"My Aunt Gold Teeth" by Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul is a short story that was originally published in 1958 in the Paris Review. Naipaul himself was born in Chaguanas, Trinidad, where the story is set, and like his characters in his story came from an Indian background, a family including pundits, religious experts with profound knowledge of the Vedas (Sanskrit texts sacred in the Hindu religion).
The first person narrator of the story is a child, but the narrative voice often veers from the first-person viewpoint of the child to omniscient narration. The narrator appears almost contemptuous of the aunt, characterizing her by extended and unflattering description. The two main outward elements of the characterization are the gold teeth, which we encounter at the opening of the story, and which give her the nickname she bears (she is always called "Gold Teeth" in the story). The second element in the description is her weight; the narrator seems both obsessed with and disgusted by the fact that she is very fat. On a psychological level, she is characterized mainly by her level of superstition. The narrator sees religion as something ignorant people approach as a form of magic,with Roman Catholicism and Hinduism as Gold Teeth practiced them simply a set of rituals used to gain practical benefits. Her constantly praying for children and the negative attitude of the narrator and other members of the community towards her barrenness is simply taken for granted and used as the occasion for discussion of her superstitiousness.
We are told that Ramprasad, Gold Teeth's husband, is a pundit, knowing all five of the Vedas, something highly respected in Hindu society, and also are informed that he is relatively well off (providing the money allowing her to replace her teeth with gold ones). Physically, he is characterized as having a huge appetite for food, and becoming ill over the course of the story, but he is an essentially flat character, mainly serving as a pretext for development of Gold Teeth's character and critique of the way religion and medicine together are simply seen as instrumental, as means to an end, an uncritical grasping of everything that might be potentially useful.
The characterization of Ganash is also one-dimensional, with his being open to many religious traditions and his reassurance of a worried wife about a sick husband treated mainly as an occasion to critique what most people would consider a capacious and humane approach to religion as cynical self-advancement:
In his professional capacity Ganesh was consulted by people of many faiths, and with the licence of the mystic he had exploited the commodiousness of Hinduism, and made room for all beliefs. In this way he had many clients, as he called them, many satisfied clients.
Answer:
<u>1. Did swallow know that helping the happy prince for too long its life will be jeopardized?</u>
<em>Yes</em>.
<u>2. Why did the swallow still choose to help?</u>
<em> It's because the swallow helped the Happy Prince by distributing precious stones and gold leaves that decorated his body.</em>
Answer:
Anglo-Saxon culture that it was important to risk your life to win battles, especially battles for revenge of loved ones. The big mother presents this aspect of Anglo-Saxon culture because she risks to fight and avenge her son's death.
Explanation:
The Anglo-Saxon heroic code put the battles on a level of high importance, for them the battles were more important than life itself. This intensified when the battle was aimed at avenging a relative or a friend. For the Anglo-Saxons a true warrior would risk his own life if it meant getting revenge for vile acts that someone committed with his loved ones.
Grendel's mother is a strong example of this concept, as she sets out to fight the powerful warrior who killed her son to avenge him. She knows that the warrior can kill her too, but she prefers to risk her own life so that her son can be avenged.
