Clear Light of Day Key Passage

Analysis of Clear Light of Day Key Passage

Towards the end of the book, Bim lets her anger loose towards Baba and after the anger is spent, realizes what her family truly means to her. Realizing what she needs to do to fix her family, she contemplates her relationships. Bim does this in her “dark and shadowy” room which is reflective of her at first covered eyes. In Clear Light of Day, Anita Desai’s use of character thoughts emphasizes the idea of family importance.

Within the first paragraph Bim reflects on how she loves Baba, “[loves] Raja and Tara and all of them” and begins to appreciate their love. Saying that “there could be no love more deep and full and wide than this one,”(165) even with how they treated each other in the past. Bim goes on to grasp the idea that she, a reflection of her siblings; feels just as they do. “Whatever diminished them, diminished her.”(165) Overwhelmed by the amount of love she has, she also understands the need to forgive Raja in an epiphany moment. “Somehow she would have to forgive Raja that unforgivable letter.” (165) Considering that there was noone else on earth that she “was willing to forgive more readily or completely,” (165) Bim must let herself forgive Raja. Unrestrained in her analysis of her feelings, Bim begins to understand her flawed, yet perfect love for her family. Bim asserts that if she dies before her siblings or she dies after them, the “wholeness of the pattern, its perfection, would be gone” referring to her love and the family’s bond.

However, perfection in her actions then becomes what Bim wants to achieve in her love for her family. Believing that her love has too much “of a battering,” is too “inarticulate, too unthinking” and was not enough for her family, she wants to change all that and start anew. By forgiving Raja, and attempting to understand her parents, and giving Baba more thought, she hopes to mend the “great rents” torn in the net of family.

Ending on an optimistic note even if...