Pigs Cant Fly Essay -- Childrens Books Literature Essays

Pigs Cant Fly Why? Amma said. Because the sky is so high and pigs cant fly, thats why. --From Pigs Cant FlyThe why and because of disembodied spirit is often best captured by children, for they, as the relatively less socialized individuals in society, will often innocently question the social myths we, the heavy(p)s, always care for granted and as the truth. Hence, adults are usually at a loss as to the because when children ask in that cruelly direct way why sure things happen, or why certain things are the way they are in society. Many adults simply brush off the childrens disturbing questions, either telling the children to set off well alone or replying with an answer that has absolutely no relation to the original question, as Arjies mother does in Pigs Cant Fly. How constantly, question though they may, children do not have the ability to comprehend the complex societal boundaries they transgress. Intelligent criticism of what we assume as our social reality must come fro m adult minds. Very often though, a literary text is able to dexterously blend both the poignancy of childhood and the sharp perspective of a maturate consciousness to better question the social myths we assume to be truth and reality. Pigs Cant Fly is such a text, and it achieves its blend of childhood poignancy and adult adulthood through the literary devices of narrator and narratee.The narrator in Pigs Cant Fly is a young child of seven, and the whole story is related to us through his infantile perspective, except for a brief moment when we get a sense of an older Arjie, who tells us that the remembered innocence of childhood is now lost to him forever. The narratee, the person whom the designer assumes the story is to be told to, is howe... ...s a criticism of the social myths we wrap comfortably around ourselves as reality, my reading requires a narratee who has a certain background in social criticism and who may be interested in reading the story in this way. However, many readings may be derived from Pigs Cant Fly, and hence I looking at it is enough to simply understand that the story is essentially about the alienation and loneliness one feels at not being what society expects, and empathy with such a person, instead of bristling self righteousness will better serve towards peace and tolerance in our societies, than all the wealth or knowledge we can ever garner. BibliographyChatman, Seymour. Narration Narrator and Narratee. Reading Narrative Fiction. Ed. Seymour Chatman. New York Macmillan, 1993. 130-141.Selvadurai, Shyam. Pigs Cant Fly. Funny Boy. New York Vintage, 1995. 1-40.