Why is Funny Boy called a Bildungsroman novel?
Answers
Funny Boy could be read as a bildungsroman, the story of one young boy's interior formation and integration, set against the backdrop of his country's disintegration.
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Answer:
Funny Boy could be read as a bildungsroman, the story of one young boy’s interior formation and integration, set against the backdrop of his country’s disintegration. The boy, Arjun “Arjie” Chelvaratnam, is the second son of a privileged middle-class Tamil family. It is amid rising waves of Sinhalese and Tamil violence that Arjie must understand and come to terms with his own homosexuality. Coming out is no small feat for any gay teen to undertake, and on top of the usual feelings of loneliness, isolation, and fear of rejection by family and friends, Arjie must negotiate his painful transformation to adulthood in the midst of a country gone mad.
It is the socio-economic, racial, and religious tensions within Sri Lanka that occupy most of Selvadurai (and consequently Arjie’s) time and attention within the novel. In fact, while Arjie’s awakening sexuality serves as an undercurrent throughout the book’s five sections (plus an epilogue) it is really only the main theme of one, “The Best School of All.” That is the section in which Arjie’s father sends him to The Queen Victoria Academy, a terribly cruel English-style school.
The Queen Victoria Academy serves as a symbol for colonial, aristocratic, and middle class male privilege. This is the tradition Arjie is expected to be a part of. To be gay would, for Arjie, mean failing in the eyes of his Father and the larger world of middle class Tamil patriarchy in which he lives. Indeed, Arjie’s father tells him that the academy