William Sutcliffe's novel Are You Experienced? in a Leistungskurs on India In the general context of post-colonialism we chose the subject of India in the Leistungskurs S 2. The novel is suggested by Joybrato Mukherjee in his interesting essay Interkulturelle Erstbegegnung mit der Bezugkultur Indien. Ein Unterrichtsprojekt im Englischunterricht der Sekundarstufe II. It is published in Praxis des Neusprachlichen Unterrichts. Cornelsen, 1/01, pp.35ff. Sonja Keibel reviews our discussion of the novel in class under the aspect of how much and what kind of information about India we could glean from the novel. Mukherjee also suggests an anthology of Indian Writing from 1947-1997, interpretations of two texts from which I selected here. I have related post-colonialism as a frame of reference in the Jahrbuch 2000 of the Gymnasium Hamm (pp. 77f.) in the context of Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple. You will find my slightly adapted observations there. Thorsten-Michael Wulff

William Sutcliff's novel Are You Experienced? Appreciated by Sonja Keibel, S2 Delivered as a homework on 18 March 2002

Introduction (Summary):

The novel is about two young students, Liz and Dave, who travel to India in their summer holiday for three months. Liz travels to India because she wants to find out about herself. But Dave just accompanies Liz to get her (again) into bed.

Liz is Dave's best friend's girlfriend. Liz and Dave become close friends and get on well with each other. Dave falls in love with Liz but does not tell anybody. They decide to travel to India, as friends, because in the students' circles it is fashionable to go to a Third World country in their holiday attempting to find out about themselves. But just a few days before their departure they have unexpected sex with each other. Since that day, everything changes between Liz and Dave, because she behaves as if nothing had happened. She ignores Dave and they are swearing at each other during their whole stay in India.

The plot of the story

The main aspects that are dealt with in the novel are Dave's jealousy, the development of Liz's and Dave's relationship, the travellers' pretended experiences, the real, proper purpose of travelling and the contradiction between being rich and at the same time doing backpacking in a post-colonial country where backpacking is regarded as an activity of poor people.

Since Dave is still in love with Liz (rather because his love is spurred by his urge, his desire to get her again into bed), he is jealous of any person that approaches Liz. Of Jeremy, for example, whom they meet in a hotel in Delhi and who is Dave's first rival. Jeremy comes from Turnbridge Wells and he is already more experienced and has the basic knowledge about how to struggle along in India, since he has been in India for a certain period of time. He brags about his knowledge and takes India as a stage to show how experienced he is (p. 20), but in reality Jeremy does not understand anything about India. That is also the reason why Liz and the other travellers they get acquainted with are not experiencing anything about India. They act like Jeremy, whom Liz admires. By giving up to worry about the poverty and the social misery and by ignoring it, they just adapt themselves to the Indian rules of behaviour. They just accept the rules.

Compared with Liz and the other travellers, we can say that Dave is the only person who is experiencing something. The longer he is in India, the more he experiences. Dave is more grown up, since he does not ignore the poverty there but rather thinks about it. He perceives everything that is around him, in comparison to the others who just think they understand everything that happens in India, but they do not. Dave feels depressed and guilty being a rich English person in a poor post-colonial country ("Just that I'm-poor-and-you're-rich look in their eyes made me feel depressed and guilty." - p. 78) He feels that his personal space is invaded by the begging kids, who are rather persistent and do not let go until they get some coins (pp. 17, 20).

The difference between Liz and Dave is that he has afterthoughts and ponders India's problems. Dave is the only person who sees that you cannot form a theory of India. In the end, Dave also finds out the proper purpose of travelling. At the beginning, travelling just means having fun. It is just like a game where you have to score and just have to keep going until the end of the trip. The trip has nothing to do with experiences and is seen as a poverty-tourism adventure holiday. Perhaps the travellers are not even aware of it, but they only "want to be able to put something on their CV that shows a bit of initiative." (p. 140) Their kind of travel is all about low horizons dressed up as open-mindedness. They have no interest in India and are not sensitive of the problems this country is trying to face up to (p. 140). During their whole trip they search for other English travellers and stick together to make everything as comfortable as possible. This is also the way Dave behaves at the beginning, but in the end, after some encounters open his eyes, he sees a real point in travelling; namely getting in touch with the natives (the Indians), getting to know and understanding their way of life, their religion, their social structure, their culture and their problems.

Another aspect that is dealt with in the novel is the contradiction between being rich and doing backpacking at the same time. Ranj, for example, who is an Indian coming from Putney in London flees from his rich family and goes backpacking . His family are very powerful and have their fingers in everything. As soon as they find Ranj, they will drag him back, because they are convinced that "this is no way to behave for a respectable Indian." (p. 92) The social tradition is changing. But Ranj does not want to be bound by any kind of tradition. He wants to have his own way without having to pay attention to what is expected of him and what he is allowed to do just to fit in this unreal society.

Although Ranj is an Indian himself, he has a very bad opinion of Indians. He says they are just interested in one's money and whatever they say to one is a lie (p. 93). That is also the reason why Ranj wants to get out, going backpacking to find the true India.

Assessment of the book

You can assess this book under two different aspects. It depends on what purpose you want to read it for.

If you are interested in the protagonists, whose characters are very specific, and in their way of behaving, I can recommend this book to you.

But if you want to deal with India's culture in class, for example with its social structure and its religion, you should not choose this book, because it does not give you much information. The reader also does not get much to know about the political, especially the post-colonial aspects. Just a few times it is mentioned that India is a post-colonialist country but the author does not set out the Indian history in greater detail; for example the Raj (the period of British rule in India), the Indian Independence - and Republic Day or the India-Pakistan division.

It is required that the reader have a certain knowledge about India and its history, because the novel provides no information about e.g. Buddhism, the case system, the founder of Buddhism, Gautama Buddha, its culture, its religion, its policy, its social structure, India's independence and Ghandi.

The author just mentions the poverty in India, but not in great detail, but rather superficially. He writes about the begging Indians and how persistent they are, but he does not tell about the social misery, the bad living conditions, the high infant mortality, the constant population growth and the problems that result from these.

In the novel poverty is seen as a kind of annoyance that you have to ignore, otherwise your mind gets ill, because you cannot change the misery. Automatically, poverty evokes a bad conscience in the travellers. And since they are not interested in India and its problems, but only in themselves, they stop thinking about India's poverty.

The book's language is partly rather vulgar, but it is put in a kind of funny and original way that captivates the reader and makes him continue reading. The reader learns much of colloquial and juvenile language.

On the whole, I personally liked to read the novel. It was great fun. A lot of times, I had to laugh because of the surprising language, that is in its vulgarity very original, not indecent.