37 pages • 1 hour read
Nayomi MunaweeraIsland of a Thousand Mirrors
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Yasodhara Rajasinghe
Yasodhara is the protagonist and narrates most of the novel. She is born in Sri Lanka as ethnic tensions are rising on the island. She is privileged in comparison to Shiva, her neighbor and friend who lives in the apartment above her, because of her Sinhalese background and her parents’ access to education and work. Her family is well-off enough to flee the increasing violence in Sri Lanka and escape to America, where they experience economic difficulty and racism as immigrants learning to navigate a new country and culture.
Yasodhara’s passion is books. She reads every moment she can—“in the bathtub, at the dinner table, on the bus” (116). Her appearance is defined by “a plainness that suited Jane Eyre” with a “flat listless wall of hair” and dull eyes (119), at least in comparison with her beautiful younger sister. Yasodhara is an imperfect character—she lets jealousy interfere with her relationships, and she lies to her daughter when she doesn’t know how to explain Lanka’s death—but these imperfections make her a realistic character and a trustworthy narrator. She does not attempt to justify one side of the war over another but promises to tell the story of her family, which she acknowledges “is also one possible narrative of my island” (7). It is through this lens that the author makes her own intentions known in exploring the story of individuals rather than attempting to explain or justify sides of a complicated war.
Yasodhara’s character development is subtle and occurs primarily after Lanka’s death. She does not take many risks, choosing to settle into an arranged marriage after her first heartbreak and keeping a lifeline back to America even when she returns to Sri Lanka to visit La. After Lanka’s death, Yasodhara forgoes her marriage and family in Southern California and settles in San Francisco with Shiva, her childhood friend and deceased sister’s lover. Though it is a drastic change on the surface, this is another example of Yasodhara’s dependence upon the comfort of the familiar. In escaping to San Francisco to live with Shiva instead of returning home to her husband and parents after Lanka’s death, Yasodhara attempts to restart her life in America as though it had never been interrupted by the war at all.
Saraswathi
Saraswathi is the second narrator and antagonist in the novel. She is introduced at the beginning of Part 2, about halfway through the story. Saraswathi describes Sri Lanka’s island setting as one of a thousand broken bottles, signaling her break from the first narrator’s perspective.
Saraswathi is a foil to Yasodhara, both in her upbringing and her narrative. Her experiences offer another perspective on the ongoing ethnic tensions fueling the Sri Lankan Civil War. Both Yasodhara and Saraswathi are drawn to teaching, yet their life experiences take them on drastically different paths. Saraswathi’s narrative is shorter and less developed than Yasodhara’s, reflecting her shorter life and limited opportunities for growth due to her circumstances.
Sexual assault and subsequent scorn from her family change Saraswathi. She begins as a somewhat hopeful yet cautious student hoping to become a teacher, but her experience at the hands of Sinhalese soldiers triggers her transformation into a vengeful killer, “ferocious as our men” and “not afraid to die cut up or blown to pieces” (184). Her Tiger training makes her feel empowered, and she thinks of herself as a “Tiger with teeth and claws” rather than a girl spoiled by soldiers and shunned by her family (192). She eventually becomes the suicide bomber who kills Lanka on a bus in Colombo.
Lanka Rajasinghe
Lanka is Yasodhara’s younger sister. She completes the threesome Yasodhara refers to throughout the novel: Lanka, Shiva, and Yasodhara are a pyramid, a triangle (62). After a few years of settling into American life, Lanka grows into a beauty with “skin as smooth as creamy plumeria petals, eyes as big and lashed as extravagantly as a cow’s, and that heavy mass of hair” (118). She is called La from childhood, a single ringing syllable like “that simple musical note that was exactly her” (63). She is an artist, and as an adult she returns to Sri Lanka, where she reunites with Shiva and begins a romantic relationship with him.
Lanka is different from Yasodhara in many key ways: she is beautiful, while Yasodhara considers herself plain; she is an artist who fills her rooms with shades of blue-green reminiscent of her island home, while Yasodhara fills her room with books; she pursues a romance with Shiva, and Yasodhara picks up that romance after Lanka’s tragic death. Lanka is loyal and trusting; although Yasodhara pushes Lanka away and intentionally builds a divide between them, Lanka still seeks Yasodhara’s companionship. They are brought back together through their shared experience of heartache, a pattern that is repeated when heartache over Lanka’s death brings Yasodhara and Shiva together again. Lanka’s artistic ability is echoed in Yasodhara and Shiva’s daughter Samudhra, hinting that Samudhra has in a sense taken Lanka’s place as the third in Yasodhara and Shiva’s triangle.
Lanka is among those killed in Saraswathi’s suicide bombing at the climax of the novel. Although Yasodhara pushes Lanka aside for much of their adolescence, Lanka’s constant presence on the sidelines offers an ongoing contrast to Yasodhara’s choices and dependence upon the comfort of familiarity, repeating the pattern of their father and Mala. Her death brings Yasodhara and Shiva together again, thus providing context for the Prologue.
