Hello everyone
    
     This is the first text we are inviting you to read and comment on. I hope you can share your impressions and your views here.
    
     'Ullswater' is based on a short story by Romesh Gunesekera. It is about the relationship between two different brothers and how various factors have caused them to grow apart. It raises issues of relationship, family, culture and identity, among others.
    
     You can download the full text and other supplementary material from the BritLit page on Teaching English
    
     I hope you enjoy your reading and I look forward to having your comments.
    
     All the best
     Chris

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Hello there! Having just read Ullswater, I find the depth and breadth of the text quite breathtaking! Not only does it span 3 generations, but two continents and a range of emotions, from romantic bliss and political fervor to drunken desperation and violent anger with self-hatred, finishing up on resigned sadness. I think the descriptive language used to conjour up the Indian tropics is wonderful... I can almost smell the breadfruit and jambu! What did you think?

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ULLSWATER is really a fascinating reading.
     First it made me think about how we sometimes drift away from the ones we once loved and with whom we shared our most treasured memories and happiest times. It is sad sometimes to realize how growing up, growing old, fighting for our ideals of having a career, a political view, distances us from our siblings and father and mother. The rivalry that exist between brothers that many times make them our imaginary enemies. It is also so touching seeing how getting old makes us so vulnerable and susceptible to the passions and feelings that we spend part of our lives denying and trying to hide or avoid. It also made me think how the fear of death and guilt work on making people try to redeem their feeling of guilt.

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hi everyone,
     'Ullswater' is a text of fiction that treats a bitter reality of two brothers who could not understand their differences. Victor, the narrator , whom I do blame slightly because he told me almost everything, leaving me in an awful state of indigestion. I understand that his nephew should know every single detail about his father, but I,as a reader feel consumed by the end of the story. Herein I am raising a question to my dear colleague readers: Should the narrator tell everything to his/her reader?
     My direct response to 'Ullswater' is that the text is fantastically well wrought. The language is very poetic in the sense that the romantic moments of the past are described very beautifully. I have even the smell of flowers flirting my nose :)
     When Victor describes Sonia, language becomes poesy, "....in the afterglows of sunset, when parrots darted across the sky, her(Sonia's) face would absorb light and slowly become luminous like the moon". Is not this beautiful?

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Ullswater is a vivid narrative.
     Actually, Ullswater depicts a hot social issue of all the times, that is, family relationship. It's shocking to see what a bitter relationship experience Victor and Senaka had.
     During the reading, I have found out that Victor and Senaka grew up with lack of affection in their relationship. They did not learn about sharing in the very young age. However this lack of affection and sharing influenced the rest of their life. Senaka could not trust on his brother or share his problems.
    
     In African families, the future relationship between people/ children depends on principles based on love, affection that they learn when they are very young. They rarely have this sort of missing affection. African parents teach sharing, affection and unity to their children. For example: eating together, sharing the same plate of food, telling story around the fire and also sharing different points of view about everyday life. This experience remains with them until they are old.
    
     I totally agree with Victor's attitude, sharing his bitter and sad experience with his nephew. And I hope Ranjit learned how to live in good relationship with other people, he would not follow his father's example.

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Hi Mostafa,
     It is just to answer your question addressed to the group. I also agree with you. For critical readers, the narrator could not give all the details. I also think he wrote everything for any audience.
    
     Yes, the way Victor describes Sonia is really a poetic language with a little more exaggeration in it. I tried to reread this part for a better understanding. I would like to see Sonia's face, I tried to imagine it as japanese ladies with a fantastic make-up "maquillage" in their faces.
     I am also leaving the same question to our dear colleagues: Should the narrator tell everything to his/her reader?
     Cheers.

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Hello,
    
     I'm Gladys, from the south of Brazil. I'm a university teacher and I've been following your discussions with interest. As for our friend's question about the narrator's role, my opinion is no, I don't think he should tell us everything! That's the fun of reading for me. You can create hypotheses, imagine, connect, suspect...
     A good day to you all.
     Gladys

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Well as I said before, when I read the text I didn't analyze the characters that much, but what impressed me the most was the lack of communication these two borthers have.
     Family is so important, and they hardly new each other.
     The lesson that I have always known is that family always must be together, after all is all that we've got.
     I enjoyed the text.
     Viviana.

