“The Middleman” is told in the first person by Alfie Judah, a Jew who is a newly naturalized American citizen originally from Baghdad, Iraq. He has temporarily left the United States because he has been involved in some shady financial dealing and is fighting extradition. He is currently living in an unnamed Central American country,…
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Melon by Julian Barnes – Analysis
Julian Barnes’s short story “Melon” has many political implications. It is the tale of an English nobleman’s encounters with French culture at three distinct times in his life, giving readers his view of that country before, during, and after what is arguably the most significant event of the country’s history, the revolution that transformed it…
Melon by Julian Barnes – Setting
The Reign of Louis XVI The first part of this story takes place around the year 1774, or roughly the time when Louis XVI ascended to the throne. For more than a century before Louis XVI’s reign, France had suffered under the rule of the self-indulgent monarchy. Wars and poor management of the country’s wealth…
Melon by Julian Barnes – Literary Devices
Symbolism Barnes conveys the significance of the story through the use of symbols. One of the most obvious symbols is the game of cricket. To Sir Hamilton, cricket represents a community of rich and poor, brought together by individual skills. Barnes uses the game as a means of revealing social assumptions. The privileged aristocrats enjoy…
Melon by Julian Barnes – Themes
Aristocracy “Melon” focuses on a particular member of the English aristocracy, showing different facets of him over the course of years, highlighting the different perspectives that one can have as a member of the ruling class. When he is young, he is not the master of his world but instead is watched over by his…
Melon by Julian Barnes – Characters
William Bedster Bedster appears in this story as an example of the flexibility of the English class system: at one time the butler to the Earl of Tankerville, Bedster is described as having been able to rise in society to become a publican, or tavern manager, in Chelsea. Samuel Dobson Dobson is the second under-gardener…
Melon by Julian Barnes – Summary
First Section The first section of “Melon” is presented as a letter that a young British nobleman, Hamilton Lindsay, writes to his cousin Evelina, in 1774. Lindsay is traveling in Europe and is on his way to Rome with his tutor, Mr. Hawkins, when, at Evelina’s suggestion, they change direction and stop at Montpelier, a…
Meeting Mrinal – Analysis
The award-winning poet Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s first collection of short stories, Arranged Marriage , was published in 1995, and in 1996, it won the American Book Award, the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award for Fiction, and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Prize for Fiction. The collection was well received by the public, quickly becoming a…
Meeting Mrinal – Setting
Immigration from India to the United States Indian immigration to the United States was uncommon before 1900; Hindu beliefs discouraged it, as did the British colonizers of India, who restricted the movements of the Indian people. In 1946, the Luce-Celler bill was signed into law. This law permitted one hundred Indians per year into the…
Meeting Mrinal – Literary Devices
Setting The story is set in two locations: India, where Asha was brought up and married and which is presented only in her memories and California in the United States, where she now lives. As well as being two separate countries, India and the United States have two different cultures and sets of social expectations….