The Concept of the Journey in “Dharma” and “The Twenty-Seventh Man” Anonymous 11th Grade

Within “Dharma” by Vikram Chandra and “The Twenty-Seventh Man” by Nathan Englander, the concept of the journey forms the central structure around which the rest of the narrative is built. While the two stories are contextually very different—“Dharma” takes place in mid-1900s India, and “The Twenty-Seventh Man” is set slightly earlier, in Stalin’s Russia—these dissimilarities prove inconsequential as the thematic unity between the two overcomes any superficial differences. Chandra’s “Dharma” and Englander’s “The Twenty-Seventh Man” complement each other well, together validating the importance of the journey for story and character development using the stories’ shared elements of symbolism and meta.

Symbolism in the two stories is abundant, as the authors draw on readers’ perceptions of the characters to attribute meaning to otherwise unremarkable things. In “Dharma”, one example of such is Jago Antia’s “bottle full of yellow pills” which he “[feels] in his pocket all day, against his chest” (Chandra 165). These yellow pills are medication for the pain Antia feels in his amputated leg, “a constant hum just below his attention” that keeps him from performing his duties as a commander with the focus and care that he requires of...