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theanitaalvarez's Reviews (1.77k)
3.5 stars.
As most people, I saw the film of this book growing up. I discovered that it was a novel some years after, and finally this year I got to read it (for one of my courses at Uni). I’ve never been much of a fun of animal stories (save The Lion King and maybe Bambie), but I liked this one.
We all know this one: a pig comes to live at a farm (where they plan to have it as the main course in the Christmas dinner), he gets “adopted” by the sheep-dog and he ends up learning how to heard sheep and it’s awesome at it.
The fun thing about this book is that Babe doesn’t win because he’s the fiercest or the physically strongest. He wins because he is nice and respects everybody equally. His adoptive mother, Fly, is very dismissive of the sheep under her care. For her, the sheep are stupid and have to be shouted at and bullied.
But Babe is not one to accept this blindly. Instead of following what his mother thinks is the right way to handle sheep, he comes up with what he thinks is the better way to do so: he talks to them nicely
And of course, it works way much better than anything Fly did before. And even she gets round to do it eventually. I liked those scenes a lot, with Fly fighting with herself to go against her nature and act nicely towards them. Especially when it was for Babe’s sake. It was sweet of her, who was pretty much the opposite of sweet in her general interactions with… well, basically everybody.
Babe shows that the traditional idea of strength and power we’re used to read are not precisely what ends up winning battles. He is polite and kind to everyone, and thus everybody warms up to him. Even the farmers who had planned to eat him ended up loving him as much as the other animals. There’s a great moment in which a pack of wolves attack the flock, and Babes defends them fiercely. I felt it was a brilliant way to show his growth: from being a scared and insecure piggy, he becomes a strong sheep pig, that can drive away wolves.
Well done, pig.
Babe’s relation with the farmer was pretty enough. I liked the way in which he warmed up to the pig. While he didn’t want to have much to do with Babe at first, he ended up respecting and caring for him. Babe was so much more than just a pig, he was the one that united the farm and so on.
I enjoyed this book as if I was a little kid again. Though my favorite pig story will always be Charlotte’s Web, Babe was very nice. Even if it’s easy to say that the values that are held in the story are very traditional, I believe they are still relevant. At least, you can still attract more flies with honey than with vinegar. So… yay for Babe!
As most people, I saw the film of this book growing up. I discovered that it was a novel some years after, and finally this year I got to read it (for one of my courses at Uni). I’ve never been much of a fun of animal stories (save The Lion King and maybe Bambie), but I liked this one.
We all know this one: a pig comes to live at a farm (where they plan to have it as the main course in the Christmas dinner), he gets “adopted” by the sheep-dog and he ends up learning how to heard sheep and it’s awesome at it.
The fun thing about this book is that Babe doesn’t win because he’s the fiercest or the physically strongest. He wins because he is nice and respects everybody equally. His adoptive mother, Fly, is very dismissive of the sheep under her care. For her, the sheep are stupid and have to be shouted at and bullied.
But Babe is not one to accept this blindly. Instead of following what his mother thinks is the right way to handle sheep, he comes up with what he thinks is the better way to do so: he talks to them nicely
And of course, it works way much better than anything Fly did before. And even she gets round to do it eventually. I liked those scenes a lot, with Fly fighting with herself to go against her nature and act nicely towards them. Especially when it was for Babe’s sake. It was sweet of her, who was pretty much the opposite of sweet in her general interactions with… well, basically everybody.
Babe shows that the traditional idea of strength and power we’re used to read are not precisely what ends up winning battles. He is polite and kind to everyone, and thus everybody warms up to him. Even the farmers who had planned to eat him ended up loving him as much as the other animals. There’s a great moment in which a pack of wolves attack the flock, and Babes defends them fiercely. I felt it was a brilliant way to show his growth: from being a scared and insecure piggy, he becomes a strong sheep pig, that can drive away wolves.
Well done, pig.
Babe’s relation with the farmer was pretty enough. I liked the way in which he warmed up to the pig. While he didn’t want to have much to do with Babe at first, he ended up respecting and caring for him. Babe was so much more than just a pig, he was the one that united the farm and so on.
I enjoyed this book as if I was a little kid again. Though my favorite pig story will always be Charlotte’s Web, Babe was very nice. Even if it’s easy to say that the values that are held in the story are very traditional, I believe they are still relevant. At least, you can still attract more flies with honey than with vinegar. So… yay for Babe!
