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Overview
Teza once electrified the people of Burma with his protest songs against the dictatorship. Arrested by the Burmese secret police in the days of mass protest, he is seven years into a twenty-year sentence in solitary confinement. Cut off from his family and contact with other prisoners, he applies his acute intelligence, Buddhist patience, and humor to find meaning in the interminable days, and searches for news in every being and object that is grudgingly allowed into his cell.
Despite his isolation, Teza has a profound influence on the people around him. His very existence challenges the brutal authority of the jailers, and his steadfast spirit inspires radical change. Even when Teza’s criminal server tries to compromise the singer for his own gain, Teza befriends him and risks falling into the trap of forbidden conversation, food, and the most dangerous contraband of all: paper and pen.
Yet, it is through Teza’s relationship with Little Brother, a twelve-year-old orphan who’s grown up inside the walls, that we ultimately come to understand the importance of hope and human connection in the midst of injustice and violence. Teza and the boy are prisoners of different orders: only one of them dreams of escape and only one of them will achieve it—their extraordinary friendship frees both of them in utterly surprising ways.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780385525039 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Random House Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 04/08/2008 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 464 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.13(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.02(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
.1.
JULY 1995
The singer is lying on the floor, a gray blanket pulled up around his chest. With slightly narrowed eyes, he stares at the ceiling. A single lizard is up there, clinging to the plaster.
What if it were the last lizard in the world? Then what would you do?
Teza opens his mouth.
It's not the last lizard. Rather, it's the first. Most of them won't appear until evening, little dinner guests neatly dressed in khaki. When the halo of insects has formed around the lightbulb, the reptiles run to and fro in their jerky, mechanical way, jaws snapping. Sometimes their mouths are so stuffed with insects that they can barely shut them. Gluttons. Showoffs. Any hungry mammal would be jealous. With all that eating, you'd think they'd get fat, but unfortunately the lizards are very skinny, like most of the human inmates. Teza closes his mouth.
In response, his stomach growls, the sound as loud as his normal speaking voice. A predatory animal has taken up residence in his gut. Never mind the parasites, a small panther is mutating in there. A feral dog. Evening with its lizard bounty seems very far away.
To confirm that sad thought, the iron-beater begins to strike eleven a.m. Teza counts each blow of a hardwood pallet against an iron bar in the compound, at the base of the watchtower. Clang, clang, clang. The timekeeper whacks the iron as hard as possible, so that the prisoners will hear him and know their time is passing. All ten thousand of them, especially the couple thousand politicals whom the singer counts as friends and comrades, are very far away. The nature of the teak coffin—of any solitary cell—is that it converts everything into distance. Time, space, food, women, his family, music, anything he mightneed or want or love: it is all far, far away.
From solitary, the whole cage is a foreign country to him. He lives on the very edge of it, straining to hear the other voices.
Tkeep! Tkeep! Tkeep!
The lizard sings. Not like a bird, though Teza remembers from first-year biology that this common cling-to-house lizard is brother to a tiny prehistoric sparrow. Then the desert wind blew and the rain fell and the scales grew into feathers. As he stares at the lizard on the ceiling, he can imagine it: the front two legs and feet stretched out, webbing, blossoming into wings. The back feet articulated into clawed toes, which curled deftly around the thin branch of a tree. And birdsong ribboned through the steamy jungle.
But before that, who knows how many millions of years ago, there was just this somewhat alarmed chirping tkeep tkeep tkeep to inspire the Neanderthals. Like Junior Jailer Handsome. Here we are again, the singer thinks, smiling. Back in the Stone Age, among cavemen, in a cave. His stomach growls.
The iron-beater is still. It's past eleven o'clock now. And Sein Yun has not shown up with breakfast. Teza watches the lizard run from the light, stop, run to the wall, stop. It runs down the wall and whisks itself out the air vent high above his head.
