Hanif Kureishi's The Black Album: Häufig gestellte Fragen (FAQ)
Was ist der Hauptgegenstand dieser Abhandlung?
Die Abhandlung analysiert die Rolle von Essen und Konsum in Hanif Kureishis Roman "The Black Album". Sie untersucht, ob diese Aspekte lediglich nebensächliche Hintergrundinformationen darstellen oder eine tiefere Bedeutung im Kontext des Romans haben.
Welche Kapitel umfasst die Abhandlung?
Die Abhandlung gliedert sich in fünf Kapitel: Eine Einleitung, die den Kontext und die Motivation der Arbeit beschreibt; ein Kapitel über die Figur "Chili"; ein Kapitel über die "heilige Aubergine"; ein Kapitel über den Drogenkonsum im Roman; und abschließend ein Kapitel, das die Rolle von Essen und Konsum im Roman zusammenfasst und im Kontext der Literatur generell betrachtet.
Welche Rolle spielt die Figur "Chili" in der Analyse?
Chili, der ältere Bruder des Protagonisten Shahid, wird als eine "heiße und würzige" Figur beschrieben, deren Verhalten und Lebensweise durch den Vergleich mit dem Gewürz Chili verdeutlicht wird. Sein Einfluss auf Shahid und seine Rolle im Kontext des Romans werden analysiert.
Welche Bedeutung hat die "heilige Aubergine"?
Die Szene mit der "heiligen Aubergine" dient als satirische Kritik an religiösem Fanatismus. Die Interpretation einer Aubergine als göttliches Zeichen wird als Beispiel für leichtgläubigen Glauben und die Manipulation religiöser Überzeugungen dargestellt.
Wie wird der Drogenkonsum im Roman behandelt?
Die Abhandlung untersucht verschiedene Aspekte des Drogenkonsums im Roman, von der Darstellung der Drogenkultur in London bis hin zu den Folgen des Drogenmissbrauchs. Es wird auch die Frage aufgeworfen, ob Religion selbst als eine Art Droge betrachtet werden kann.
Welche Schlussfolgerung zieht die Abhandlung bezüglich Essen und Konsum in "The Black Album"?
Die Abhandlung kommt zu dem Schluss, dass Essen und Konsum im Roman weit mehr als nur Hintergrundinformationen sind. Sie interpretiert diese Aspekte als zentrale Elemente, die eng mit den Themen Religion, Drogenkonsum und Sexualität verwoben sind und einen erheblichen Teil der Handlung und der Botschaften des Romans ausmachen.
Welche anderen literarischen Werke werden erwähnt?
Neben "The Black Album" werden auch "The Buddha of Suburbia" von Hanif Kureishi und "The Godfather" von Mario Puzo erwähnt, um die Rolle von Essen und Konsum in der Literatur im Allgemeinen zu illustrieren.
Welche Quellen werden in der Abhandlung verwendet?
Die Abhandlung bezieht sich auf Hanif Kureishis "The Black Album", das Cambridge International Dictionary of English und verschiedene Online-Rezensionen des Romans. Die Fußnoten geben detaillierte Quellenangaben an.
Für wen ist diese Abhandlung gedacht?
Diese Abhandlung ist für akademische Zwecke gedacht und dient der Analyse von Themen in Hanif Kureishis "The Black Album" auf strukturierte und professionelle Weise.
Content
2. Chili
3. The holy aubergine
4. Consumption of drugs in the book and in general
After these paragraphs, I tried to draw a conclusion about my essay, which is
5. Conclusion of the role of food and consumption in the book and the meaning of food in literature in general. Is it more than just some redundant background information?