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One of the things that struck me the most about this book is how important names really are. I could completely understand how Gogol's identity was so confused, because I at some points have felt like that. I share a name with my mother, my paternal grandmother and one of my aunts. So I’ve always felt at odds with my name. And sharing a name with a great Russian writer is probably a lot worse than sharing it with half of my family.
The novel revolves around an Indian family living on the States and their eledest kid, Gogol. The father, Ashoke, is a great fan of Gogol’s work. Once, he was on a train accident (back in India) and he survived because he used a page of Gogol’s “The Overcoat” to alert the rescuers of his presence. So, he feels as he owes the writer his life. When he and his wife have their first child, they can’t follow the naming tradition of their families (Ashima’s grandmother was supposed to pick the name of the baby, but the letter never arrived), so they name him after Gogol.
Gogol struggles all his life with his name, with his family and with their expectations for him. He has to deal with being a second-generation immigrant and having to conciliate two different cultures and identities (which you can also read in Amy Tan’s work, mind you). I really loved how he tried to fight his parent’s expectations. He doesn’t date Indian girls at first, though he ends up marrying (and divorcing) one. But it is not only about being an immigrant, I feel that all of us at some point try to show that we’re not our parents. In Gogol’s case, his name was a very obvious representation of his parents’ (specially his father’s) expectations. And his refusal of his name (he changes it a few times through the novel) is also a rejection of their hopes. He continually does things that his parents don’t approve.
Identity is one of those things that are a struggle. Fighting with it is just something we all do. And I love how Jhumpa Lahiri works with these themes. It felt really realistic and down-to-earth.
But in the end, Gogol/Nikhil discovers that you don’t have to be one of the other. There’s something in between. That accepting expectations and different cultures is not the end of the world. When he picks Nikolai Gogol’s book in the end, he is in a way accepting his father (who is dead by that point of the book) and himself at the same time. It was a lovely scene, and summed up the themes of the novel and it brought them to a round end. It is still an open ending, because we’re not really sure of what is going to happen with him. But we still get a sense that everything is going to be okay.
So, I’d recommend this novel. It might not be the ultimate immigrant experience novel, but it tells a story with which we can relate in different ways. Especially if you’re in your early twenties and still trying to figure out who you are.
The novel revolves around an Indian family living on the States and their eledest kid, Gogol. The father, Ashoke, is a great fan of Gogol’s work. Once, he was on a train accident (back in India) and he survived because he used a page of Gogol’s “The Overcoat” to alert the rescuers of his presence. So, he feels as he owes the writer his life. When he and his wife have their first child, they can’t follow the naming tradition of their families (Ashima’s grandmother was supposed to pick the name of the baby, but the letter never arrived), so they name him after Gogol.
Gogol struggles all his life with his name, with his family and with their expectations for him. He has to deal with being a second-generation immigrant and having to conciliate two different cultures and identities (which you can also read in Amy Tan’s work, mind you). I really loved how he tried to fight his parent’s expectations. He doesn’t date Indian girls at first, though he ends up marrying (and divorcing) one. But it is not only about being an immigrant, I feel that all of us at some point try to show that we’re not our parents. In Gogol’s case, his name was a very obvious representation of his parents’ (specially his father’s) expectations. And his refusal of his name (he changes it a few times through the novel) is also a rejection of their hopes. He continually does things that his parents don’t approve.
Identity is one of those things that are a struggle. Fighting with it is just something we all do. And I love how Jhumpa Lahiri works with these themes. It felt really realistic and down-to-earth.
But in the end, Gogol/Nikhil discovers that you don’t have to be one of the other. There’s something in between. That accepting expectations and different cultures is not the end of the world. When he picks Nikolai Gogol’s book in the end, he is in a way accepting his father (who is dead by that point of the book) and himself at the same time. It was a lovely scene, and summed up the themes of the novel and it brought them to a round end. It is still an open ending, because we’re not really sure of what is going to happen with him. But we still get a sense that everything is going to be okay.
So, I’d recommend this novel. It might not be the ultimate immigrant experience novel, but it tells a story with which we can relate in different ways. Especially if you’re in your early twenties and still trying to figure out who you are.
