37 pages • 1 hour read
Nayomi MunaweeraIsland of a Thousand Mirrors
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Resentment and Conflict Are Cyclical
Ethnic tensions are established early in the novel as Yasodhara introduces herself immediately following images of a “rifle-toting tiger” and a “sword-gripping lion” (7). The author does not attempt to blame one side—Tamil or Sinhala—over the other but instead reveals the complicated and cyclical nature of unresolved resentment and conflict. These cycles are played out at both the domestic and the national level, demonstrating the deeply rooted nature of the cycle and the extent of its repetition through family lines.
Early in Yasodhara’s family history, Beatrice Muriel reinforces stereotypes associated with race and class. Immediately upon Mala’s birth, Beatrice Muriel laments Mala’s gender and skin color, fearing it will be difficult to ever get her married. Beatrice Muriel’s history is not explored in depth, but her strong-rooted beliefs in racial superiority and class division are clear, as is the shame she carries over marrying a fishing village doctor with only the name of a prince. On the other side of her family, Sylvia Sunethra maintains aspects of high colonial culture in her household and similarly ashamed of her husband’s humble roots. In the next generation Visaka is cruel to Nishan in ways her daughters do not understand, maintaining a grudge against her husband for aspects of his heritage that she looks down upon and repeating the cycle of class-based frustrations within the domestic sphere.
Yasodhara and Shiva are fated to repeat the patterns of their parents, “twinned from birth, in some strange fashion, repeating the pattern of my father and Mala, the male and female twins that floated in our family history” (61). They grow up to repeat the family history of Visaka and Ravan, upstairs-downstairs neighbors of opposing ethnicities whose innocent love is disrupted by realities of civil war. Like their parents, Yasodhara and Shiva are attracted to each other and pulled apart; unlike their parents, they find their way back to one another. In doing so, Yasodhara and Shiva repeat the pattern of their reliance upon a third person to hold them together, as their daughter Samudhra replaces Lanka as the third point in their foundation.
Repetitions and parallel experiences occur frequently throughout the novel, often in distorted ways. Visaka rejects Ravan for his Tamil background; the immediacy of the ethnic violence between the Tamil and Sinhala pulls Yasodhara and Shiva apart in the next generation. Nishan’s view of fish scattering like a thousand shattered mirrors is echoed in Saraswathi’s imagery of a thousand broken bottles. Yasodhara’s dedication to her doctoral studies and her consideration for her university students are reflected in Saraswathi’s original dreams of becoming the next village teacher. Characters are deeply separated by generations of ethnic tension, but they also exhibit similarities that make both sides of the conflict more human.
Civil War Divides Nations and Families
It’s impossible for characters to escape the impact of civil war in this novel. The violence in Sri Lanka impacts individuals, families, and the nation. No ethnicity, class, or geographic region is spared from the common experience of suffering brought on by war. Generations of ethnic tensions tear the nation’s communities and families down ethnic lines, inspiring thoughts of secession.
Individuals who fight in the war return changed. Dilshan returns from his army training “a different person. A stranger with hard eyes” (72). Similarly, when Saraswathi’s brothers return home briefly after their Tiger training, they don’t bother with expected niceties such as complimenting their mother’s cooking or acknowledging the sacrifices the family made to feed them during their visit. Instead, they talk “only of Eelam, of their weapons,” and of how many Sinhala soldiers they’ve killed (132). Saraswathi is also changed when she returns home from Tiger training; in a twist of roles recalling the female Tiger recruiters who once attempted to enlist her, Saraswathi attempts to recruit her sister Luxshmi, the only remaining child in her family’s home.
The changes in individuals have a ripple effect on families. Saraswathi’s family is torn apart by the war, her parents losing all their children to the Tiger forces by the end of the story. After joining the Tigers, Saraswathi inhabits a different world from that of her family, “and there are no bridges between that place and this” (192). She considers the Tigers to be her family, her parents and sister now “strangers [she] knew in a different time” (193).
Saraswathi’s setting exemplifies war’s impact on communities. Her parents remember a time before the civil war began, but Saraswathi struggles to imagine a “world with plenty to eat and no air strikes” (130). Yasodhara’s setting is not immune to the impacts of war, although the signs are subtle in comparison. The Wellawatte house, originally a symbol of the judge’s high-class aspirations, is physically divided, with a Tamil family upstairs representing the north and a Sinhala family downstairs representing the south.
For those able to flee the violence, escape is not permanent. Yasodhara is drawn back to the island, trading one heartache for another in her attempt to flee her broken marriage. Lanka’s death brings the ultimate pain of loss to Yasodhara, demonstrating that physical distance and emotional separation cannot protect individuals and families from the heartbreak of loss associated with war.
Migration and Exile Are Isolating Experiences
Connections to family, identity, and culture are challenged when people feel forced to abandon their homes in this story. In the domestic realm, Ananda’s threat to immigrate to the United States to pursue his relationship with a woman he chooses for himself isolates him from the rest of his family until they seek refuge from the civil war. Yasodhara also chooses exile from her family when she returns to America and starts a new life with Shiva, but this self-isolation does not save her from missing her lost sister.
Nishan’s experience in America, although played out in the background, highlights the struggle of starting over in a new country. He quickly goes from a university-educated engineer and member of the ethnic majority and land-owning class to being looked upon as the complete opposite. In America Nishan’s education is undervalued, his family is looked at and treated as foreigners, and he no longer owns the home where his family resides. Nishan contracts “the recent immigrant’s fever” after his promotion to office assistant, and he “wants more, so much more. He wants to conquer this new country. Make it recognize his talents, his abilities, make it see him” (108).
When Lanka returns to the family’s Wellawatte house in Sri Lanka, the new residents look at her as a foreigner. Similarly, Yasodhara finds that she is “the one who has become unrecognizable, with [her] foreign clothes and shoes, the sureness of [her] American walk,” when she returns to the island to visit her sister (197). After years of assimilating to American culture, neither Yasodhara nor Lanka fall smoothly back into their home culture.
While Yasodhara’s family encounters difficulties related to immigration and assimilation, Saraswathi experiences the solitude of being exiled from her own family. From the moment she returns home following her assault, her father cannot look her in the eye. Her mother eventually pushes Saraswathi to accept that she must leave the family to avoid bringing them further shame. In the absence of a loving and supportive family, Saraswathi embraces rage and begins to view the Tigers as her family instead. In the moment that Saraswathi sees her own hair falling from her head in the style of the female Tigers, she experiences the overwhelming “sensation of dislocation” that Yasodhara uses to describe her own solitude among family members (197). Saraswathi does not experience the “immigrant nostalgia” of missing a homeland (99), but her experience of being exiled and the subsequent feeling of isolation echoes Yasodhara’s constant feeling of dislocation.