The role of food and consumption in Kureishi's The Black Album
I) Introduction
A few years ago, I read Hanif Kureishi's book "The Black Album" at school shortly before the Abitu r. The task in the exam in the Abitur was to analyze an extract of Kureishi's "The Buddha of Suburbia". In the last semester, I watched the film "The Buddha of Suburbia" in an university class. Since I enjoyed the movie and I had enjoyed reading "The Black Album" at school, I have decided to write my essay about Kureishi's book. Of course I had to read the book once again as I could not remember the concrete details of the plot. The only thing I could remember was a very superficial outline of the plot, I regard as necessary to talk about. Kureishi's whimsical story is about a student named Shahid Hasan living in the London of the early 1990s. His life is torn between some fundamentalist Islamic "brethren" and his female college teacher he has got a love affair with. His college teacher has got an "...insatiable appetite for pleasure, feeding him from her cornucopia of forbidden fruits."1. These two worlds are the total opposite of each other and it is hard for Shahid to find his identity and his "way" between sexual passion and religious fever. The story reaches its climax when these two worlds are directly confronted to each other when the fanaticals burn Salman Rushdie's book "The Satanic Verses" in the public .
While I was reading the book once again I recognised that there were certain hints concerning food and consumption already on the first page and , of course, in the following pages. To give a few examples :
- Shahid lives "...in a house beside a Chinese restaurant..." 2
- " The various tenants played music, smoked dope and filled the dingy corridors with the smell of bargain aftershave and boiled goat,..." 3
- The setting of the first discussion between Riaz, Shahid's neighbour and leader of the fanaticals, and Shahid is a restaurant in the neighbourhood.
Since there are too many allusions and concrete details about food and consumption through the whole book, I have decided to pick out a few scenes and topics I would like to present in my essay due to the task to write about "The role of food and consumption in Hanif Kureishi's The Black Album".
I have given every single topic of my essay a section of its own.
The order in which my essay is written is as the following:
II) Chili
" Chil-li , Am usually chili , the small red seed from particular types of pepper plant that is used to make some foods very hot and spicy..." 4 This definition really " Suits him" 5 tells Chili's younger brother Shahid his neighbour Riaz. Shahid is definetly right. Chili is a very strange character. Who would recommend his younger brother to watch the movie "Taxi driver"6 before moving to a big city as a kind of preparation for urban life? This movie is about a taxi driver (played by Al Pacino) who becomes a real maniac. All these gangster movies in which Al Pacino7 plays, for example The Godfather or Once upon a time in America fuction as a kind of reality guide for Chili. He lives the life of the gangsters in these movies. When Chili enters the housewhere Shahid lives, Chad says about him:"Looks like Saturday Night Fever rollin' right along here"8 due to Chili's outfit.
These are only a few reasons for the name fitting to the Shahid's big brother who "...puts all his income up his nose or into Armani suits...Buyer to pay." 9 . The characteristic features of the definition of the spice given in the CIDE can directly be referred to this guy, especially the attributes "...very hot and spicy..." 10 . One reason for Riaz "suspecting" Shahid is also his brother Chili,"... a cokeaddled sharpster who's played the game of Thatcherite economices to his advantage." 11 . When "...Chad, after shaking hands with the invariably fragrant Chili, was sniffing his fingers and making a face at Hat. Shahid hoped to God that Chili didn't notice." 12 But Chili noticed what Chad was doing and tells Shahid afterwards:"Tell him (Chad) if he sniffs his hands at me again, his children's children will feel the pain." 13
However, Chili also has got a positive aspect: he would always help his younger brother whom he still feels responible for as it is typical of Islamic family structures and due to their father's last words that Chili should take care of Shahid.14 After their father's death, "Shahid gained the impression that his elder brother had appointed himself a reality guide, pointing out pitfalls before the boy made a serious error due to credulity, sensitivity and lack of cunning." 15 Chili wants to help Shahid in his way, the hot and spicy one, the way the "Taxi driver" and "The Godfather"use to get rid of problems instead of solving them in a moderate way. It is a very brutal and violent way Chili choses to overcome problematic situations and that is exactly the point why the name really "suits him"16 as Shahid says. The Latin saying "Nomen est omen" is totally right in the case of Chili.
III) The holy aubergine
Looking at the book at the 20th time maybe, I realised that on my edition is an illustration of an aubergine beon the spine.
This scene is a pretty hilarious one attacking the blind fervor of the fanatic Muslims. It is just one example of criticism of religious zealousness in Kureishi's books in which also successful satire can be recognised.
