When Paulus goes off to Veterinary College, it gave Njabulo a chance to show his love for Thebedi. He had had a crush on her for a long time but never revealed his feelings until Paulus went away. The relationship between Thebedi and Njabulo would not have been so frowned upon at all as they were both the same colour.
The most controversial issue within the story is when Thebedi and Njabulo supposedly have a baby, but when the baby is born it is mixed-race. Njabulo accepts the baby by going out and buying things for it, ‘he bought from the Indian store a cellophane-widowed pack”. This is probably because he loved Thebedi too much to get rid of her because of a mixed-race child. This shows the different views within the cultures.
But when Paulus finds out that the baby is most probably his, he demands that Thebedi gets rid of it, ‘You must give it to someone’. This shows that he is scared of the authorities, because if they find out he would be facing prison or worse. So when the baby is found dead, and the forensic evidence relates to poison, Paulus is the main suspect. But when Paulus gets to court it says that when Thebedi was giving evidence she was still wearing the ear-rings Paulus had given her when they had first met, ‘she wore gilt-hoop ear-rings’. This proved that she still had feelings for Paulus.
In Veronica, it is not a case of racial differences; it is the fact that society dictates the way you live by your gender. Fatalism plays a big part in this story. Okeke shows that he accepted what he had been given more so than Veronica. This is shown by the fact that Okeke moves away top the city to try and make a life of his own. Whereas Veronica was not persuaded by Okeke’s efforts to try and get her to come with him. Instead she stayed in the village to try and scrape a life off of very little money. Okeke proved to be moralistic, ‘all the women I meet are only interested in money and cars’.
Veronica herself had to mature a lot quicker than any other adolescent as her father was a bitter drunk and her mother was weak and poorly. When Okeke went away to his life in the city, I think both of them were feeling as if their lives were going to be dramatically changed but were too afraid to admit it.
Okeke returned to the village as a prosperous doctor with many paths he could choose to take his life down. He came back to discover that Veronica was still living the same life but with a child and husband. Her brothers and sisters that she worked so hard to keep alive had left her and dispersed into different parts of the country and forgotten about her.
The war breaks out and Okeke returns again to find Veronica lying there close to death. She says she wants to dies because she has lost everything, ‘I don’t want to live, you hear?’. So Veronica slips away and Okeke shows how much he felt for her by burying her down by the river, where they spent so much time together in their youth.
A Stench of Kerosene is set in Jammu and Kashmir, Northern India. It is based in mid 20th Century. The cultural force that plays its part in this story is the Hindu Marriage Act (1955). This governs all Hindu marriages. This Act also applies to Buddhists and Sikhs. It said that the bride should be 18 and the groom 21. Neither should already have a spouse and both should be capable of giving consent. It was also believed that both spouses should be fit for both marriage and consummation. This rule however did not apply to the counties of Kashmir and Jammu.
Manak truly loved his wife called Guleri. There was a carnival in a town called Chamba. Guleri looked forward to it every year and was set on going the same as usual. But there was just one problem, Manak knew that if Guleri left for any length of time, his mother would set up a marriage with someone else he might not even like. He was so seperate for her to stay he even begged her, ‘I ask again, don’t go away this time’.
The reason his mother wanted Manak to get a different was because Guleri had never conceived a child and therefore could not continue with the family name. His mother paid 500 rupees just to get Manak another wife. This worked because after a short time of being with the second wife conceived a child. When Guleri heard the news of Manak’s second wife she soaked her clothes in kerosene and set them alight.
The fact you don’t ever find out what the second wife’s name is, tells us that she was irrelevant to Manak and that he considered her to just be there as his wife. The main reason he just put up with her is because he respected his mother and thought that it would be wrong to speak up about how he actually felt. Also this shows that Manak’s mother cannot be blamed entirely because she was just acting how her culture dictates.
Overall in these didactic stories, it shows the effects that different cultural forces had on people’s relationships and that people had to go to extreme lengths to avoid the terror of being caught doing something they know is wrong but cannot help.
