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Question
Show how the story shows a conflict between humans and nature.
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Solution
The Blue bead is a story about conflicts.lt is the story of Sibia, story of a twelve year old Indian girl who saved a gujjar woman from being devoured by a crocodile. There was a mugger crocodile laying in the water, A little 12-year-old girl name Sibia lived in a small village and she was marked for work from a very young age. She had never owned anything in her life In the village the woman would get paper grass from above the river. When they had enough they would take it to the bullock and sell it for money. One day when they were crossing the river on their way home, Sibia decided to rest. One of the Gujjar women went down to fill her two gurrahs with water. Things took a turn for the worst and all of a sudden a crocodile attacked the woman, biting on the woman’s leg. At that moment Sibia got up, sprinted, grabbed the hayfork and stabbed the crocodile in the eye with all her power. Immediately the crocodile let go and went away. Sibia saw a small blue bead lying by the river, she grabbed it. Since she was poor she didn’t have a necklace. She’d always wanted one like the other women, now she could make one with the blue bead. After that she went home and told her mother all about it.
There are various conflicts in the story. Sibia wants jewellery but cannot afford it. Has to work much harder than any child should and struggles to survive. Everyday Sibia has to cross the Indian River which is full of crocodiles. The grown Gujjar women is attacked by the crocodile and the twelve year old Sibia kills the crocodile and saves the women.
Then there is the conflict of lack of wealth in Sibia’s family. The author states in the beginning of the story:”She was a happy immature child woman, about 12 years old. Bare foot, of course, and often goosey cold on a winter morning, and born to toil. In all her life, she had owned anything but a rag.”
Another major conflict highlighted in the story is Human versus Nature. The conflict was that a woman was attacked by a crocodile and Sibia was there to save the woman. This conflict served the purpose of telling us how brave and courageous Sibia was and how she found the blue bead.Crocodiles often attack humans in India and surrounding countries. It’s very unlikely that one would survive an attack,but luckily, Sibia was there to save that woman.
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RELATED QUESTIONS
Read the passage given below and answer the questions (a), (b) and (c) that follow :
(1) At the Literary Society’s meeting, Isola read out the letters written to her Granny Pheen, when she was but a little girl. They were from a very kind man – a complete stranger. Isola told us how these letters came to be written.
(2) When Granny Pheen was nine years old, her cat died. Heartbroken, sitting in the middle of the road, she was sobbing her heart out.
(3) A carriage, driving far too fast, came within a whisker of running her down. A very big man in a dark coat with a fur collar, jumped out, leaned over Pheen, and asked if he could help her. Granny Pheen said she was beyond help. Muffin, her cat, was dead.
(4) The man said, ‘Of course, Muffin’s not dead. You do know cats have nine lives, don’t you?’ When Pheen said yes, the man said, ‘Well, I happen to know your Muffin was only on her third life, so she has six lives left.’ Pheen asked how he knew. He said he always knew - cats would often appear in his mind and chat with him. Well, not in words, of course, but in pictures.
(5) He sat down on the road beside her and told her to keep still – very still. He would see if Muffin wanted to visit him. They sat in silence for several minutes, when suddenly the man grabbed Pheen’s hand.
(6) ‘Ah – yes! There she is! She’s being born this minute! In a mansion – in France. There’s a little boy petting her, he’s going to call her Solange. This Solange has great spirit, great verve – I can tell already! She is going to have a long, venturesome life.’
(7) Granny Pheen was so rapt by Muffin’s new fate that she stopped crying. The man said he would visit Solange every so often and find out how she was faring.
(8) He asked for Granny Pheen’s name and the name of the farm where she lived, got back into the carriage, and left.
(9) Absurd as all this sounds, Granny Pheen did receive eight long letters. Isola then read them out. They were all about Muffin’s life as the French cat − Solange. She was, apparently, something of a feline musketeer. She was no idle cat, lolling about on cushions, lapping up cream – she lived through one wild adventure after another – the only cat ever to be awarded the red rosette of the Legion of Honour.
(10) What a story this man had made up for Pheen – lively, witty, full of drama and suspense. We were enchanted, speechless at the reading. When it was over (and much applauded), I asked Isola if I could see the letters, and she handed them to me.
(11) The writer had signed his letters with a grand flourish :
VERY TRULY YOURS,
O.F. O’F. W.W.
It was highly possible that Isola had inherited eight letters written by Oscar Wilde, for who else could have had such a preposterous name as Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Willis Wilde.
Adapted from : The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society – By Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
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(2) cat-like
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