Anita and Me: Key Quotations (AQA GCSE English Literature)

Remember the assessment objectives explicitly state that you should be able to “use textual references, including quotations”. This means summarising, paraphrasing, referencing single words and the referencing of plot events are all as valid as quotations in demonstrating that you understand Anita and Me. It is important that you remember that you can evidence your knowledge of the text in these two equally valid ways: both through references to it and direct quotations from it. 

Overall, you should aim to secure a strong knowledge of the text, rather than rehearsed quotations, as this will enable you to respond to any question you may be set. It is the quality of your knowledge of Syal’s novel that will enable you to select references effectively.

If you are going to revise quotations, the best way is to group them by character, or theme. Below you will find definitions and analysis of the best quotations, arranged by the following themes:

• Family relationships 
• Friendship
• Cultural identity 
• Violence and abuse

The novel illustrates the importance of family in a young person’s development through the intimate narrations of the child protagonist, Meena, who relates her evolving attitude to her family as a result of her experiences with other families she encounters. Syal’s Bildungsroman illustrates the significance of family support as both Meena and her friend, Anita, grow up in very different families. 

Paired quotations:

“My tender papa, my flying papa, the papa with hope and infinite variety” – Meena, Chapter 4

“...the lines around his warm, hopeful eyes, lurking in the furrows of his brow, shadowing the soft curves of his mouth” – Meena, Chapter 5

Meaning and context

• The first quotation shows Meena’s strong admiration and love for her father:
• She describes him as gentle and hopeful, as well as complex
• Later, her reflections shift to consider her father in a deeper way, as an individual:
• She sees that past hardships have left a darkness in his face
• Although she still describes him as “hopeful” she also recognises shadows “lurking” on a furrowed (worried) brow

Analysis

• A triple describes both the characterisation of Meena’s father and the protagonist’s feelings towards him:
• Meena appreciates his gentle, optimistic and exuberant personality 
• The possessive pronoun and colloquial term of address in “my flying papa” conveys close family bonds:
• This shows Meena’s earlier, more innocent perceptions of her father
• However, later, an oxymoronic description of her father portrays Meena’s growing realisations about her family:
• This shows Meena’s growing awareness as she gains knowledge about her family’s heritage 

Paired quotations:

“I rarely rebelled openly against this communal policing, firstly because it somehow made me feel safe and wanted” – Meena, Chapter 2

“Life isn’t all ha-ha-hee-hee with your friends. They will leave you when times get bad, and then all you will have left is your family, Meena. Remember that" – Shyam, Chapter 6

Meaning and context

• Meena refers to the network of close South Asian friends who are referred to as aunts and uncles
• Here, Meena expresses her mixed attitude towards the many members of her “family”
• Later, Mr Kumar, Meena’s father, describes family love as unconditional and long-lasting
• Syal shows how Meena’s family try to guide her to taking more responsibility:
• However, this also shows the challenges Meena faces choosing between the fun her friends offer and the disciplined life her family wants for her

Analysis

• Syal uses contrasting language to convey Meena’s attitude towards her family at the start of her journey:
• The phrase “communal policing” implies an omnipresent disciplinary force
• Whereas she also describes this with emotive language connoting to the security this brings (“safe and wanted”)
• In Chapter 6, Meena’s father reminds Meena of the value of family when she gets into trouble again
• This line foreshadows the conflicts Meena encounters with her friends
• It is worth noting Syal’s use of the phrase “Life isn’t all ha ha hee hee”:
• Meena’s comedic and hyperbolic narration of events point to her early immaturity
• Her father appears to criticise her immaturity here

“If Anita’s father, Roberto, had delivered a speech like that to her, she would have flicked her hair and said Bog Off! The words sat poised on the tip of my tongue all the way home. I did not have the courage to free them” – Meena, Chapter 6

Meaning and context

• Meena complains about her father’s lectures and harsh discipline
• She compares her father with Anita’s father, implying she would prefer more lax parenting herself

