Andrew James

In this paper through the examination of select Dalit memoirs that provide invaluable insights into the functioning of these individuals and their community as a whole, I hope to demonstrate how food has been used both as a means of oppression and to reinforce caste hierarchies in India. Firstly, through a review of the existing literature I will examine the ways in which food and taboos regarding certain foods have been used to reinforce the caste social hierarchy and the superiority of the upper castes from the national perspective of India as a nation. Then through the examination of the Dalit memoirs I will delve into specific examples of how food has been used to belittle and marginalize these lower caste individuals and communities on a more personal basis and how hunger seems to become a part of the Dalit identity as a whole, but still affects one group in particular more than the others. Through these examinations I seek to prove the dual role food has taken in the formation of social hierarchies, which is to enforce the superiority of the highest as well as the oppression of the lowest in these hierarchies.

The trickster is a common figure across mythologies from a variety of cultures and ages. In these many myths, he often plays a dual role, the trickster often acts as both creator and destroyer. As a figure of disorder, but also a hero. While myths normally condemn and punish malice and deceit, the trickster’s forms of trickery are often praised. One can argue that the role of the trickster in myth is to maintain the balance between order and chaos and they are amongst the few mythical figures to make use of both. Making use of Jung’s archetype theory, as well as Tylor’s stages of religion from the primitive to the modern, to examine and compare between trickster figures from various mythologies, I hope to show that the trickster figure is representative of both sides of humanity’s development of consciousness, the primitive and the modern. The trickster is representative of both sides of the coin, his chaos and foolishness are a representation of man’s primitive past, however, his wit and ability to use unconventional methods to produce beneficial results can be seen as a part of man’s transition to the modern and an age of knowledge. Thus, he is simultaneously both the figure of disorder and a scapegoat in primitive society as well as a culture-hero who makes the existence of modern society possible.

In this paper I hope to examine how this novel explores the concept of family, in specific, the found family, as Bod is raised by a number of supernatural entities each with varying degrees of influence on his life and development as he grows after the loss of his original family. I will be examining the found family and the orphan child in Gaiman’s book, while initially showing how there are strong parallels between Kipling’s The Jungle Book and Gaiman’s novel and how Gaiman utilizes the tropes of the found family laid down by Kipling, within his own text. The Graveyard Book like many other young adult or children’s novels suggests that often the found family is essential in nurturing and developing a sense of self, and the skills necessary for survival in a child, in a way that perhaps the natal family would not have been capable of doing. It also promotes the ideal that parents or guardians do not have to be biological, to be protective and successful parents, as long as they have a sense of responsibility and genuine care for the child. The novel also reasserts the age-old adage of how it takes a village, or in this case, a graveyard to raise a child. In spite of only two of the ghosts, the Owens couple adopting Bod, there are a number of spirits in the graveyard who all have a major influence on his learning, growth and development throughout the course of the novel. In addition to this, the boy Bod also has a significant impact on the inhabitants of the graveyard, as it his arrival that brings the spirits of the graveyard together as they unite to protect him. It opens another avenue for examination, of how in children’s literature the found family is normally brought together by the arrival of a child, usually as in this case, an orphan, who gives these individuals a reason or cause to unite.