Funny Boy Chapter Summaries

Funny Boy, The Struggle of Coming to Terms With the Real World. The voyage between childhood to adulthood can lead to many new personal discoveries. In the book Funny Boy by Canadian author, Shyam Selvadurai, Arjie encounters many situations which influence his preconceived notions of childhood. In the Sri Lankan society that Arjie lives in, the expectations are that the boys play with the boys and the girls play with the girls. Arjie prefers to dress up in Saris and play bride-bride with the girls rather than cricket with the boys. This fantasy world that he plays in influences his view on love and weddings. This conflicts with the political tension between the Tamils and the Sinhalese. Arjie comes to understand that the real world of socio-political beliefs is at odds with his innocent perspective of childhood. As a young boy, Arjie finds the most fun with playing in the girls world but

Rhada Aunty is a Tamil and Anil is a Sinhalese and those two groups do not get along and is not accepted to intermarry. Initially, Arjie does not understand why Rhada Aunty and Anil cannot be together. It was after the attack by the Tamils towards Rhada Aunty, that Arjie realizes that they could never be together. He says “It was so clear now that I was surprised I had not seen it before, that I had not understood the moment I saw Rhada Aunty with that bloody bandage around her head that her relationship with Anil was over” (Selvadurai 97). Arjie always thought that if two people loved each other they could be together, not knowing of all the political conflicts going on around them. Arjie “… believed that if two people loved each other, everything was possible. Now, I know this was not so” (Selvadurai 100). Arjie learns that his idealogical view of what love and marriage is could not always play into the real world because of the political tension in his