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Symbols
As the novel’s title suggests, guavas are symbolically significant to Sampath’s journey, representing the freedom and simplicity he craves. The first appearance of a guava marks a major turning point in Sampath’s life. After Sampath loses his job and sinks into despair over his depressing circumstances, his mother Kulfi joins him on the roof of their house and kindly offers him a guava. As he shakes and squeezes the fruit, demanding answers from it, Sampath accidentally causes the guava to explode. This seems to give him a strange moment of clarity. He realizes how badly he wishes to be free, and the next morning he runs away from home to live in a guava tree. These events associate the guava fruit with the idea of freedom, a stark contrast to Sampath’s restrictive former way of life. The exploding guava shows him that nothing is stopping him from doing something sudden, unexpected, and most of all, liberating.
Sampath’s new life in the tree brings him closer to the same fruit, symbolizing how he’s seemingly achieved the freedom he sought. But after Sampath’s father Mr. Chawla brings modern complications to Sampath’s orchard, this desire for a free and simple life returns. At the end of the novel, Sampath can only reach perfect freedom by literally becoming a guava fruit himself, by mysterious means. A guava has a simple existence with no responsibilities, concerns, or complications, and this is exactly what Sampath has been seeking all along. For Sampath, becoming a guava is a kind of spiritual transcendence. As he truly becomes one with nature, the monkeys that live in his tree carry him far away from the people chasing after him, freeing him from the pressures and restrictions of the modern world forever.
Guava Fruit Quotes in Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard
The Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard quotes below all refer to the symbol of Guava Fruit. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 5
Quotes
He thought of Public Transport, of the Bureau of Statistics, of head massages, of socks and shoes, of interview strategies. Of never being left alone, of being unable to sleep and of his father talking and lecturing in the room below.
“No,” Sampath answered. His heart was big inside his chest. “No, I do not want an egg,” he said. “I want my freedom.”
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Chapter 16
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He could not claim it. If only it would reach out and claim him instead. If he stayed here long enough within reach of its sights and sounds, might it not enter him in the manner landscape enters everything that lives within it? Wouldn’t the forest descend just this bit lower and swallow him into its wilderness, leaving his family, his devotees, to search fruitlessly for a path by which they might follow?
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Chapter 25
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Here and there in the branches near him, the season’s last guavas loomed from amidst the moonlit leaves. One, two, three of them…so ripe, so heavy, the slightest touch could make them fall from the tree.
He picked one. Perfect Buddha shape. Mulling on its insides, unconcerned with the world… Beautiful, distant fruit, growing softer as the days went by, as the nights passed on; beautiful fruit filled with an undiscovered constellation of young stars.
He held it in his hand. It was cool, uneven to his touch. The hours passed. More stars than sky. He sat unmoving in this hushed night.
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Guava Fruit Symbol Timeline in Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard
The timeline below shows where the symbol Guava Fruit appears in Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5
When Kulfi comes up to the roof and offers Sampath a guava, his anger wells up inside him as he grabs the cool, bumpy fruit. He shakes...
(full context)
Chapter 6
...at the top of which he can see an old orchard. He finds an ancient guava tree and feverishly climbs up its branches before coming to rest at last. As he...
(full context)
Chapter 7
...him in the orchard. When, after a while of searching, they find Sampath in his guava tree, he wonders what he might say to defend himself, but ends up saying nothing...
(full context)
Chapter 8
...a makeshift pulley system. Before long, Sampath is living more comfortably than ever in his guava tree. He can hardly believe how luckily things have turned out, and how many reverent...
(full context)
Chapter 25
...becoming one with his surroundings. Darkness envelops him, and he picks one of the ripe guavas from the branches. He admires its perfect shape, its bumpy texture, and the cool feeling...
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...is a large object on the cot that they hadn’t noticed before. It’s an enormous guava, much bigger than any of the others. The monkeys surround it, and on its side...
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The entire crowd gives chase as the monkeys retreat with their enormous guava up the hillside and into the forest. In the midst of the chase, Pinky sets...
(full context)
