Writer. 3. Is violence contagious? Violence is contagious in many cases. That is when a group of people or an area is largely affected by the misdeeds of some people than the violence in the form of retaliation is widely contagious. People come from all forms of life together to take their revenge. This is done to satisfy their mind and soul about their sufferings due to the deeds of some people by giving them physical pain. In these stories the misdeed, crimes and sins of the one side of the partition country is retaliated by the same by the people of the other side of the partitioned country.
At such time they only remember the misdeed of other and taking revenge. Thus they completely forget their own crimes and sins and become completely blind or we may say, takes one sided decision of balancing the crimes of the others with their own. Violence in the stories: Changing normal situation good men into cruel beasts. Violence in the stories occurs at several scenes. The difference in the violence in these stories from other stories is that it depicts the conversion of the normal situation good men into cruel beasts. The scenes are as follows. Writer. 4.
Firstly, in the story before the rain, the dumped girl finds herself in the centre of rage of anger of his husband and villagers who were good men at normal times. Later the out break of the news of partition further put fuel in the fire and increases the cases of violence in that area. Secondly, when a group of young boys playing the game of win love of a girl, becomes each others deadly enemy after the outbreak of the partition news. The reason being that the breaking of the news of partition, just because they belong to different religions and backgrounds they start disregarding each other.
Thirdly, when a person finds out that his relative is battered, killed, raped, looted, burnt alive etc in other part of the partitioned country than the similar steps are taken by the same in the neighborhood in the name of revenge. Conclusion: In the end, Violence is really contagious. It changes good man in normal times into mean and cruel beasts who knows other person’s mistake but forget his own crime.
References:
Cracking India, (1991, U. S. , 1992, India; originally published as Ice Candy Man, 1988, England) is a novel by author Bapsi Sidhwa.