The situation is as the following: Salman Rushdie's book "The Satanic Verses" has been published and the fanaticals, among them Riaz and his group, are strictly against this book. Chad says about the book and the author:"It's a sacrilege and blasphemy. Punishment is death. That man going down the chute." 17 The fatwah has been put on Rushdie by the Ayatollah which means that Rushdie was regarded as an outlaw in the Middle Ages. It was the task of any believing Muslims to kill him. When the group is discussing this topic, Chad says:"...we have been given a miraculous sign."18.Tahira, another member of the group gets excited about the sign and asks for more information. The sign is "...an arrow pointing straight at the author (Rushdie)." Moreover Chad says that "...an arrow in the form of a fruit." and "...that the arrow is an eggplant."19 Due to Chad, a "...devout local couple had cut open an aubergine and discovered that God had inscribed holy words into the mossy flesh. Moulana Darapuria had given his confirmation that the aubergine was a holy symbol ." 20 Afterwards Chad says that they were planning the exhibition of the aubergine. The house, where the "miracle" happened is regarded as "The House of the Miracle"21 and different people from all strata of society, among them is Rudder, a polititian who wants to profit from the whole thing, gather at the "holy place". Even the preservation of the sacred miracle in the foyer of the Town Hall is discussed in order to make the public witness of this "wondrous example of God's signature." 22
The whole scenario shows how fanatical Riaz and the others react on the "sign". A "simple fruit" becomes holy. The fact that a devout couple had read something in the aubergine reminds of ancient habits when priests used to look into the guts of animals and predicted fate and the future from these guts, for example in Greek and Roman history.
The term "House of the Miracle" suggests that the place where the "miracle" had happened might become a place for pilgrimages which might become a "Little Mekka" for believing Muslims. Moreover this scene shows how easy it can be to indoctrinate believing people. A simple fruit is supposed to represent God's wish. The fruit is interpreted to be an arrow, meaning to put the fatwah on Salman Rushdie for publishing the Satanic Verses. Maybe Rushdie should have known better about fanatics although the fatwah on him has been recalled.
From a Western attitude one might think that these people have been blended by their own fanatic believe and by that what some so-called "religious people" have said. How can an aubergine become so popular? This is probably very hard to understand for "neutral" people who are not that religious. Some may even claim that the whole story about the aubergine would be nothing but pseudo-religiosity, an anachronism or a business as it is for Rudder due to his attitude revealed on the bottom of page 179 and on the top of page 180.
However, it is a fact that if emotions play a role one easily can become blended and even narrow-minded. One cannot think in a rational way anymore and one loses any objectivity .But: one must not condemn these people, one should try to bring them back to reality although this might be very hard. The aubergine acts as a symbol, a symbol of liberty for the Muslims encouraging them to overcome their "poor and monotonous everyday life" and to kill the one who has been ridiculing about their religion since religion functions as props in their life of a minority. Religion works as their last fortress in the Western world, and nobody is allowed to ridicule about it.
This is a pretty different alternative to the "power of food" since the fruit becomes a solemn subject. Maybe one could even predict possible riots from the aubergine caused by religious fanaticism. In this case, the aubergine would function as a trigger of a discriminated group.
IV Consumption of drugs in the book and in general
The consumption of drugs plays a very important role in this book and there is also a link between drugs and religiosity in the case of Chad. Chad used to be addicted to drugs before he was rescued from the drugs by religion. But cannot religion also be a drug??!
The whole book is about some kind of subcultural life in London. On the hand hand there are the religious fanaticals and on the other hand there is Deedee Osgood who introduces Shahid to another subcultural movement in London. She visits certain pubs and parties with him where people abuse drugs. Often, Kureishi describes teenagers, for example the young dealer who sells ecstacy pills to Shahid. He describes them lying on the floor, enjoying their trip. Typical of the people taking drugs is what Deedee says "There's only now." 23
which totally reflects their situation: these people do not care very much about tomorrow or a future, they are living for the moment. When Shahid is on a trip after he took an ecstacy pill, he talks to a girl next to him. The girl says that she was living only for the weekend to take drugs. During the week she was relaxing and recovering for the next weekend and for her next trip.24 Taking drugs obviously releaves people from their everyday life. Some may say that drugs increase their consciousness. They would gain new, different experiences.
