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A Significant Familial Relationship In Pollock's Play

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Though the Komagata Maru incident was a real event, with serious repercussions that affected thousands of immigrants and their families, the most significant familial relationship in Pollock’s play is Hopkinson’s. The audience is never explicitly introduced to Hopkinson’s parents, but they provide significant conflict, especially in terms of Hopkinson’s motives. The first mention of his parents at all is in a nondescript, vague paragraph where Hopkinson states his father was “stationed in Punjab...there was a felt carpet from Kashmir, brass ornaments...anything he wanted...It belonged to my father.” (107, Pollock) Hopkinson’s father is his hero -- a successful white man in the early 20th century is all Hopkinson really aspires to be. However, in the same scene, Evy asks about Hopkinson’s mother; she is ignored, and brushed aside. She is persistent, though, and later argues with him as to how truthful he is being -- she comments that “[Hopkinson] lived with [the Indians].” (110) This negates another argument between them, and Hopkinson is quick to move on to his father, saying “I …show more content…

If his own father -- who was, in Hamlet’s mind, revered and considered great -- is barely given a thought after his death, what will happen to Hamlet, a man not nearly half the one his father was? The subtle contrasts he makes of his father to Claudius -- “this Hyperion to a satyr” -- are not just surface level. They expose a side of Hamlet that is desperate for some assurance that he is worth something. The way he views himself, Claudius, and Old Hamlet revolves solely around the fact that Hamlet wants to be his own person, not just a replica of the two men who came before him. His act of killing Claudius for his father represents the closure he longs for; that he can requite how his father left this earth, and satisfy his own need to be

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In his book the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie portrays a teenage boy, Arnold Spirit (junior) living in white man’s world, and he must struggle to overcome racism and stereotypes if he must achieve his dreams. In the book, Junior faces a myriad of misfortunes at his former school in ‘the rez’ (reservation), which occurs as he struggles to escape from racial and stereotypical expectations about Indians. For Junior he must weigh between accepting what is expected of him as an Indian or fight against those forces and proof his peers and teachers wrong. Therefore, from the time Junior is in school at reservation up to the time he decides to attend a neighboring school in Rearden, we see a teenager who is facing tough consequences for attempting to go against the racial stereotypes.

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Junior, a misunderstood boy not only has to live as an outcast in a school filled with white people but, also has to live as an outcast among his own people. In The Absolute True Diary of a Part Time Indian, Sherman Alexie explores the terrible losses that occur on the reservation and how for that very reason Junior is becoming more alone than how he was before. He loses his sister, grandmother, the man who he says is like an uncle to him, and also himself in such a short amount of time. Junior’s sister was secretly into writing romance novels so she turned her life into one. She ran away from home and got married.

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Thomas also reveals in the story how the father mocks the officer about his lack of heritage, claiming that he will pretend that the officer is a “real Indian” (Alexie 102). The paradoxical use of the term “real Indian” shows the reservation’s uniform bias towards non-native Americans, even if there is a hint of blood within them. This animosity is also reflected Thomas’ perspective of white Americans, which is affected by their tendency to accumulate wealth and be placed in higher tiers of economic living.

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He is later disgusted by his mother’s quick remarriage to his uncle, Claudius, almost two months after the death of his father who was also his mother’s husband. After Hamlet’s conversation with his father’s ghost in which Hamlet was told that his father was murdered by Claudius, he became filled with even more grief because he has a difficult duty of killing his uncle in order to avenge his father’s death. This is seen in the “to be or not to be” soliloquy.

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