Teza scans the brick wall around the vent. His eyes have learned the different colors of reptile and wall, lizard skin and skin of man, brick and spider. That's what he wants to see now. The spider.
It's the color of a tiny, dirty copper pot. When the bulbous back catches the light, the copper becomes iridescent, an alchemist's metal. It glints gold, then a sheen of blue-green rises toward copper again. At dusk the creature deepens to red, then fades with the invisible sun. When Teza first came to the teak coffin, the spider was almost indistinguishable against the red bricks. But now the singer can find him in seconds.
A fine web is strung high in the corner where the two walls meet, below and to the left of the air vent. The spider often rebuilds his web in a different place. When Teza wakes each day, he checks to see if his companion has chosen to abandon the darkness of the cell and build his new home outside. The singer thinks he's the sort of spider who should have green leaves around him. But the spider stays.
The Chief Warden thinks Teza cannot see out of this narrowest of windows. In a manner of speaking, he is correct. The vent is too high. Even when Teza jumps he sees nothing save another fraction of the very high outer wall and a corrugated tin overhang. But the spider sees. He crawls the outer wall, up and up. From the top, the spider witnesses the whole city, the gold stupas, the green trees, the streets, millions of men and women, the lakes Inya and Kandawgyi, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's famous house on University Avenue, and his mother's two-story flat, surrounded by laundry and orchids. Daw Sanda loves her orchids dearly.
The spider perceives all this and more, much more: the sky with its white-backed, blue-bottomed clouds full of rain, the horizon curving like a belly. The spider sees.
And Teza watches the spider.
The fabulous copper-pot spider.
Is it male or female?
The singer has decided the spider is male: it's too depressing to imagine a woman here. He would hate to have a woman see him now.
The singer feeds his male comrade-spider secret messages, just a few words at a time, all his body can hold. Soundlessly, the spider takes in the messages and spins them out when he crawls into the world. The glimmering threads are Teza's words.
I love you. I think of you and send wishes of health.
We have dared everything; we must win.
I take strength from the knowledge that you keep fighting.
I am still alive. Teza.
Remember the meaning of my name.
Reading Group Guide
1. During a meditation, Teza reflects on the following Buddhist principles:
Metta.
Karuna.
Mudita.
Upekkha.
These are the Four Divine Abidings. Love. Compassion. Joy in the good fortune of others. Equanimity.
How are these principles depicted in the novel, and in what way do they help Teza cope with his imprisonment? Does he always succeed in living by these principles? How does he impart them to Little Brother?
2. How do Teza’s experiences inside the Lizard Cage represent the larger political turmoil in Burma (now Myanmar)? Despite the inhuman conditions, does hope still reside inside the prison?
3. “Words are like the ants. They work their way through the thickest walls, eating through bricks and feeding off the very silence intended to stifle them.” How is the irrepressibility of truth evident in The Lizard Cage? What parallels can you draw from other civil rights conflicts in the world?
4. Brothers Teza and Aung Min chose different paths of resistance, the former peaceful protest and the latter armed revolution. In your opinion, whose choice was more effective? How does Teza keep their relationship alive through memory? In what ways is Teza’s friendship with Little Brother similar to his relationship with Aung Min?
5. Why are pen and paper contraband in the Lizard Cage? Even Little Brother, who cannot read and write, understands their power. How is language a powerful weapon against oppression?
6. “From solitary, the whole cage is a foreign country to him. He lives on the very edge of it, straining to hear the other voices.” While confined, Teza reflects on life, from his family and first love to his education and political actions. Can memories be both freedom from captivity and a torturous reminder of a life not lived? When have you experienced this paradox?
7. Little Brother is referred to by various names, most commonly the boy, rat killer, Free El Salvador, Nyi Lay, and his real name, Zaw Gyi. Why is Teza comforted to know the boy has such a strong name? What does one’s name signify in terms of social hierarchy and character?