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Hi all and Mostafa,
     In fact it's good choice to begin with such a wonderful text for discussion .Ullswater is a good text of outstanding language . The poetic and describlive langage .the style of writing is unique as it allows a sort of enjoyment which we need to have in reading any work of art. Though the relation of the two brothers seemed to be unnatural relationship as it seemed to be an upside down picture .It's a relation that allows a lot of thinking Can't this sort of relation be found in our daily life yes, it can be there and it's natural to be there if the two brothers are differently brought up. So I find the picture a natural one . Now let me answer Mostafa's question about the narrator of the story I think it's quite ordinary to let the writer choose the narrator of his story and to limit it to one person in order to let the reader think why he did so and to create such debate we have now .We think ,we criticise and we know different ideas about the narration of a story then we got adquate information about the whole story. The end result we learnt from each others'ideas a lot . This is my vision about the story . Cheers. oh really I forgot to thank the author for this wonderful text.
     Soher
     Egypt

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Hello everyone
    
     I think Mostafa has highlighted a very interesting aspect of each story - the role of the narrator. I'm not sure I agree with the idea that the narrator in 'Ullswater' tells us *everything*. Certainly Victor is the most authoritative voice in the story - facts and their interpretation are presented to us through his perspective and the tendency of most readers is to take the word of the narrator for granted. Just almost at the end Senaka is given a voice, and even then the aggression he shows towards Victor almost inevitably puts on the narrator's side. However, for this very reason, we could ask ourselves if this is really the whole picture. One perspective cannot be *everything* - it's always partial.
    
     I think it's just brilliant how the author seems to conducts us into this trap and then let us have little glimpses of another truth - that perhaps we should not trust Victor so completely and so blindly, just because he is the one in charge of the narrative.
    
     There are a couple of instances where I had the clear sensation that the narrator's statements and his language betray his inner contradictions and undermine his authority.
    
     Open to debate...
     Chris

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Hi all and Chris,
     Thanks a lot for your wonderful analysis of the writer's intention to let us think profoundly about the way he made his narration of the story. After reading hundreds of books and novels I found out that when the writer let a character narrate the storyhe meant to let the reader expect the narrator to be the spokesman of the writer I mean he wants the reader to adhere to what the narrator said as it's the view of the writer put on the mouth of the narrator but there is a strange thing here I felt that the writer contradicts this idea and at the same time is not on approval with the narrator and still this arouses a lot of debate. Did he mean to let us hate that brother and his own way or the opposite image did he mean to let us like and respect him?At the end it created debate and debate created ideas like the wonderful ones of Chris . Cheers
     Soher
     Egypt

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Hi Soher and everyone
    
     Thanks for your reply and for accepting my invitation to the debate. :)
    
     Perhaps I have expressed myself a bit carelessly, but I did not really mean to analyse the author's intention. What I tried to say is that I believe that the way the narrative was constructed guides us to accept the narrator's voice as the definitive one at the same time that gives us some moments where we are caught wondering if this is really so.
    
     For instance, it called my attention the fact that Victor makes all the effort to show Senaka as the one who is allienated from his own country and culture, the one who has embraced England and what is English as something superior, whereas he himself is presented as the champion of his own country and culture. However, just look at the way he describes nature in both places.
    
     There is an idilic, bucolic atmosphere in his decription of Ullswater, 'sheep bleating in the field', 'borders brimmed with pink and blue', everything 'feels wholesome and safe, blessed, as if the air had been licked clean.'
    
     And then the oppressing description of his own country, where ' the sun boiled the sky', 'nothing else moves. Even the crows were stunned'. It gave me a chocking sensation where 'creepers throttled the blue jacaranda' and where 'weeds had overrun what used to be flower beds'.
    
