Behind the Beautiful Forevers Literary Elements

Narrative Nonfiction

The action is set in 2008 in Annawadi, a slum located behind the Mumbai airport.

The story is narrated by an omniscient third-person objective narrator.

Tragic, cynical, impartial

The narrative revolves around several people, among them are the Husains, Abdul, Karam, Zehrunisa, and Kehkashan. There is no overarching antagonist; rather, the most antagonistic forces in the book are institutions and the corrupt individuals who take advantage of their power within those institutions, like Officer Thokale.

The major conflict is set in motion after Fatima burns herself and blames the Husains. The conflict is that the Husains are being wrongfully held in police custody, and their innocence is held hostage by public officials seeking remuneration simply for confimring the truth.

The story reaches its climax when Karam and Kehkashan are found innocent.

When Fatima warns the Husains that she will trap them, she is literally foreshadowing her decision to burn herself and blame it on them, thus entangling them in a legal battle that destroys their business and sends three of their family members to jail.

When the people of Annawadi say that Meena killed herself "all for an egg" (198) it is a tragic understatement referring to the fact that her brother demanded she make him an omlette the morning of her suicide, and when she refused, he beat her for it. But her suicide is a response to a lifetime of abuse and the feeling of total helplessness and disempowerment.

Boo refers to the film I Am Legend when Sunil goes to see a movie after helping Kalu steal metal scraps. In sections about Manju, Boo alludes to Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway.

The predominant landscape of the book relies on the stark juxtaposition of the glass megaliths that make up new luxury developments in downtown Mumbai and the sprawling undercities like Annawadi, acres and acres of makeshift huts emitting dark cooking smoke and the smell of waste and garbage.

Boo writes, "Weekdays, the attractions of the underworld paling, he passed the hours in slack communion with nine horses he stabled in the slum, two of which he’d painted with stripes to look like zebras. Robert rented the fake zebras, along with a cart, to the birthday parties of middle-class children—a turn to honest work he thought the judging gods might factor in" (17).

It is paradoxical that Pires considers painting horses to look like zebras "honest work" when the crux of the enterprise is a deception.

There are parallels between the desperation felt by both rural and urban workers that Boo demonstrates by portraying the suicides of both farmers and garbage pickers. The rural and urban worlds are often thought of as totally seperate, unrelated spheres, but they are linked through their inescapable poverty, and the institutions that oppress the poor have the same potential to drive them to suicide, whether they live in the country or in a city slum.

Boo writes, "Manju always looked angry when emerging from her hut. Everyone who left her house got tight in the lip unless they wanted a mouthful of flies, the only creatures in the slum enthusiastic about the stale goods in her mother’s new store" (65)—thus personifying the stale goods as sentient beings capable of feeling enthusiasm.