Analysis

• Syal begins to draw comparisons between the different families in the town:
• She implies Anita’s upbringing has not taught her respect for her parents
• This line is ironic as the child protagonist is unwittingly praising Anita Rutter’s neglectful and abusive parents 
• This line also portrays the good values Meena’s family attempt to pass on to her:
• The fact she does not behave like Anita implies the respect she has for her family
• Meena’s strong desire to rebel from her family is implied in her animation of Anita’s imagined response (she would have “flicked her hair”) 
• Meena’s words hint at her belief that she feels weak and stifled in her family:
• She says she does not have the “courage” to “free” her words

Syal’s novel is titled Anita and Me, which implies the significance of the theme of friendship in the novel. Syal presents various relationships in Meena’s life that alter her definition of friendship. 

Paired quotations:

“Anita made me laugh like no one else; she gave voice to all the wicked things I had often thought but kept zipped up inside my good girl’s winter coat” – Meena, Chapter 6

“I had fought for this friendship, worried over it, made sacrifices for it, measured myself against it, lost myself inside it, had little to show for it but this bewildered sense of betrayal” – Meena, Chapter 11

Meaning and context

• In the rising action of the story, Meena expresses her fascination with Anita:
• She believes they share a similar need for rebellion and are both misunderstood
• She admires Anita for her confidence and ability to say what she likes
• Later, though, Meena realises that Anita was not a true friend and recognises how much attention she has given the doomed friendship 

Analysis

• Meena’s metaphorical language describes her feelings of being stifled:
• The onomatopoeic “zipped up” draws attention to the way she hides aspects of her identity and puts on a façade (in a “good girl’s coat”)
• By Chapter 11, Meena realises the true nature of her relationship with Anita:
• The long list presents her overwhelmed emotions 
• Alliteration in “bewildered” and “betrayal” emphasise the painful realisation

“She needed me maybe more than I needed her. There is a fine line between love and pity and I had just stepped over it” – Meena, Chapter 9

Meaning and context

• This quotation shows Meena gaining clarity about her friendship with Anita
• By this stage of the story she sees Anita’s vulnerabilities as a result of her home-life
• Here she makes it clear she has gone from admiring Anita to pitying her

Analysis

• Syal’s parallelism draws attention to the function of their friendship: it is based on a shared need 
• Meena’s mature reflection is conveyed with the simple emotive words “pity” and “love”

“I put my face right up to his; I could smell the smoke on his breath. ‘You mean the others like the Bank Manager?’” – Meena, Chapter 13

Meaning and context

• Here, Meena confronts Sam, a boy she has befriended:
• Although Sam is a dangerous bully she challenges him on his part in beating up an Indian bank manager and his racist comments

Analysis

• The lines show her brave challenge of her friend:
• She draws attention to how close her face is to Sam’s with sensory language (“I could smell the smoke”)
• This line shows Meena knows Sam respects her and highlights Meena’s changing attitude to friendship:
• Where before she submitted to the confident children in the town, now she is not afraid to stand up to them 

The novel deals with Meena’s confusion about her personal identity as a second-generation Indian immigrant in England. Syal’s story shows the challenges faced by young people caught between adhering to traditional roles and cultural expectations while being drawn towards their own independence and identity.

Paired quotations:

“You’re so lovely. You know, I never think of you as, you know, foreign. You’re just like one of us” – Daljit, Chapter 2

“I knew I was a freak of some kind, too mouthy, clumsy and scabby to be a real Indian girl, too Indian to be a real Tollington wench” – Meena, Chapter 6

Meaning and context

• At the beginning of the novel, Meena relates how her mother would respond to discriminatory comments from the English people in the town:
• She says her mother would “graciously accept this as a compliment”
• But she adds that “afterwards, in front of the Aunties” she would make them laugh by “gently poking fun at the habits of her English friends”
• In Chapter 6, Meena compares Indian daughters to the more “mouthy” children
• The word “wench” refers to the colloquial term for a rebellious and confident girl

