A Brief Opinion about Stephen Kelman's novel "Pigeon English"

Diah Ayuningtyas
4.33 PM
December 12, 2016
Tangerang Selatan, Banten

After reading Stephen Kelman's novel entitled Pigeon English in Prose subject in 6th semester, my lecture gave me some questions about the novel. Hopefully, all of my answers could be useful for you who need some informations about this novel, so there are my own opinions:

1. How is the main character described in “Pigeon English.”?

In the novel, the main character is a boy eleven years old, and the character described as if he knows every aspect in the story through the lens of a young-boy. Frequently, the main character is doing something without a prediction because the main character’s curiosity is high. Moreover, the main character in the story tries to solve a crime and help the police by capturing the suspect. For instance, in the novel page 47, the main character says “we were looking for the knife the dead boy got killed with. If we see it, we’re going to fish it out and take it to the police.” This statement shows the curiosity of the main character and he does unordinary thing for a boy in his age. Besides that, the main character was described disrespect to person above his age. Like what the main character does to Lidya (main character’s sister), he is always trying to follow her sister’s business, for example, he want to tell his Mamma about his sister watching kissing (Kelman 27). For children, or a boy in eleven years old is unusual to talk about something like that. Even though, the main character is still revealing his childish side, it can be seen from the way he talks about a chewy candy Haribo (Kelman 15), as we know candy is identically with children.

2. Describe the correlation between setting and theme in “Pigeon English.”

“My tower is as high as the lighthouse at Jamestown. There are three towers all in a row: Luxembourg House, Stockholm House, and Copenhagen House. I live in Copenhagen House. My flat is on floor 9 out of 14. It’s not even hutious, I can look from the window now and my belly doesn’t turn over.” (Kelman 5). This statement told that the setting of place in the novel is not in a big city. The main character is not living in a big house, it is flat. Therefore, the setting shows that the main character is living in the mid-lower social class. Another evidence about it is the main character says “there’s a million dogs around here. Asweh, there’s nearly as many dogs as people. Most of them are pit bulls because they are more hutious, you can use them as a weapon for if your gun ran out of bullets.” (Kelman 18). A lot of dogs told us that the living around the main character’s flat is very wild, the kind of dogs also told us that the dog is not for being a pet. In upper social class, the dog is usually getting caged. Another evidence about the setting in the mid-lower social class condition is the main character told that the lift in his flat is occasionally break down and stopped for an hour (Kelman 41). The theme of the story is about crime and violence, the clue of the suspect for the crime in the story directed to the local gang called X-Fire, the gang whom do a bullying toward the other children in the town. It has a correlation with the setting of the story. Because of the setting is in a low social environment, it makes the morality of the people, especially children, cannot shaped well. The existence of the local gang can cause the crime.

3. Elaborate one issue which appears in “Pigeon English.” 

The issue which appears in the novel is about racism. The main character is coming from Ghana, his skin is black (no offense). The main character move into England which the majority of people’s skin is white. Therefore, the main character want to be accepted by the origin (England). If using the post-colonial theory, we could apply the concept of Mimicry from Homi K. Bhabha in this issue. In my view, mimicry is a reproduction toward an environment, but the reproduction is different, there is nothing the same, not same as the origin and the reproduction is not pure. As the result, the person who tries to be as same as the environment never get it. From the post-colonial theory’s perspective, the colonized never claimed the authority, they always below the colonizer. This is what the main character, Harrison Opoku has done with. It is written in the story “I was the dead boy because X-Fire picked me. I just had to stand still. He kept pulling me.” (Kelman 14). From this statement, the main character got bullied by the local gang called X-Fire because he comes from Ghana. Moreover the gang called him ‘Ghana’, X-Fire says “Keep it real, Ghana. You get any shit, you come to me, yeah?” (Kelman 39). The process of mimicry is written in the story “If I was in the Dell Farm Crew Vilis couldn’t abuse me anymore. If I wanted to swap my trainers to the other person would have to do it and there’d be no swapping back.” (Kelman 56). This statement claimed that the main character want to fight and want to be accepted by the local gang, the main character have to prove that he can be the part of them, so that he cannot be abused by the gang anymore. Another statement about that “Me: ‘It’s only because I’m black. If you were black they’d let you in the gank as well.’” (Kelman 66). This claimed that the main character felt like have been accepted by the gang. However, it never happens, the main character is always getting bully by the gang, they still called him Ghana. “X-Fire: ‘What about you, Ghana? What are you hiding?’” (Kelman 241).

4. Give your own opinion about “Pigeon English.”

In my opinion, Pigeon English is an unordinary novel, even though the theme of the story is about crime and violence, the author can wrap it in a different way by using a young-boy’s lens to deliver the story. As we know, the most of novel whose theme like this is supposed to be the serious one. However, the author could push away the assumption about novel with crime as the theme is always serious. As a result, the novel is terribly fun, easy to read, and make me laugh out loud because of the hilarious act of the main character, Harrison Opoku. Besides that, I am terribly disappointed because the author leave the story of Pigeon English as an open-ending, the main character die and the mystery is not getting solved. Another opinion about this novel is the excistence of slang such as asweh, adjei, sharp-sharp, gowayou, and another strange vocabularies that makes me feel uncomfortable in understanding the story because I do not know what the meaning of each words. Therefore, I want to give an advice about that, the author supposed to provide the meaning of the strange vocabularies by giving a footnote or give a glossary at the end of the novel, so that the reader can be more understand the story and the reader is not getting distracted by something that they do not understand.

Work Cited

Kelman, Stephen. Pigeon English. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011.