The short story Anil was written by Ridjal Noor and the story is set in a small village is Malaysia. Noor begins the story by describing the setting which make the reader feel slightly uneasy yet intrigued as to what might be occurring on the ‘ hot sweltering night in the middle of march’. Quite disturbing imagery is used and it becomes clear at the beginning that poverty is a big theme throughout of the story.
‘ When mosquitoes were in their reign of terrorism there was a little village where the villagers kept to themselves in little huts… dreaming their dreams that rarely amounted to anything’ Within this quote there are two contrasting imageries because the personification ‘ mosquitoes in their reign of terrorism’ could be foreshadowing something bad that is yet to come, this is because the word reign is used normally used to describe a particular person that is in charge of a group of people (such as the village) and mosquitoes are linked with blood, diseases and even deaths, this could suggest that the mosquitoes could symbolise the headman and suggests that any blood or deaths that occur are because of his doing and therefore foreshadows the terror which will soon happen.
In contrast with this horrible imagery is the description of ‘ the little villagers’ which gives a quite calm and relaxed feeling to the village and the description used sound like a fairy tale where little is repeated to suggest that the villagers lead unimportant lives and begin there days with the same repetitive routines and have ‘ dreams that rarely amounted to anything’ illustrating there lost hope for the future and being stuck in the same small place everyday.
This imagery could however suggests that the villagers are like innocent prisoners with no place to go and nothing to look forward to therefore again makes the reader feel uneasy. In addition to this as the beginning paragraph continues the reader gets vivid images of children tossing and turning in bed and how ‘ children dreamed of waking up to another day, and the next, and the next till it was over as soon as it began’.
This quote emphasises how poor the village is and I think this is quite powerful imagery because it describes children dreaming about something no child should dream therefore making the reader emphasise with the village (especially with the children) due to everyone’s constant struggle in poverty. The opening of this story really does prepare the reader for the rest of the story due to some of the foreshadows and descriptions of poverty it gives us an insight about what could possibly happen and prepare for the ‘ reign of terrorism’
