Anita and Me Literary Elements

Coming-of-age novel

1960s Tollington, a fictional mining town in the West Midlands of England.

Meena Kumar, first-person.

Comedic, Ironic, Sentimental, Reflective

Protagonist: Meena Kumar; Antagonist: Anita Rutter (and Sam Lowbridge)

Meena Kumar seeks belonging and self-acceptance, while navigating the differing values of her friends and family, and the tensions between her British and Indian cultures.

The night before Meena's eleven-plus exam, Tracey calls for Meena's help, saying Anita is in peril. In actuality, Anita is having sex with Sam. Anita and Tracey fight, and Tracey falls into a pond, nearly dying. Later, Meena talks to the police. She can falsely accuse Anita and Sam of pushing Tracey, or tell the truth. Meena tells the truth.

Meena's desire for drama—exemplified in her asking “When would anything dangerous and cruel ever happen to me?” (p. 37)—foreshadows the conflict Meena will face later in the novel, and her growing understanding of life's harsh realities.

Anita regularly understates the difficulties of her home life. For example, describing her parents in Chapter 6, Anita says, “She said my dad beat her up. He didn’t. She pricked her arm with a dart to make it look like that. Dad told me. He’s not picking her up. She can come home on the bloody bus, he says.”

The novel includes allusions to real historical events—from Indian Partition to anti-immigrant violence in 1960s Britain. A subtler allusion: Meena gifts her boyfriend, Robert, a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee–– a subtle reference to the two novels' parallel themes.

The image of Tollington's changing landscape—the demolished schoolhouse, the new motorway, the aging houses—helps to emphasize Meena's changing point of view over the course of the novel.

Meena confronts various paradoxes throughout the novel: bullies become victims, tragedy is treated comedically, unspoken language becomes a form of communication, etc.

Parallelism and the use of character foils are present in the relationship between Anita and Meena: Meena has a supportive home life, but lacks a sense of belonging amongst her peers; Anita is popular and confident amongst her peers, but has a dysfunctional home life.

Community members and friend groups are regularly grouped under single labels: the women factory workers of Tollington become the "Ballbearings Committee;" Meena's friends become the "Wenches Brigade;" adult women in the South Asian community become Meena's "Aunties."

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