A Pakistani woman who is born in England has written the short story, Pictures in the 1950s. The main character of the story has an inner conflict, and the conflict appeals to the main theme, which is religion. The theme and the conflict are still very relevant today.
Amina is a girl, we don’t know how old she is, but she goes to school and her class paints a lot, which can be interpret as she is a little girl. Amina lives with her mother and father in a house which is connected to a shop. Amina doesn’t get much attention at home; she is often alone, watching television, because her mother and father work in the shop from early morning until 9 p.m. She smells of food and unguent, because of the shops stockroom. She really loves to paint and we can see it in the beginning when she thinks that the painting of baby Jesus and his mother should be on the wall of the classroom. She has self-confidence, because she thinks, she knows that her painting is just as pretty as the other ones in the room.
Amina has an inner conflict about her fear to question the adults in her life or disappoint her parents. This argument is very clear in the text, when her teacher commands Amina to take her picture of baby Jesus and Virgin Mary home. Amina doesn’t discuss it for long, and the teacher thinks Amina has agreed with her, but Amina is not convinced. “… Amina nodded, defeated rather than convinced…” (p. l. 16) This particular ‘scene’ shows us that Amina doesn’t want to insult the teacher’s request by telling her opinion.
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