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The Narrative Techniques in Ice Candy Man: by Bapsi Sidhwa
The Narrative Techniques in Ice Candy Man: by Bapsi Sidhwa
CANDY MAN
By Bapsi Sidhwa
THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN ICE CANDY
MAN
• Bapsi Sidhwa's third and till date the most celebrated and widely
quoted novel
• Most powerful narratives of recent times.
• India and Pakistan-Partition through the eyes of an eight-year-old
disabled girl, Lenny.
THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN ICE CANDY
MAN
• Lenny's development from childhood to adolescence coincides with
India's struggle for independence
• Lenny is unbiased in her views as she is a Parsi and a small kid.
• She has access to a wide variety of viewpoints, both pre and post-
Partition, through her Ayah, a beautiful woman
• Lenny's passionate love for Ayah is an energetic centre to the plot.
THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN ICE CANDY
MAN
• Sidhwa’s focus in this symbolic novel is not so much on the story as it is on the
narrative techniques
• Foremost among them is the first-person present-tense narration.
• Lenny. is--or was-a child when the events described take place, and the events
are seen through her consciousness.
• The present tense providing immediacy and a certain simultaneity between past
and present.
• Perverse nature of amorous human passions
• How religious fanaticism can breed hatred and violence
THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN ICE CANDY
MAN
• Bapsi Sidhwa chooses Lenny, a polio-ridden, precocious child as the
narrator of the novel
• Utmost objectivity, without an air of propaganda
• Lenny is free from any religious or ethnic bias.
• Truth-infected tongue
THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN ICE CANDY
MAN
• Bapsi was of the same age when the nation was divided into two
• The events of Partition had left an indelible mark on the psyche of
child Bapsi
• The intersections of the Author and Lenny.at various points of the
narrative seem to be deliberate
• She admits in an interview, "the scene where people ride into the
house to kidnap Ayah did happen in real life, although I have
fictionalized it."
THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN ICE CANDY
MAN
• In Ice-Candy Man, Lenny is the narrative persona.
• The household staff.
• Ayah, an eighteen-year-old dusky beauty, Shantha,
• Imam Din, the genial-faced cook of the Sethi household,
• Hari, the high-caste Hindu,
• Moti, the outcaste gardener,
• Mucha, his shrew of a wife,
• Papoo, his much abused child and
• the Ice-Candy-Man, a raconteur and a "born gossip"