     And these are Victor's descriptions, not Senaka's... but of course, what comes into play is also my own reading and my own perceptions, which make me feel and see the description of the English landscape as lovely and pleasant and the other one as unpleasant and unattractive.
    
     Mmmmmm
     Chris

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Hi Chris and co
     Don't know if my last comments actually went- my computer said it couldn't find the site, which is odd.
    
     First, apologies for taking so long to read the story.
     Second, I found it disturbing at several levels. I suppose lack of communication/ failure to communicate has been with us since the middle of C20th- but there are strange twists here.
    
     Where does Ranjit stand in all this? On the one hand, all Senaka's troubles seem to start after he is born. On the other, Ranjit has fulfilled a kind of ambition of his Anglophile father's by settling down in England in a house not far from the black waters of Lake Ullswater with English flowers and a young family, a far cry from the decadent tropicalia of his father's house in Ceylon. And the use of "you" in the narrative seems to give Ranjit more importance than the actual events narrated do.
    
     What of the political theme? Victor doesn't seem to have made much of a success of his political engagement with independence. At least in material terms, he seems to be drifting. Ranjit set up and paid for Victor's trip to England. Victor doesn't seem to have a wife and family of his own or even a fixed occupation...
    
     Could it be that Senaka was right and Victor did hate his brother? Independent of his disapproval of the arrack and the degeneracy of the last meeting (where the ice cracked like a pistol shot) is there a suggestion that Victor at least disapproves of Senaka, if he doesn't actually hate him?

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Hi Gladys,
     Welcome to the group. I agree with that the narrator shouldn´t tell us everything. And this one doesn't. One thing I like about his narration is a feeling of guilt, insinuating that his voice is not the only one. He kind of implies that his version is partial.
    
     Cheers
     José Antônio

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Dear All
     The following is my reading notes. I want to share this with the group.
     ‘I could hear sheep bleating in the field behind us. Up and down the long garden the borders brimmed with pink and blue English flowers: Senaka would have known all their names, but the foxgloves and hollyhocks out at the bottom of the garden framing Ullswater in purple are the only ones I know, and those only because I asked’ (lines 14 – 17, p. 1) – I think the lake is a symbol of unknown here with fringes of the known world expressed through the reference to ‘foxgloves and hollyhocks’ as the only familiar names to the narrator. This description, in my reading, runs parallel as a metaphor for the relationship between the two brothers - mostly unknown, may be even unexplored to them with little patches that could be explained.
    
     ‘I wanted to tell him everything’ (Ibid) – i.e. ‘everything’ from his perspective about the last day of Senaka’s life. He can’t tell Ranjit everything because he himself doesn’t know ‘everything.’ Victor came to see his brother in distress, literally after ‘years’ to mend ‘frayed family ties’ upon receiveing a letter from Sonia, his brother’s wife. His visit was prompted by a sense of duty as well as guilt for having done ‘nothing’ for his brother for so many years. Here this sense of duty is cultural, I think. In most societies in India, Srilanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, elder brother plays a very important role in family life. In most Indian societies after father, the elder brother becomes the ‘head of the family’ and is treated as a ‘father figure.’ Senaka’s wealth and wisdom made him responsible for this socio-cultural role reversal (‘He, rather than our poor unfortunate parents, had come to represent family stability and authority’ L 123-124). Senaka’s personal distress and trouble makes the retrieval of this socio-cultural position for Victor possible. (‘Aiya’ is the Tamil word for elder brother) This cultural norm inculcates in him a sense of duty towards his brother and to sort out things in their life treating them as ‘family’ issue. There has always been a drift between two brothers in their life together. Even when they were together this mutual distance did not allow them to know ‘everything’ about each other. In his inner mind Victor perhaps held his brother responsible for their mother’s deteriorating health (see ‘she was so ill—so distant— although I think her problems really started only after his birth’ L 59-60). It is possible that a similar feeling run through the family that may have turned Seneca an introvert, seeking his refuge in the world of books. In his love for England, known through his reading, may be he was seeking a physical refuge where he can be himself.
    