8. Animals, particularly lizards, play an important role in The Lizard Cage. What is the significance of the characters’ relationships with animals? How are those relationships spiritual, and what do they teach us about human relationships?
9. How are jailers Handsome and Chit Naing products of the environment in which they live? Why do they have such different attitudes toward Teza even though they have the same occupation? Are they motivated by survival, loyalty, or ambition?
10. In what way does Teza achieve freedom through Little Brother? What does the novel say about the resilience of the human spirit?
Foreword
1. As she wrote The Lizard Cage, Karen Connelly imagined she was trapped in a windowless 8 x 10 jail cell just like her main character. Did the novel prompt you to imagine yourself in solitary confinement? How do you think you’d cope with the kind of isolation and sensory deprivation that Teza endures?
2. When Little Brother takes stock of his meager belongings, he “knows he is rich.” Half-starved, his body aching from a recent beating, Teza muses that “happiness is the absence of lice.” What role does gratitude play in the novel?
3. “The paradox fascinates him–as the old loyalties desiccate and the danger intensifies, he feels lighter and younger than he has in years.” How does Chit Naing evolve as a character over the course of the novel?
4. In the second half of the novel, Handsome recalls a beating he received as a small child, “His body was shaking violently, milk teeth clacking together.” Did this scene alter your view of him? What does the novel have to say about the cyclical nature of violence? How do some characters manage to break the cycle?
5. Prior to The Lizard Cage, Karen Connelly published four volumes of poetry and two books of travel writing. How are her varied writing skills at work in her first novel?
6. The Lizard Cage does not portray an alternative, disguised version of Burma, it is a story that could actually happen today. How aware were you of the Burmese dictatorship before reading the novel? Did it make you look any differently at your own life within a prosperous free democracy?
7. For those of you who meditate, were you inspired byTeza’s ability to “breathe himself out of the coffin”? If you’ve never meditated, what do you make of the view that “your breath is your teacher”?
8. Aug Min observes of Little Brother, “This was an old child locked in an old hunger.” Discuss the role of hunger – emotional, physical and spiritual – in The Lizard Cage.
9. Little Brother tries unsuccessfully to teach himself to read. His longing to make meaning out of the letters is mirrored by Teza’s hunger for the written word. Discuss the power of language in the novel.
10. Every character in The Lizard Cage has different ways of surviving the harsh realities of prison life. What helps Teza/Jailer Chit Naing/Little Brother survive the brutality of the cage? What helps Sein Yun/Jailer Handsome? If you found yourself in the prison of the novel, how do you think you would manage?
11. The author has said in interviews that Jailer Chit Naing is her favourite character in the book, because “he struggles in the way so many of us struggle.” What do you think she means by that?
12. Even though Teza eats the lizards in his cell for sustenance, he does so with respect and regret. Little Brother, too, has very important “relationships” with lizards and other creatures. Why are these relationships so important for each of these characters?
13. Why does Teza allow himself to trust the rather untrustworthy Sein Yun? Apart from what he hopes to gain, why does Sein Yun betray him and the other politicals?
14. Teza relies daily on his strong Buddhist faith, particularly his meditation practice. Is The Lizard Cage a Buddhist book? How are some of the basic beliefs of Buddhism similar to those of other faiths? How are they different?
15. Little Brother believes the lizard that changes colour is a kind of little god, and he believes in the mysterious power of the spirit of the tree. He believes in the Buddha, too, and actively recalls his Muslim father praying early in the morning. How do all these different beliefs help him?
16. Teza and Little Brother slowly come to form a profound friendship, as do Teza and Jailer Chit Naing. What is it about Teza that draws them both to him?
17. Why is Chit Naing willing to sacrifice his safety for Teza, for Little Brother, and even for the political movement against the dictatorship?
18. One of the key objects in the novel is a pen. Lost and found, and changing owners several times, it acts as the trigger for much of the action and tension in the story. Is the pen a weapon? A talisman? Or something cursed?