Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers (Analysis)

Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers (Analysis)

Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers

“The Poor” and the Slum-Dwellers

In which she disputes the general notion of life

Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forever

“The Poor” and the Slum-Dwellers

The mainstreamed assertion of life below the poverty line often follows distorted narratives of those of misfortune and destitute and frequently we may find that those of whom dwell at the lowest of our economic construct are camouflaged as idealistic humans for the simple purpose of evoking a sense of remorse from those that thrive from the economy. Through her non-fiction narrative Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo in attempt to diminish such media distortions, sheds light on the social injustice of life in the pits of a failing economy and the stories of those who resided there in. Boo uses various literary devices such as ethos, pathos, and cinematic irony to transfix our gaze on the actual life in the slums of Annawadi from the perspective of its inhabitants, and in this reveals that despite the coveted depiction, residents of the slums are not perfect idealistic humans. That some are bent and hardened into wicked sometimes selfish beings in order to stay alive but Boo also reveals the rare beauties in the underworld slums of Annawadi and it’s effect on its residents and the small lessons they might teach.

In the instance of her aforementioned disputation, Boo intentionally focuses less on those of verbal dexterity and broadens her book’s approach by instead publicizing more of those whose stories are best told through their actions as they either have no education to articulate what life in the slums truly mean to them or simply lack the motivation to believe their words may truly tell their stories. With this, Boo expresses an aspect of the values of life below the poverty line through the observation of Sunil Sharam, an ambitious resident of the slum who despite having to work day-in and day-out to create a livelihood for his sister and himself, finds a purpose to protect the beauty in the slums of Annawadi. Sunil collects scraps and garbage and sells them to other slum-dwellers in order to make a living; Sunil’s character is ambitious, and hardworking despite only being a child. Though, through usage of the literary device cinematic-irony, Katherine Boo shows her readers a new side to Sunil as he goes out of his way to protect parrots that nest in the slums rather than using them to make a profit. “Some of the road boys had been capturing the parrots one by one to sell at the Marol Market, but Sunil brought Kalu around to the belief that the birds should be left as they were.” [p.g. 159] The authorial choice to hone in on this exact seemingly unnecessary moment in Sunil’s story evokes a sense of irony in the character himself. Sunil works all the time as he has to make a living for himself, and yet still he makes time to appreciate the simple beauty in nature so much so that he goes out of his way to protect it. A new spectrum is opened up when we analyze this as we find the purpose of beauty in a world filled with such terror in Sunil’s case is to, in spite of his economic status, sometimes forget about the materialistic worth of something, and instead appreciate the beauty in it’s existence. This is the first lesson of the Slum-Dwellers.

From the rare beauties and it’s life lessons, we are transfixed into the desolate aspects of the slums; Katherine Boo tells the story of Fatima, the one-legged whore of Annawadi. In this, Boo appeals to both our sense of morals and also our sense of emotions, but with the gruesome foreshadowed death of Fatima, we will analyze the usage of pathos in her story. When readers are first introduced to Fatima, she is characterized as a disabled promiscuous and notoriously known hot-tempered slum-dweller, and from then on, Boo, as she records Fatima’s actions, only devalues the character more as Fatima proves to be the havoc of Annawadi, rubbing her lovers in her husband’s face just the start of her mischievous acts. Despite Fatima’s character being as said, though, she was never too far gone to readers her actions proving no worse than other slum-dwellers and in this, Katherine Boo took to the process of humanizing the one-legged woman. “Much of her outrage [was] derived from a belated recognition that she was as human as anyone else.” [p.g. 72] Boo incites, “Nowadays, when her mother took the train across the city to visit, she couldn’t help but pass around a glamour photo of Fatima’s younger sister-that two legged marvel with a sparkling jewel in her nose.”[p.g. 72]. In saying this, Boo pulls sympathy from her audience for Fatima as she was never truly loved by her mother but rather a shameful existence which should in any case solidify Fatima’s current character. Katherine Boo’s aim is to expose to readers that “slummers” are not the good Samaritans that mainstream media depicts them as, at least not thoroughly, and rightfully so. We as readers above the poverty line cannot judge and verdict those below the economic construct using our social contracts to solidify these meaningless verdicts of character. She aims to expose that the poor can be wicked, but their wickedness justified, as this is in Fatima’s case. Boo incites her readers with a back story for Fatima, a silver lining, to pull at the heartstrings of her audience before delivering the heart wrenching scene in which Fatima sets herself on fire leaving her readers wondering: Is this an act of spite? Anger? Or sadness? Boo purposefully perplexes her readers to show that, the underworld of Annawadi is perplexing. That nothing is black and white. That in the slums of Annwadi a broken woman may very well set herself on fire for revenge, or simply out of the loneliness that comes along with the realization that the only part of her worth anything is nested between her legs. That in the end, slum-dwellers are just humans trying to live within their horribly limited means as contently as possible. And while some may make it, others do not.

And now, Boo tackles our morality. To what extent should a mother go to provide for her child? How much, is too much? Katherine Boo introduces readers to perhaps the most socially mobile resident in the slum-hierarchy, Asha. A political mongul and unofficial slum-lord of Annawadi, Asha has built herself up to success in the slums through corruption and justifies her immoral tactics by simply pleaing the job of a mother. “Asha knew her daughter judged her for her plots and side deals, and for the nighttime meetings with the Corporator, policemen and government bureaucrats that these schemes always seem to entail. But the politics for which Manju had contempt had brought her a college education and may someday lift them all into the middle class.” [Boo. 30] In this, Katherine Boo provides a precise example of how life in the pits of our economic construct may change its residents as in order for Asha to provide her child with all that she didn’t have, and all we take for granted, she has to stoop as low as corrupted government schemes and plots, and though Boo’s purpose is to convey the justifications of these tactics in order to survive in the slums, she leaves the reader to form their own judge of character on Asha. Despite the fact that Asha was doing the “motherly” thing for her child to pursue a higher education, does the levels she stoop to prove her character morally wrong or morally right? In Asha’s story we learn that one of her most notorious schemes encompasses taking micro-finance loans using it to benefit her financial needs by double-crossing small business associates who go into business with her. Katherine Boo poses the ethical question in this: Do intention forgo actions? And if so, can one truly believe that Asha is a morally just person? Living in the slums, does morality even matter? These are the questions Boo initiates as she appeals to our sense of ethos.

Collectively in her non-fiction narrative Behind the Beautiful Forevers, we see Katherine Boo succeed in presenting her audience with a newfound view of life below the poverty line, and it’s inhabitants. Through the stories of Anawadi’s slum-dwellers we see that despite the common notion, the slum can present a sense of beauty that sometimes changes or reveals more about it’s “rough-around-the-edges” residents. We see that, unlike the mainstreamed assertion of those who reside in slums, Annawadi is filled with corrupt and wicked humans that are forced to abide by these characteristics to make a livelihood for themselves and their families. Katherine Boo teaches us that the social construct that we who benefit from the economy abide by cannot be used to condemned those who are condemned by the economy. We learn that places like the slums of Annawadi are whole new underworlds with their own rules, and social construct and therefore its own personality. She teaches her audience that we cannot make idealistic humans out of these slum dwellers because then we erase who these people are, and what their stories encompass. Katherine Boo shows us that it is the stories of the inhabitants and those who dwell that truly convey the social injustice of life at the pit of our economic structure, not a whitewashed and embellished ideology of what life must be like in the slums.