    
     Here I agree with Chris, ‘everything’ is never everything. It is one interpretation of one perspective, complete only from that perspective. Its like a jigsaw – only perspectives from the ‘other’ can complete it leaving out space for future interpretation through act of reading to be more enriched.
    
     I think through his narration the scope for the reader to see the world of Senaka becomes broader. Victor’s world as well as perspective is represented as binary opposites and probably mutually exclusive. Victor talks more about his perception of Senaka, off course there is no other way of talking about a person and Ranjit knows little about his father – therefore his narration is the only clue to know about Senaka. In fact it is through these gaps in narration that I had a glimpse in the world of inner mind of Senaka.
    
     It is on the day in 1967 when Victor came to see Senaka, after so many years that Senaka granted Victor an entry to his own inner world, the metaphor for which is his study. Earlier whenever they met, generally the venue used to be the veranda.
    
     When he said ‘cheers’ at the time of taking a drink together that sounded like an irony. A man so deep in depression crying out ‘cheers’ merely as a ritual where there is no room for cheerfulness in his life.
    
     The names are also very significant: Victor, that means the ‘winner,’ is given to the survivor in the battle of life. Ranjit, also means ‘a winner in the battle.’ Both these ‘winners’ are alive in the narrative. However, the name of the main character, i.e. Senaka has a mythological significance (Jataka Stories). Senaka is the Bodhisatva, born as a brahmin to serve as a minister of king Janaka, the King of Vedaha (Benares) who is Sita’s foster father in Ramayana. Senaka, in our story, is the wise one as well.
    
     Looking forward to comments on the above observation
    
     Love
     Sanghita

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Hello everyone
    
     Thanks a lot for eveyone commenting so far. I believe we have a lot of food for thought here! Thanks Sanghita for the enlightening information on the meaning of the Indi names. :)
    
     As Soher said in a previous post, 'Ullswater is a good text of outstanding language.' I couldn't agree more. In terms of language, I think it's really interesting to pay attention to the words Victor uses to describe affective relationships in the story.
    
     Any comments?
     Chris

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Dear all......
     I just can't agree more, when some of you said that the narrator shouldn't be "that" descriptive, we as readers need to use our imagination as well......
     That's the kind of reading I love.
     Hugs, Viviana.

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Hi Chris et all,
     I am quite glad to have provoked such enlightening impressions. When I said that the narrator shouldn't tell everything, I just meant that leaving some "blanks" would certainly deautomatise the reader and make him/her more creative. You are right Chris in saying that everything is not everything; because as you may have insinuated the narrator is sometimes subjective and thus "unreliable"; which is quite normal since the truth is relative.
     However I would maintain that the omniscience in narration is no longer a credible way of storytelling, because 'democratically' speaking, the modern narrator has to forget about the orthodox manner of Victorian despot-like way of imposing his view on the receptor without any consideration to the latter's critical thinking.
     Gone are the days when the "TRUTH" was sacred and undebatable, but it seems that Victor is perhaps still victorian in his blood and marrow:)
     Victor's biased manner in making his late brother responsible for the sorrows they underwent is unfair, since we didn't really have the occasion to listen to other points of view .
     Cheers

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Dear Mostafa
     your posts are always crystal clear. I admire them. When I was trying to say that 'everything' is not everything following Chris, I didn't mean to contest your reading. you are right Victor gives too much info, mostly his evaluation of the character of his brother and his ruined life. But I thought this way, he was also giving us clue about the gaps in his narration. also i felt that his talkativeness and judgemental stand was planned in contrast to the character of Senaka, the sensitive one. We didn't have any chance to hear his part of the story, from his own mouth. However, the gaps in Victors narration, portrayal of his ego, impartiality to the extent of callousness actually forms Senaka's version of the narrative. Senaka is the 'other' in this story. Certainly Victor's version is not the TRUTH - TRUTH, is not predetermined and fixed but constructed through negotiation. In fact, Victor's version appears, to me, to be mostly in self defense in the sense that this gives him a chance to justify his inaction in terms of his brother. Subsequently his justification also acts as purgation of the sense of guilt built in him for years. Victor's manner is biased, no doubt - but that appears to emerge as a subconscious working of his defense mechanism.
     I'll look forward to more comments on this observation.
     Regards and love
     Sanghita

