37 pages • 1 hour read
Nayomi MunaweeraIsland of a Thousand Mirrors
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Commonality of Suffering
The author intentionally avoids elevating one side of the war over another in this story, and a key aspect to achieving that goal comes from the commonality of suffering on both sides. As early as the upstairs-downstairs division of the Wellawatte house, neighbors from opposing ethnicities make passive-aggressive complaints about one another. They make similarly petty domestic complaints, complaining about one another’s food, noise, and methods of child-rearing. These domestic complaints are repeated when the Rajasinghe family finds themselves as the foreign renters with a landlord from the majority ethnic group in Los Angeles, a twist in positions that emphasizes that such basic complaints are common across ethnicities, cultures, and geography.
Much greater suffering is also common. Visaka is shocked to realize that Alice understands her heartache, the emotional rivalry between Visaka and Ravan’s wife ends after they share the experience of childbirth, and Yasodhara opens up to Lanka again once they have both experienced a broken heart. Even Saraswathi at her most desolate knows that “other people have been hurt in this room. Many have died” (153). Knowing that she is not alone, even in such an isolating moment, gives Saraswathi the strength to endure and push through her physical and emotional pain. Ultimately, though, Saraswathi’s response to her suffering brings even more suffering to Yasodhara, closing a cycle of connection through pain.
Constant Threat of Violence
Tension in the novel intensifies as violence gets closer to the narrators. Even when Yasodhara’s family escapes from the immediate threat of violence and immigrates to the United States, Saraswathi’s perspective brings the reader directly into the dry season in the northern war zone, forcing the reader to view the conflict and its associated violence from an even closer perspective. The encroaching and intensifying violence creates a constant atmosphere of fear.
Nature mimics the violence of war in this novel. Even Alice’s home village is pierced with “the gunshot exclamation of a crocodile’s jaw cracking through turtle shell, the crash of musth-dripping bull elephant, the yellow-lit eyes of a hunting leopard” (65-66). Alice’s stories carry an atmosphere of encroaching danger for the first narrator; Saraswathi’s narrative takes place in a setting already fully engulfed by that danger. Saraswathi and her sister must hurry home each day after school to avoid soldiers who look at everyone “with eyes that are filled with hate, but also with fear” because anyone could be a suicide bomber (142). Whether living in the Wellawatte house or the northern war zone, the threat of danger is always just around the corner, over the wall, or pounding directly on the front door.
Love Crosses Societal Boundaries
The Prologue sets the reader to expect that physical love will play a meaningful role in the story. However, in hinting that the male lover is in love with the narrator’s sister, it immediately prepares readers for love that crosses boundaries. Though the Epilogue brings clarity to this initial moment, boundaries of ethnic differences and familial expectations are still crossed when Yasodhara and Shiva come together at the end, bringing together the Sinhala and Tamil sides of their histories. Although their ancestors quaked with rage at Visaka and Ravan’s budding love affair, Yasodhara and Shiva break the cycle of giving in to societal boundaries.
Beatrice Muriel’s character establishes the stereotypes of class, race, and gender in the novel. From early on, she struggles to overcome the “limitations of fate” associated with her husband’s humble heritage (11). Her adherence to social and ethnic class order make it difficult for Beatrice Muriel to look upon love marriages as decent: “They signify a breakdown of propriety, a giving in to the base instincts exhibited by the lower castes and foreigners” (51). Even Visaka, the daughter of a judge, is looked upon as unworthy of Nishan because she is a “Colombo girl of reduced circumstances” (53). Beatrice Muriel is convinced that fate, history, stars, and family lineage must be considered for a marriage to be viable. Mala, however, serves as the foil to this notion, marrying a man of her own choosing and choosing well. Mala chooses her husband based upon the way he looks at her and the way he trusts her in addition to their physical attraction. Their marriage offers a subtle alternative for Yasodhara and Lanka, who both eventually pursue an interethnic romance with Shiva.
Power of Sex
Sex plays an important role in understanding the narrator’s relationship and perspective. The novel opens with Yasodhara reflecting upon Shiva, who is lying next to her in bed and mumbling her sister’s name. It isn’t until the Epilogue that readers know for certain the identity of the Prologue’s narrator and are given more context for Shiva’s mumblings. Yasodhara and Shiva turn to one another for comfort, and she repeatedly seeks his physical affection when she struggles emotionally. When she struggles in her first marriage, Yasodhara attempts to seduce her husband, feeling that she can regain their emotional connection through physical connection. For Yasodhara, sex is a confirmation of a deep personal connection that provides comfort and security.
For Saraswathi, though, sex carries the power to claim a person, and this claim is one that can be taken, lost, fought for, and won. After losing her sexual innocence at the hands of Sinhala soldiers, Saraswathi reclaims ownership of her body by dedicating it to the Tiger cause in what she considers the ultimate sacrifice. Saraswathi’s nightmare of her rape morphs into nightly dreams of being sexually dominated by the Tiger leader. She connects sex to power and ultimately reclaims her body when she dedicates it to the leader’s cause.