Analysis

• Through Meena’s digressive narration she shows readers typical conversations that take place between immigrants and the English townspeople:
  • This highlights attitudes in the town and exemplifies the problems Meena has fitting in
• In Chapter 6 Meena expresses her sense of isolation as a result of her dual culture:
  • She uses the word “freak” to convey how strange she feels
  • Her use of the phrase “real Indian girl” implies her sense of being an imposter
  • She believes she cannot live up to the family’s expectations of an ideal Indian daughter
• Meena’s language conveys the differences in culture around her:
  • She wants to be like the other girls in the town:
    • Yet this is in contrast to what her family wants of her, shown with the adverb of quantity “too”
    • While they want her to be quiet, she is “too mouthy”, while they want her to be neat and graceful she is “too clumsy” and “too scabby”

Paired quotations:

“But to be told off by a white person, especially a neighbour, that was not just misbehaviour, that was letting down the whole Indian nation” – Meena, Chapter 3

“The songs made me realise that there was a corner of me that would be forever not England” – Meena, Chapter 5

Meaning and context

• Meena says that every immigrant who behaves poorly is responsible for representing India negatively
• By Chapter 5 Meena realises that she is influenced by both Indian and English culture:
• She realises that while she feels predominantly English, there will also be a part of her that belongs to her 

Analysis

• Meena often tells the reader about Indian culture through comedic narration
• Early on, she alludes to the high standards immigrants feel bound to in order to prove their worth:
• Meena says too that “It was continually drummed into me” that she had to behave perfectly as an Indian girl to “prove you are better”
• Later, Meena is moved by her father’s singing and this reminds her of her ancestral heritage
• The word “forever” highlights the indestructible bonds of family and culture

Syal explores the consequences of powerlessness in a society by illustrating the effects of oppression and poverty on the various characters in the novel. For some characters, violent and aggressive behaviour towards others affords them some sense of control over their chaotic and unpredictable lives. For others, experience of violence leads to fear and they become the victims of abuse. For other characters, experience of aggression leads to greater tolerance and empathy.

Paired quotations:

“...friends could suddenly become tormentors, sniffing out a weakness or a difference, turning their own fear of ostracism into a weapon with which they could beat the victim away, afraid that being an outsider, an individual even, was somehow infectious” – Meena, Chapter 6

“Anita, the same skinny harpy who had just narrowly missed gouging out another girl’s eyes, was now whispering lover’s endearments” – Meena, Chapter 9

Meaning and context

• The first line comes as Meena begins to realise the hostility and aggression around her
• At this stage of Meena’s development she begins to see that her friends will do anything to avoid isolation
• Later, Meena sees Anita’s complexities:
• She describes Anita as a violent “harpy” (a monster)
• Meena expresses her surprise at Anita’s loving and gentle side with the horse

Analysis

• Meena describes the group of friends as aggressive and dangerous:
• They appear cunning and harsh, “sniffing” out any “weakness”
• The competitive nature of their relationships turns to violence, implied by the word “weapon”
• However, while the violent behaviour continues, as seen in the second line with the present-tense continuous verb “gouging”, Meena begins to see deeper reasons for this
• When Meena describes Anita as “skinny”, she juxtaposes the description of her as a monster against a more vulnerable and powerless image
• Syal portrays Anita’s tender side to present the way her real nature has been impacted by her circumstances

“...no one wanted to think about the gangs of no-hope teenagers …trapped in a forgotten village in no-man’s land between a ten-shop town and an amorphous industrial sprawl.” – Meena, Chapter 6

Meaning and context

• Meena describes the gangs of teenagers, such as the one Sam Lowbridge leads
• She goes on to describe the town as a “no-man’s land”, an empty space between two enemy groups preparing to battle
• She describes the town as “amorphous”, meaning it is without shape or structure
• Here, Meena also refers to the town’s industrial nature, presenting it as desolate

Analysis

• Syal draws attention to the cause and effect cycle in disadvantaged communities
• By connecting the town’s desolate landscape alongside a desolate people, Syal suggests unemployment and decline has damaged the citizens
• In particular, Syal shows how the children are neglected, just like the town:
• This makes them trapped and hopeless
• Syal implies abuse and aggression can result from such desperation