The Balance Between Family Attachment and Detachment Throughout "The Monk's Story" and "The Teacher's Story" Anonymous 10th Grade

Gita Mehta, one of the most well known authors in Indian literature, is the author of the novel “A River Sutra”. One of the primary characteristics of Mehta’s work is her capacity to exanimate and explore the human psychology and its limits, with the purpose of communicating an overall message or moral to the reader. To accomplish this, the author introduces a unique and interesting technique based on interconnected framed stories, where each one of them has it’s own personal conflict regarding love, desire and family. Moreover, this paper seeks to study and compare both “The Monk’s Story” and “The Teacher’s Story” by linking them and developing the significance of family in each one of them, but more specifically, to demonstrate the balance between personal attachment and detachment.

Primarily, regarding the topic of detachment, “The Monk’s Story” presents an internal conflict between family values with duty and wealth. By being the son of a rich merchant, the monk has always been granted the opportunity of luxury and privilege. Nevertheless, he has never found himself fulfilled or completely pleased by it. It was when the character finally got to see the hunger and poverty in the world that he realizes the impact that money...