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Dear Sanghita,
     I appreciate very much your pertinent and convincing response to both the text and to my reading. you are a strong critic, I respect you a lot.
     So let's move a bit from narration to another mystery in this lovely text. When I concluded my reading of Ullswater, I felt somewhat frustrated because the death of Senaka has mystified more and more his real personality .
     Do you think that Senaka was unable to adapt to reality ? Do you think that he couldn't differentiate between the REAL and the FICTIVE world of books he indulged in? Therefore, is his suicide an outcome of READING FICTION?
     Beware readers of Fiction!:)
     By the way Sanghita, your name is musical;what doe it mean?
     Cheers everyone

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Dear Sanghita,
    
     Thanks for your explanation of the names, which I'd been wondering about. Very helpful. I don't know what the personal Old Scandinavian name Ulfr means, as in Ulfr's water (=Ullswater), so can't reciprocate from Europe, for which many apologies. (No doubt someone contributing to this list does know however, and can enlighten us.)
    
     I have a different take on the symbolism of the English landscape from yours. I see black rather than pink and blue. I also have a personal note to interweave because I think a story like this invites personal responses too.
    
     Victor tells us that Senaka had committed the Lake poets to memory, so I suppose those texts are an unspoken part of this story, which wouldn't otherwise be set in the English Lake District, a region which Senaka had learnt about remotely and which his son knew through personal experience. Presumably Senaka knew that it was on Ullswater that Wordsworth had the terrifying experience described in 'The Prelude' of seeing Helvellyn, "a huge peak, black and huge", rise up out of the night and stride after him as he rowed across the lake in the boat that he'd earlier taken as "an act of stealth and troubled pleasure":
    
     "after I had seen
     That spectacle, for many days, my brain
     Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
     Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts
     There hung a darkness, call it solitude
     Or blank desertion."
    
     Senaka's disingenuous conduct over the marigolds (again a brightly coloured flower) suggests that his courting of Sonia was also "an act of stealth and troubled pleasure" whose consequences could hardly be happy - and did indeed lead to "solitude and blank desertion".
    
     At the wedding, Senaka is warned by Sonia's father that if he ever makes her unhappy, he (Sonia's father) will put a bullet in him. But this isn't how it turns out, because murder is much easier to understand than suicide and it wouldn't be much of a story if this was how it ended. So she has to make him unhappy.
    
     When someone takes their own life, we often ask how they can justify what they've done, and if we're close to them, we may wonder whether we had a hand in it too. So it isn't surprising that Ranjit isn't satisfied with the foxglove and hollyhock, lakeside account of his father's death: "What the hell did he think he was doing?" he asks. He wants his uncle to exonerate him. (Or both of them.)
    
     Three and a half weeks ago, someone for whom I had an immense respect (also) shot himself in the head. We were much less closely connected than Victor and Senaka - we met for the first time only eight years ago. I last saw him four weeks (rather than two days) before he took his own life. Unlike Senaka, he seemed to live a life of absolute contentment, so it's with disbelief and out of sadness for the shock to his family rather than with indignation that I ask what (the hell) he thought he was doing. But I do know that if we'd never met, he'd have been spared a sadness which may have contributed in some small way to what happened to him. Part of me wants be exonerated; another part wants to acknowledge how deeply he felt the sadness we shared. In saying this, I'm praising the reality of the portrayal of Ranjit, 'the winner in the battle', who, in his indignation and with his need for exoneration, is, for my money, the true focus of the story.
    
     For Wordsworth, the mountain is "black and huge", and, "with purpose of its own", contributes an important lesson in the "fair seed-time" of his soul (quotations from 'The Prelude'). In contrast, as he tells the story, Victor stares out at the "black water" of the lake, which seems to reflect his inadequate account of what happened to his younger brother.
    
     Mountain or lake - which darkness speaks to you?
    
