A Cry Against Conventionality

As was mentioned today in class, Desani’s H. Hatterr did seem to harbor quite an amount of resentment or disdain towards some of the more notable figures in the literary and even general world. Mostly, he really seemed rather perturbed that these figures were able to attain such a vast amount of recognition when (he believed) they did not even truly possess what should be constituted as knowledge. He speaks of himself as having a knowledge of “life,” or maybe even similar to the knowledge which Gandhi describes his father as having—that of experience.

Hatterr, though clearly not quite as well-known as those such as Shakespeare, Milton, or Marlow, it would seem, clearly thought he had just as much of a right to be—believing himself to be just as knowledgeable (due to the great amount of knowledge which he found them all to be lacking in) and probably even deserving of all of the numerous titles which he illustrates as being shown forth on his idealized tombstone. Overall, I think Hatterr (or Desani) truly did, to a degree, respect all of these forerunning literary geniuses, but would simply refuse to completely accept them as such out of the resentment and possibly slight jealousy which he felt towards them. It seems as though he is trying to illustrate how the these writers ultimately came to be so widely acknowledge due to their mere following of conventions. As Hatterr does in fact illustrate with this novel, he clearly is capable of just as much genius in his own way. He simply refuses to follow the conventions which the majority of the populace seems to find fit, finding it dire to be exceptional more in an amount of uniqueness rather than molding to the proper means of exposing such intellect. With this novel he seems to me to be trying to show just how much he truly is capable of, if people would only allow themselves to stray from acceptance solely of the conventional and veer out in experience and appreciation of something starkly unique and new.