the theme of money in Stories From Around the World

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Money has been, throughout the history of humanity, an end and an aim for human action. In their pursuit of money, people have followed different paths; some honourable, legitimate and legal and others devoid of legality, honour and legitimacy. Indeed, in the short story collection Stories from Around the World complied by Hilary Patel, many stories examine the impact of money and financial considerations on the decisions that many characters make.

In "Mr Sookhoo", the eponymous character is immediately identified to the reader as someone whose sole concern in life is the accumulation of wealth and riches. Mr Sookhoo, sitting on his porch and chewing at a tooth pick discloses an ingenious idea to his helpless wife: he informs her that he aims to deploy religion as a tool for making easy money. Mr Sookhoo's plan is simple; knowing that religious people give generously around the festive season especially when presented with a group of innocent carol singers raising money for charity, he decides to fabricate an institute for the blind, deaf and dumb and to use local school children to achieve his selfish money-making aims. Sookhoo shows total disregard to morality putting his personal financial gain at the top of his priorities. When Mr Sookhoo's plan starts paying dividends in the form of good takings on the very first day of his carol singing project, he immediately resolves to work his young assistants (who are not, of course, aware of his malicious intentions) longer hours giving them little rest. Moreover, when Mr Archibald, the Headmaster of the local school attended by the carol singers, suggests treating the children to ice-cream, Mr Sookhoo chooses to ignore the suggestion buying the children only a carbonated drink that clearly costs less than the ice-cream. It is clear here that Sookhoo is oblivious to anything but his obsession with making easy money.
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In Christianity, Sookhoo is guilty of the sin of avarice or greed which is one of the seven deadly sins that signal total loss of faith. In the story, Mr Sookhoo is not a Christian but pretends to be one convincing Mr Archibald that he had "seen the light" in order to gain his approval for sending children with him on the carol singing mission. Mr Sookhoo's avarice leads to his eventual downfall when he is found out and captured at the end of the story. Sookhoo's avarice leads to a snowballing of unfortunate occurrences that upset the ...

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