Kureishis offers in his book a big variety of all kinds of drugs, for example from dope-joints up to cocain. He reflects Shahid's impressions when he is high which gives the reader a good look at the feelings of stoned people. On the other hand, Kureishi does not ignore the side effects of drugs and drugtrafficking by describing the young dealer being hit by Chili and also by what the girl tells Shahid that she had to regain her power during the week after an excessive drug abuse on weekends.
At school, I had to write an essay in French with the topic"Pourqoui les jeunes gens se dreugen- ils" or in English "Why do young people take drugs".
As the main cause for people taking drugs I used to say they did so in order to overcome their problems, to forget about their everyday life. But who could give a description of the term "drug"? What is a drug and what is regarded to be a drug by the law? Cannot religion also be a drug, since it enables people to do things "normal" people would never do? Of course, one can explain that radical groups and sects are forbidden, but is not alcohol also a hard drug? Alcohol is available on almost every corner. If one drinks too much alcohol it is more bad for the health than smoking marijuhana. I certainly do not want marijuhana to be legalised in Germany, but it is my intention to demonstrate that there are many other drugs, such as alcohol, legally available in public stores , even for teenagers!
In this book, Kureishi gives an excellent view to the "raving scene" in London. Also in "The Buddha of Suburbia", Kureishi mentions drugs.
Drugs have become a part of everyday life in large cities, even in Berlin there are certain clubs well known for drugtraficking and drug abuse such at the former techno club "Der Bunker" near Friedrichstrasse. This disco was closed because of too much trouble with drugs, fights among dealers and trouble with the police. But one cannot ban the drug scene. They just moved to another club. That is just the way it is in urban life. Kureishi includes this topic in his book, but he only describes the drug scene without getting a certain feeling of responsibility for young readers of his book. Wouldn't it be good if he gave a deterring example of drug abuse although this was not his intention for writing this book?
V Conclusion of the role of food and consumption in the book and the meaning of food in literature in general. Is it more than just some redundant background information?
Food and consumption do surely not play an inferior role in Kureishi's book The Black Album. It is definetly more than just some redundant background information. If one regards religion as a drug due to the saying "Religion ist Opium für's Volk", one could say that the whole book was about nothig else but food and consumption. This is because the main topics of this book are
- religion, represented by the holy aubergin,and as a possible drug as such since it enables people even to plan a murder
- London's raving scene, where it is almost all about being on a trip or being stoned by dope, it is about the consumption of different drugs
and
- sex, someone once said that he regarded sex as the best of all drugs, and Kureishi describes several sex scenes in his book. Sex as a drug one can consume.
According to these three main topics of the book, one can surely interprete that food and consumption cover at least 50 % of the whole story.
During the vacation, I also read Mario Puzo's brilliant book The Godfather. Also in this book one might realise that food and consumption are more than just background or at least a good background creating a certain atmosphere, for example Don Corleone eating his pasta while discussing the business.
[...]
1 A review of the book taken from the internet
2 Kureishi, Hanif, The Black Album, London 1995, p.1.
3 Kureishi, Hanif, p.1.
4 Procter, Paul, Cambridge International Dictionary of English, Cambridge 1999, p.226.
5 Kureishi, Hanif, p.6.
6 Kureishi, Hanif, p.3.
7 Kureishi, Hanif, p.38.
8 Kureishi, Hanif, p. 38.
9 adapted from a review of The Black Album in the internet.
10 CIDE, p.226.
11 adapted from the internet, review by Charles Taylor
12 Kureishi, Hanif, p.39.
13 Kureishi, p.43.
14 Kureishi, p.41.
15 Kureishi, p.42.
16 Kureishi, Hanif, p.6.
17 Kureishi, p.169.
18 Kureishi, p.170.
19 Kureishi, p. 170.
20 Kureishi, p.171.
21 Kureishi, p.172.
22 Kureishi, p.179
23 Kureishi, p.117.
24 Kureishi, p. 63.
- Quote paper
- Anonym (Author), 2000, The role of food and consumption in Kureishi`s The Black Album, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/97937
