Analyse af Amanthi Harris' novelle 'Red Sari'

Cultures can meet in many different ways. When you get married to someone from another culture and other traditions it can be difficult to make everybody’s wishes and expectations come true. You can be confused about your choice of identity. In the short story “Red Sari”, by Amanthi Harris, we are given a great example of a girl who has to choose between her own traditions or the new traditions of the place she is being married.

“Red Sari” is about a young Indian woman, who is getting married to an English man named Andrew. She lives in London so the culture of the west is affecting her choice on which kind of wedding dress to wear. She cannot choose between a traditional red sari, which her mother wants her to wear because of her native traditions, and a popular wedding dress from the western culture. She wants to make her mother happy and therefore they are going shopping in a part town like a town in India. Her mother found a Sari and huge jewels, which she wants her to wear on her wedding day but the main character does not want to.

The short story starts in medias res which means we are just thrown right into the action of the story. By using in medias res the reader is not given any introduction or information about the story’s characters so the reader has to figure out everything without help. By using in medias res the reader can be confused about what is going on so you would have to read a bit more of the story to understand it. The short uses in medias res to throw the reader right into the story: “I first saw the dress in a magazine for brides-to-be; the bride in the picture was small and young, and she had dark curly hair, like me.” (p. 1, ll. 1-3). We get to know that it is about a girl who is looking in a magazine of wedding dresses. We do not get to know who she is or what the reason is for her to look in a magazine of wedding dresses.