Behind The Beautiful Forevers Themes

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Aaron Hamid GEO 3602 Professor Price 3/1/14 Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity Book Review Katherine Boo’s prize winning non-fiction account of life in the slums of Mumbai deals with the key themes of inequality, unemployment, poverty and powerlessness through the presentation of the striking reality of daily life in a Mumbai slum. The initial description of the slum and the surrounding area showcase these themes in a clear manner. Within the first few pages the reader is greeted with the vast inequality that exists within Indian slums and overall developing cities. The slum Annawadi is overshadowed by the conspicuous wealth of the rising city of Mumbai. While one does see the towering hotels and a rise of India’s middle class, it is the irregular arrangements and prevalence of pollution that really makes one feel as if they are walking in the “trash-strewn, tin-roofed shack” of the young garbage trader Abdul.…show more content…
The fact that Abdul and his family must engage in such tasks as garbage trading is evident of the situation in this slum. The themes of poverty, powerlessness and inequality are at the very core of her work, and develop themselves through describing the challenges facing the residents of these Mumbai slums. The ever present reminder of the massive inequality of India is represented in the modern and opulent buildings that encircle the slum. Boo's account follows the challenges and struggles that the various slum dwellers have to endure just to survive and to make ends meet in a world that gives them hardly any opportunity and little chance to improve themselves. Boo presents these as necessary strategies by in order to showcase the unemployment, inequality, poverty and powerlessness that are such a daily reality for the slum dwellers depicted in this

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