Chameleon

Chameleon Coming to a foreign country and being yourself is not easy. Suddenly you stand between two cultures. You feel different, like you don’t belong. You are trying hard to be like them, but can you escape from who you are' Rita Patel, 24-year old woman, is one out of many immigrants who lives in London. She is Indian. The reason why her family is living in London is because her father came to London to work. He wanted to turn back to India, but he couldn’t; he met Rita’s mother and Rita was born. She also has a younger sister Seema and a brother Raju. Rita is a hardworking woman and had rented the house in Finchley with her catholic boyfriend Mark, so they could be alone. No Catholics, no Indians – it was wonderful. Rita has always felt like white and wanted to be like white ones. She listen to white music, ware white clothes, eat white food and every morning she rubs bleaching cream into every exposed part of her skin, but can the bleaching cream cover who she really is' She taught it could, until Mark’s mother refused to talk to him, because she found out that his girlfriend wasn’t catholic. Rita couldn’t understand it, because she has lots of white friends, and has always felt welcome in their houses. She also feels very well integrated and therefore it came as a shock to her, that somebody couldn’t accept her as she was. Then it hit her – I was fine as the token dark friend. The parents of her white friends don’t mind her as a friend of their sons, but when it comes to marriage it’s a whole different matter. The reason why she was welcome as their friend is because then the white parents have a clear continence, and no one can call them racists. Rita’s family is very old-fashioned. They only have Indian friends and don’t socialize with locals or anybody, but Indians for that matter. They want Rita to get married to a non-Indian man. They don’t think that a white boy will treat her right. They only want one thing, these white men, they won’t stay with you. Rita is against it and doesn’t feel the same way as her parents. She can’t understand their thinking. They were living in a time warp and wanted to keep me there with them. Rita was happy with Mark, he was special to her. They had met at university. He made her laugh like nobody else. For her he was different from the Indian men she knew. She couldn’t imagine marrying an Indian man, because it will feel like marrying her father or brother. Everything felt so right with Mark, I loved him.   Rita’s parents were very disappointed with her. She was the opposite of what they wanted her to be like. Rita was tired of her mother telling her what to with her life. She starts pushing into meetings with Indian men. She had the feeling that dating Indian men was like dating her father or brother – she finds them boring. After meeting up with the Indian men, she found out that there wasn’t anything wrong with Indian men, but they wasn’t Mike. At the end Rita finds out that her parents knows about Mark and that they have known it over a longer period. She didn’t have any options left than introduce him to them. The reason why the text is called Chameleon, is because Rita is trying to fit into the white culture. She even use bleaching cream, to fit in. But in the end she most face the truth, that she is an Indian girl. The themes in this text could be; arranged marriage, mixed couple, identity, traditions etc. From Rita’s experience, we can conclude that you can’t escape from who you are, even if you are trying hard. It is easier being with somebody like yourself; the same culture, the same traditions, you don’t need to explain anything and you can be who you are, but life is just not so simple and it will never be. The story has to settings, in the Asian-marked and at her home. Most at her home, where she is struggling with her parents, because she tries to fit in to the British culture and she is losing her Indian culture. She forgets to take her shoes off, and how to cook Indian-food. Rita has become very well integrated in the English culture, she even thinks that se is white her self. Rita is well determined that she is a ”white girl” “I was white in every way, apart from my skin colour - I listened to white music, wore white clothes and ate white food. At last she realises that she isn’t white, when Mark tells her that his mother, doesn’t approve her as a girlfriend of Mark. She can’t believe that his parents could make such a decision. The group which Rita has tried so hard to be a part of has rejected he The narrative style in ‘Chameleon’ is a 1st person narrator. The story as it is told through Rita’s point of view which makes it very subjective. “He had never liked me.”8 Here she assumes that her brother doesn’t like her, this does not include her brothers point of view, which could be the exact opposite. this is just one of many places in the novel, where you can see that you can’t trust everything she says, because we only see it from her point of view. The narrator also curses a lot, she uses words as bloody, pissed off etc, this is figurative speech which gives us the view that she is very integrated, and taking distance from her own culture. In addition to other story’s, this story can be compared to about a boy. In about a boy we have two main characters. These two characters is called Marcus and will, both of them undergoing a huge change in their life. Like Rita in chameleon, Marcus thinks he’s just as normal as any other kid, at his school. In about a boy, the first time Marcus realises that he’s not ‘’normal’’, is when a person tells him his not normal. Like in about a boy, Rita first realises that she’s different is when Marks mother, tells Mark that she doesn’t approve of his marriage to Rita.