A Casual Brutality Analysis

Imagine your life transitioning with constant violence, poverty, loss, racial terror and an environment of hatred. Your homeland rotted by violence and corruption. Imagine leaving your home country alone to a new one at the age of eighteen having to escape the horrid circumstances. You start a new life but, having a hard time forgetting the nostalgic occurrences back home where your family lives, even when you’re now thirty-two; a doctor happening to be successful in societies case. Neil Bissoondath character Raj Ramsingh, in the novel A Casual Brutality happens to develop the novel to a deeper meaning where there are ironic twists as if the story isn’t just casual but, its paradoxical with hidden truth progressing throughout including: the

Death: with its overwhelming connotations of loss, of defeat, intrinsically dramatic, even though it is slow and painless. Loss: it stays with you, informs your every attitude, your every decision, your every act” (Bissoondath 45). This quote expresses the themes of common life occurrences Raj goes through between recovery, death and loss. When he returns to Casaquemada with his wife Jan and son Rohan, he finds a country grown violent and corrupt: ""I was seeking protection from people who needed protection"" (Bissoondath 163). An emergency is declared; while Raj is away tending his dying grandfather, soldiers come to his house and kill Jan (Rohan, too) when she resists arrest. He takes the next flight to Toronto. Bissoondath conveyed a message that even though what happened back home was disastrous and traumatic, Raj deals with this situation by leaving right away knowing that violence shouldn’t be continuing in your life you just have to flee and start fresh including if you lost your