Mrs Begum's Son and the Private Tutor

First I'd like to dissect the title of this short story a little bit. It is called Mrs Begum's Son and the Private Tutor and not Magid and the private tutor. This struck me as incredibly important to the story itself and once reading it I understood that this was not a story about Magid or his family but about who Magid was because of his family and the role he was born into.

I really enjoyed this story because it was a simple glimpse into another person's life from an unattached third party. The narrative starts out with Mrs. Begum explaining to Pemrose very clearly that he is only the tutor, not a friend and not a mentor. The type of story that is told by a single person who is almost completely separated from the lives of the characters (and by the laws of storytelling, is barely a character himself) are simultaneously the most honest and the most jaded stories out there. As I was reading it I felt compelled to trust this objective narrator but at the same time I could not ignore the possibility that Pemrose was an overly analytical employee of this household and nothing more. I think that Smith wanted this story to be read with that in mind; by giving Pemrose a girlfriend, and therefore a degree of depth as a character, the audience is able to guess his motives and his perspective.



The other characters besides Magid and Pemrose appear to me as mere manifestations of a child under pressure to do great things. Mark was the rebel, and the man of the story. He is the character that represents the part in all of us that would really like to say "fuck it, I'm not doing this anymore." Mrs. Begum was all the expectations and the goals we set for ourselves, or the success that we hope we will someday attain, although in what form we do not know. The Communist Leader was a symbol of failure. He fell from fame and more accurately, relevance, and is now nothing more than an outdated cultural reference. He even fails at the small job of closing the bingo hall.

Magid's future as told by Pemrose was the truest part of the story. While Magid was growing up in his parents' house, his race and religion and culture mattered more than anything because it was all he knew, it was his whole world. Just like the backgrounds of his neighbors mattered to Mrs. Begum and the Communist Leader's title was brought up again and again, Magid's role in his household was everything. His role was an exaggerated version of the roles we are all born into and cannot escape; for example I am a daughter, I am a middle child, and I look like my dad. All these things are uncontrollable to me but affect me in significant ways. It mattered more than anything in this tight knit community that is essentially, Magid's world. But when Magid grows up, he is Matt. He is a normally ambitious kid who probably became a lawyer or a doctor or something like that, it doesn't matter. As a child who grew up in one of these culturally saturated homes and communities, I understand whatever your primary socialization consisted of and whatever you were raised as, fades into the background as you experience new things and care about things your family doesn't.

I am curious if anyone picked up on any other subtle symbols that Smith inserted into the story. Things like Allison wearing a bindi to the grand opening of the bingo hall, or the perpetually crowded bus. I can guess the significance of these things but the small details always escape my interpretation.