The Outsider by Meher Pestonji

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omniscient perspective and follows the life of the protagonist Theresa in India. Theresa, a German sociology student from Munich, writes her doctorate thesis about street kids all over the world (p.6 l. 1-2). Within the short story she acts extremely aggressively and impulsively towards poor people being ignored but also in a very naive way. She needs to learn that it's impossible to change the world and problems like poverty and injustice, especially the life of a boy named Santosh. He is the only street kid being able to communicate with Theresa in English. Santosh has has a rough life so far: his father is an alcoholic who abuses and tortures the whole family (p.9, 1. 11). After the twelve year old little boy has tried to kill him, Santosh flees from his home and now lives in the shelter. But his struggle still continues. Santosh gets bullied and even raped by the other boys just because Theresa treats him in a special way (p.17, 1.17). A complete difference to Santosh are the characters of Cawas, Zenia and Savak who are part of a wealthy community called Parsis. They are disgusted by the street kids and have no empathy for their fate. Cawas and Zenia live together with Theresa in Eden Hall and their opposite attitude are shown everyday. The short story works with a bunch of stylistic devices but mainly focuses on antitheses, contrasts and juxtapositions. There is also some foreshadowing which gives hints about what will happen in the story (p.7, 1.11). The opposite behavior, the attitudes towards poverty and injustice and the different ways of treating the underprivileged are only some aspects that demonstrates the various perspectives within the short story (p. 10, 1.40) The characters in the story swears a lot and also use some very harsh expressions in order to illustrate the reality in India (p. 7, l. 33). No euphemism are used and no one pretends to be nice and tolerant towards the street kids Theresa's sentimental tone forms a huge contrast tonten unadorned opinions of the Parsis members. The short story generally uses a certain kind of language in order to transfer a message. Even the title offers room for interpretation. There are several outsiders within the story: it's not only Theresa as a naive tourist who want to change the world but also Santosh being last in a world full of cruelty and injustice. Even the member of the Parsis community isolate themselves from the underprivileged world around them (p. 11, l.41, p. 8, I. 26 + II. 35). The differences between poor and rich people, social classes, cultural backgrounds, traditions and aspects of diversity are only few themes to be mentioned. The short story represents some typical characteristic such a type of text generally consists of. It doesn't give the reader an introduction and leaves him/him/them/they with an open ending. Only a few characters deal with everyday problems in a limited amount of time and setting. While the main plot is going on, the reader does not get any further information about the characters background and their perspectives. The short story "Outsider" perfectly portrays the diversity of India in this case it is the huge gap between the rich and poor. The narrative perspective helps the reader to understand the differences in living conditions between the westernized members of the Parsis community and India street kids. Moreover, people like Theresa from outside the country show that his/her/their naivety doesn't change a thing. It's still kids like Santosh who have to struggle everyday in order to survive.