Characters

The main characters in the text “Salaam Brick Lane” by Tarquin Hall are the narrator and Abdul-Haq. However, we recommend you also pay attention to the collective character represented by the people in the East End, as they are presented by both Jack London in 1902, and by the narrator and Abdul-Haq in the present day.

The narrator

The narrator of the text is the author Tarquin Hall, who returned to London after spending several years travelling abroad. His outer characterisation presents him as a journalist and freelance writer with a rather poor financial situation, as “the freelance journalism [he has] been guaranteed in London had yet to materialise” (p. 80, ll. 17-18). The narrator’s outer characterisation also reveals that he is “just shy of thirty” (p. 80, l. 5) when he returns to London, the place where he grew up. Also, the narrator has spent most of his young years in places such as “Chiswick, Kew, Putney, Richmond” (p. 81, l. 4).

Inner characterisation

The narrator’s inner characterisation presents him as a man in search of a place to settle down, but also a nostalgic man who needs to feel “the familiarity of the past” (p. 80, l. 7) to feel at home. When he arrives home, he bitterly discovers that his relatives are “scattered” (p. 80, l. 14) across England and that he is no longer close to his friends because he has spent so long travelling.

The narrator also comes across as a struggling writer, as he is not successful as he had hoped upon returning home:

I had even written a book about the journey, convinced that I had a best-seller on my hands. But no publisher had shown any interest in the manuscript and for now it sat at the bottom of my suitcase in the South Kensington flat where a friend was putting me up while I searched for a place of my own. (p. 80, ll. 21-25)

As h...