Count: 299
Santha Rama Rau was born in India and raised Hindu under her grandmother. Still, she traveled quite frequently due to the nature of her father's job as a diplomat. She lived in many countries, starting in England and going as far as Japan. Eventually she went to the United States and became a writer. She then went on to write numerous books and stories. In these, she eventually wrote her autobiography. We get to see part of her early life experience in an excerpt from “Gifts of Passage”, which talks about her time in school.
In this excerpt, Santha appears to convey herself as someone who was curious, smart, and introspective. She also shows a tremendous ability to capture the mindset of achild while still telling a detailed story.
The way Santha writes to the audience is like giving an account of a story in a diary. Things that have happened in the past but still feel current as if it only happened a little while ago. She gives decent context to each part of the story and puts herself in the shoes of a little girl in school.
The text is developed through the summation of experiences from a first-person perspective as they occur. In some instances, she would provide a context in the third person perspective in the beginning of a new scenario or event like in the transition to “The Ghost in the Garden”. She explains the story that she is told and gives most of her feedback as someone retelling an event with more knowledge like how Santha talks about her grandfather on page 678, when she says “Actually, the story of the ghost was a good deal more banal than most of my grandfather’s stories” in reference to how her grandfather would tell stories.
As you mentioned, I like how she writes as if these past events are in the present. The way she describes her memories here as a little girl reminds me of Maya Angelou's writing from the passage we read from "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". When authors use this writing style, it allows the reader to "live in the moment" as they did, processing what they read, and picturing how the author must feel in that exact moment.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the way she wrote this passage as-well. I feel very bad for her during this chapter though because it seems she is trying really hard for people to listen and understand her, and many do not want to. Such as her sister, when she tells her she saw ghosts.
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