Analyse af Mathew Kneales 'Paradise'

The short story “Paradise” is a picture of the difference between the eastern and western civilizations, and what happens when two different cultures with different values meet each other. It also shows how we can be fooled by the innocence and the mysteriousness of people and nature. We follow the protagonist Neville Ewan through his short journey, whose first intention was to write about the village Drughat, that he arrived in, for a guidebook.

The story begins in medias res as Neville wakes up in a house in Nepal, which a villager Thakali is the owner of. In the first section of the story we find out that the story is told by a third person narrator, because we are invited into Neville’s inner thoughts and feelings about his surroundings and the situation he finds himself in. Neville is also describing how his impression of Thakali and the other villagers are. “Neville felt a kind of awe of these people. They were like saints.” (p. 2. line 36). They are strangers to Neville, but strangers he has some kind of special respect and fascination toward. He thinks it’s remarkable how they can show a stranger so much kindness and hospitality. He compares their culture to the culture that he is familiar to, which gives the impression that he is sick of the whole materialistic world and the western greediness. “No, here was something wiser, better” as Neville says about the culture of Nepal.