     Porlock

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Dear Porlock
     Thanks for a very illuminating interpretation of some of the symbols in the text. It was a pleasure reading your interpretation. Water has been a symbol of reconciliation and unison in literature. But I feel here it is a symbol of the unknown. In Bengal, India, when we have a nightmare, we are told by elders to say it in front of water to reduce its potential atrocity and malevolence. When I was reading Ulswater, this cultural belief also came to my mind. The tragic death of Senaka and its memory in Victor's mind can be compared to a haunting nightmare and saying it in front of water helps in expurgating his pent up feeling of guilt, sadness etc.
     Mountain certainly can have an attachment of darkness but one side of the mountain is always illuminated by the sun. In my culture, mountain is a symbol of greatness, magnanimity and also success. I feel the darkness of the lake in this context (contrasted with bright colours, the colour of marigold is bright yellow = the colour of the sun and therefore illumination) appeals to me as intensifying the symbols of the unknown.
    
     Sanghita

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Special congratulations to Porlock- not just for a really enlightening message. You also have by far the best nickname. Readers unfamiliar with Porlock might like to share a Stevie Smith poem on the subject (Coleridge claimed to have been interrupted while writing Kubla Khan by "a person from Porlock" - which is why his poem remains incomplete).
    
    
     Thoughts about the Person from Porlock
     by Stevie Smith
    
     Coleridge received the Person from Porlock
     And ever after called him a curse,
     The why did he hurry to let him in?
     He could have hid in the house.
    
     It was not right of Coleridge in fact it was wrong
     (But often we all do wrong)
     As the truth is I think he was already stuck
     With Kubla Kahn
    
     He was weeping and wailing: I am finished, finished,
     I shall never write another word of it,
     When along comes the Person from Porlock
     And takes the blame for it.
    
     It was not right, it was wrong,
     But often we all do wrong.
    
     May we inquire the name of the Person from Porlock?
     Why, Porson, didn't you know?
     He lived at the bottom of Porlock Hill
     So had a long way to go,
    
     He wasn't much in the social sense
     Though his grandmother was a Warlock
     One of the Rutlandshire ones I fancy,
     And nothing to do with Porlock,
    
     And he lived at the bottom of the hill as I said
     And had a cat named Flo
     And had a cat named Flo.
    
     I long for the Person from Porlock
     To bring my thoughts to an end,
     I am becoming impatient to see him
     I think of him as a friend,
    
     Often I look out the window
     Often I run to the gate
     I think, He will come this evening,
     I think it is rather late.
    
     I am hungry to be interrupted
     Forever and ever amen
     O Person from Porlock come quickly
     And bring my thoughts to an end.
    
     I felicitate the people who have a Person from Porlock
     To break up everything and throw it away
     Because then there will be nothing to keep them
     And they need not stay.
    
     Why do they grumble so much?
     He comes like a benison
     They should be glad he has not forgotten them
     They might have had to go on.
    
     These thoughts are depressing I know. They are depressing,
     I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant,
     Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting
     To the purpose of One Above who is experimenting
     With various mixtures of human character which goes best,
     All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us.
     There I go again. Smile, smile, and get some work to do
     Then you will be practically unconscious without positively
     having to go.
    
    
     Cheers, SaraW

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Congratulations SaraW and to everyone else, you guys are just GREAT!!!!
     I feel proud to belong to this Lit group, I am learning a lot from all of you, Thanks,
     Viviana.

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I would like to know what kind of feeling does Sonia make you feel.
     While I was reading, I felt so sorry for her, living such a lonely life, that's what I think, I might be wrong.......What do you think????

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bravo!

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I feel gifted to be connected to such great readers, just reading the comments you get a way of looking at those aspects of the story which one would have missed. Romesh is great, and let us not blame the narrator if he crafted a work of art where Seneka has created a world of himeself in which he was the only one loser. I don't trust Victor, but Seneka ended up like that along the path of virtual world he built for himeslf, otherwise he would have get along with his wife, son, brother and all the people around him!
    
