Reading Questions

Reading Questions

Introduction

The novel is written by Nalo Hopkinson. Nalo Hopkinson is a Jamaica-born Canadian-based novel writer. She has written six novels and two short stories. She is a fiction writer who describes the daily life in a nonverbal tone. She is claimed to have a good brain for a writer which helps her imagination run wild. This assignment is related to one of her novels named 'the Salt Roads'. The assignment is related to the fantastical elements of the novel where the major discussion is related to the elements discussed in the story comprising of the Makandal's shape-changing; Mer's visitation from Ezili; Meritet's super-real sensory abilities in the desert. The assignment of the novel is also related to the purpose of the novel related to the fantasy and fiction plot, element, artifact and image. The paper also includes the debate related to the novel framework is fantasy novel or not (Anonymous, 2010).

Discussion

The novel, The Salt Roads is based on three main narrations related to the connection of the goddess, Ezili. Each narration is a story of a black woman living in a different time and place. The novel has a whirling witchcraft and sensuality in it. Mer is a dignified doctress. Ezili is the Afro-Caribbean goddess of love and sex. She is called by the lamentations and prayers. Ezili occupies the bodies of the three women, though they are separated from distance and time. Yet, these women are still connected. The connection comes from the bounding of the salt whether it is the slat of tears or the salt of baptized slaves into an alien region. Meritet is a fourth-century prostitute who leaves her house due to ill reputation and follows a horde of sailors. She finally finds a religion and calls herself to sainthood. The novel is related to the generosity and vitality. There are epic and frenetic traces where the author shows the physical and spiritual ties bound together the characters with each other within the earth.

The three women are shown to be struggle through love and survival where the Ezili goddess connects them across circumstances and time through culture, past, tears, blood, sex, death and birth referring overall to the Salt Roads. The novel is a layered work which is complex and gorgeous at the same time. The novel is a bold, vivid and bombastic book which is steeped in the secrets and subtleties of the story. The novel doesn't ignores the reality and neither the unnoticed beauty and strength. The novel travels through the harsh or ugly and scatological tone. The strong point of the novel is the characters which are shared with each other through their history, portraying sympathy and reality. The characters' story are shared through the names of various emotions felt in various circumstances such as growth, suffering, worship, breathe, life, death, hope and development (Richards, 2009).

The story is developed in the form of a poem which has its own testimony of strength and its various ...