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Anil's Ghost Sparknotes

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Anil’s Ghost is a fictional novel written by Michel Ondaatje. Anil's Ghost is a riveting literary mystery that takes place against the beautiful backdrop of Sri Lanka. It is about love, family, identity, and the search for buried secrets. The story is driven by an intriguing mystery which keeps readers turning pages until the very end. This novel offers a fascinating look into the history and culture of Sri Lanka as well as its landscape and prehistoric civilization.

Ondaatje explores the bloody civil war with the Tamil Tigers and JVP fighting the government. Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost explores the civil war in Sri Lanka through the perspective of the affected people. Ondaatje demonstrates how the conflict and setting represents violence …show more content…

This relates to the violent acts that the combatants in a war would perform against civilians or other individuals, leaving them with little alternative but to put up with it. “This was the scarring psychosis in the country. Death, loss, was 'unfinished,' …There had been years of night visitations, kidnappings or murders in broad daylight” (Ondaatje 56). The issue focused on the violence of the combatants of the war which is demonstrated in the quote saying that they would kill and even kidnap in broad daylight. This would result in many killings and even corpses or skeletons all over the land of which the party was involved. As this ended up with Anil finding a specific skeleton that was burned on the government's land. “ Anil discovered a fourth skeleton, whose bones were still held together but dried ligaments, partially burned” (Ondaatje 50). According to the quote, the body was transferred so that no one would discover it; hence, it was burned, buried, and then moved to avoid detection or just out of …show more content…

Tags were put on the right wrist, or… yellow for surgery” (Ondaatje 125). There would be ways that the doctor could also differentiate between which patient to help and some would just give them morphine tablets so that there would not have time to be spent on them. “ The triage separated the dying from those who needed immediate surgery and those who could wait” (Ondaatje 126). With all of this going on and the public bombing it affected everyone because the people would all be emotionally shattered. So from the perspective of the people that are in the middle of this war and the public bombing crumbled because everyone was emotionally shattered and even getting injured, war crimes would be all over. Although this may be true the insurgents would even affect and interrupt the other hospitals killing doctors and

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Throughout the history of the world’s conflict, soldiers have suffered in a multitude of ways. On the battlefields of the American Civil War, both Union and Confederate soldiers witnessed gruesome wounds. In the trenches of World War I, chemical warfare was a constant threat, and a very dangerous one, at that. Most recently, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, warriors and civilians alike fell victim to a kind of guerilla warfare never before seen; suicide bombings. This was in conjunction with the use of weapons such as landmines that terrorized cities for years after conflict ended.

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Moreover, the author decided to portray this concept throughout the whole novel to remind the reader that physical destruction is not the only disadvantage of war. Many individuals believe that surviving on the battlefield without experiencing dreadful injuries, grant the young soldiers a life full of peace and freedom. In fact, the youth who are affected by the psychological disorders need as much guidance and support as the soldiers who are brutally injured during the battles. Moreover, the psychological wars that bombard their minds have the power to trample upon their life. To conclude, the soldiers did not dare to aim for a successful future since the warfare annihilated their mental

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Towards the end, a perpetrator is found and a verdict is passed. This familiar structure grounds the viewer and prepares them to reflect further on the issues raised in each episode. ‘Anil’s Ghost’ provides informed political reflections on Sri Lanka’s rocky past through the eyes of well-informed characters. The novel is a hybrid genre, combining crime fiction with a political, historical and social focus. Sri Lanka’s turbulent history is portrayed in the novel’s obvious preoccupation with political turmoil.

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The strong influential characteristics of a strong female and what constitutes the role of a detective are similarly evident in the novel, ‘Anil’s Ghost’ written by Michael Ondaatje, 2000. The story follows the life of Anil Tesseria, a Sri Lankan anthropologist who is a part of the Human Rights Investigation. She is determined to discover the identity of a burned skeleton of in the civil war and bring justice to all of the nameless victims of the horrific war. Anil’s characterisation by Ondaatje has been executed stupendously as she upholds a strong female character that stands up for what she believes in until she is proven wrong. Anil displays significant values of her civil war affect context as she is believes she is being mentally disrupted due to the deaths and crime of war.

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