     Langa,
     Maputo, Mozambique

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Hello everyone
    
     I've pondering on Porlock's post for a while; especially because he says that he 'sees black rather than pink and blue' and mentions how dark and ominous the mountain and lake seem to Wordsworth in 'The Prelude'.
    
     It seems to me that the whole text of 'Ullswater' asks us to distrust the binary oppositions that exist between the two brothers: Senaka 'into his books'; Victor 'into town' - Senaka's 'infatuation with England'; Victor's 'goal of self-government' - Senaka's 'love match'; Victor's incapacity to 'embrace someone else'... but can these statements bear scrutiny??
    
     How different are Senaka and Victor at the end? Senaka suicides, but I cannot see Victor as victorious; on the contrary, he seems lost in the narrative he constructs to try to apprehend something that has escaped him. Oppositions are blurred. The lake is bordered by the mountain and they can be both black and blue, depending on the way the light filters through the clouds and depending on the way you look at them.
     Perhaps the question Wordsworth asked about Grasmere, we could also ask about Ullswater, 'Is it a mirror?'
     Pink & blue or black? Mountain or lake? I'd say both...
    
     Comments??
     Chris

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Hi,
    
     It is just through all this contrasts that the author is trying to say that things are not black or white, but that there are shades of grey.
     Nobody wins, nobody is defeated ... lack of communication brings them apart and he is questioning that is worth while.
     Lucienne

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Hi,
    
     I have been trying to look at the question on who betwen the two brother's has come out the loser or winner in their awkward relantionship. I first thougth there's no winner, both lost since they couldn't benefit from this kind of relantioship. I say that taking Victor as untrustworthy man who his only objective is to paint his character before Ranjit as a good friend, but at the same time I look at how Seneka ended up: SUICIDE, I question his integrity, for one who commits suicide is a murder, and have missed a very fundamental rigth of his own as a human: that he deserves his own LIFE no matter how wrong he has done.
    
     How could an allienated man, great reader could kill himeslf? or Victor has "lied" on that too? Isn't reading a way of accessing different ways of looking at life in various perspectives to make us feel able to deal with even the most bitter/happy experience in life?
    
     I say, since we question the integrity of Victor we should question the integrity of Seneka who in my point of view was the loser in this as he couldn't negotiate his choices even before the temptantion of suicide, he let the blinds draw on himeself like a coward!

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After reading Ullswater I felt a bit heartbroken. Victor and Senaka seem to be displaced men. Self absorded in the worlds they created for themselves, that nothing else mattered. Both brothers seem to feel rejected by each other, which prevented them from establishing familiar relations. The fact that are from the same bloodline doesn't really concern them.
    
     Gunesekera's text has made me ponder if blood is always thicker than water. I think Ranjit is the only character in this story who believes that it is.

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Dear Chris
     I think the name 'Victor' (=victorious and reminds one of victory) can be taken as an irony. If the concept can at all b attached to the name of the character that survives in the story, only a limited meaning can be got, i.e. in the sense of physical survival, or being alive. He's not a 'free' man - he's imprisoned in the memory of the past and bound by a sense of guilt. His 'confession' (I read his narration as a kind of confession out of an urge to let out pent up feelings and emotions built in him for years after his brother's death) can be taken as a justification of his own emotional impartiality and/or even callousness towards his brother. In the heart of his hearts he holds himself responsible for the catastrophe in his brother's life or at least he feels that his support may have saved his brother's life from this untimely end. A sense of waste, both for his brother as well as for their mutual relationship, prevails in his sensibility. In narrating their past in details to Ranjit, he not only tries to quench Ranjit's thirst about his father's life and death but also sorts out things that are probably unknown to him. another reading of the story makes me receive his 'confession' as almost a soliloquy full of reflection and retrospection.

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Hello everyone
     Somehow we cannot leave 'Ullswater' behind :) There are new mp3 files in the BritLit Ullswater page with Romesh himself reading the last part of the story. There are also recordings of 'Daffodils' and three other poems by Laurance Sail. Don't miss it!!
    
     Click here to go to the Ullswater webpage
    
     Cheers - Chris

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