Yet the poem bears a troubling logic for Arjie. Indeed, he is singled out as a candidate for the performance due to his effusive reading of the poem in class. An expressive boy, prone to melodrama, Arjie acts out fantasies with his siblings, performs in a community production of The King and I, and basks in any hint of admiration granted him. At first glance, Selvadurai’s protagonist, Arjie, seems equipped for this task. The function of the child, as such, is to perform nostalgia. One poem, “The Best School of All,” is meant to help the audience reminisce about their own school days and to rouse sufficient sentiment to back a rescue of the school from government restructuring. I n the culminating chapter of Shyam Selvadurai’s novel, Funny Boy, are all the necessary ingredients for a possible rescue fantasy: a principal asks a student to read two British poems about the golden days of yesteryear at a school recital.
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