Hyde Park

By: Petina Gappah

 Background of the Author
• Petina Gappah is an award-winning and widely translated Zimbabwean writer. She is
the author of two novels, Out of Darkness, Shining Light, The Book of Memory,
and two short story collections, Rotten Row and An Elegy for Easterly. Her work
has also been published in, among others, The New Yorker, Der Spiegel, The
Financial Times, and the Africa Report. For many years, Petina worked as an
international trade lawyer at the highest levels of diplomacy in Geneva where she
advised more than seventy developing countries from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean
and Latin America on trade law and policy. Petina has also been a DAAD Writing
Fellow in Berlin, an Open Society Fellow and a Livingstone Scholar at Cambridge
University. She has law degrees from Cambridge, Graz University in Austria, and the
University of Zimbabwe. She currently lives in Harare.
 Biographical Approach
• Biographical Theory would be the approach to use in the story. First, obviously, because the text Hyde Park was
an autobiography of Petina Gappah where she talked about her experiences in her first visit in London. Second,
there are a lot of points in the story that could be explained using Gappah's background, specifically her
nationality. In the early part of the text, a biographical context was already shown. She mentioned that she felt
uneasy seeing men with bald heads and tattoos. After mentioning, she also explained that shaven-head guys
wasn't that of a good person in the eyes of Black people. Knowing that Petina Gappah was from Zimbabwe, we
can conclude that she is one of those Blacks. With this fact, it can now be explained why she felt uneasy around
shaven-head men: because she may have experienced or may have witnessed how cruel these guys are to her
fellow people. One more thing, at a point in the text, she mentioned a quality of the British people that she
loved: their tolerance for eccentricity. She witnessed this quality when she passed by the Speakers' Corner inside
the Hyde Park. She may have said this one or loved this one because she hadn't had the chance to voice out her
own eccentric ideas in her country without having the people judge her. Unlike in London, people are accepting
every idea, may it be unusual or ordinary, without downright judging or shaming the person.
 Historical Approach
• Hyde Park is a Grade I-listed major park in Central London. It is the largest of
four Royal Parks that form a chain from the entrance of Kensington
Palace through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, via Hyde Park Corner
and Green Park past the main entrance to Buckingham Palace. The park is divided
by the Serpentine and the Long Water lakes.
• The park was established by Henry VIII in 1536
• Free speech and demonstrations have been a key feature of Hyde Park since the
19th century. Speakers' Corner has been established as a point of free speech and
debate since 1872, while the Chartists, the Reform League, the suffragettes, and
the Stop the War Coalition have all held protests there.
 Historical Approach
• Marble Arch is a 19th-century white marble-faced triumphal arch in London, England. The structure was designed by John
Nash in 1827 to be the state entrance to the cour d'honneur of Buckingham Palace; it stood near the site of what is today
the three-bayed, central projection of the palace containing the well-known balcony. In 1851 on the initiative of architect
and urban planner, Decimus Burton, one-time pupil of John Nash, it was relocated and following the widening of Park
Lane in the early 1960s to where it is now sited, incongruently isolated, on a large traffic island at the junction of Oxford
Street, Park Lane and Edgware Road. Admiralty Arch, Holyhead in Wales is a similar arch, even more so cut off from
public access, at the other end of the A5.
• When building work began in 1847, the arch was dismantled and rebuilt by Thomas Cubitt as a ceremonial entrance to the
northeast corner of Hyde Park at Cumberland Gate. The reconstruction was completed in March 1851. A popular story
says that the arch was moved because it was too narrow for the Queen's state coach to pass through, but, in fact, the gold
state coach passed under it during Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953.
• Both the Wellington Arch and Marble Arch (originally sited in front of Buckingham Palace) were planned in 1825 by
George IV to commemorate Britain's victories in the Napoleonic Wars
 Historical Approach
• The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), known
colloquially as the Hare Krishna movement or Hare Krishnas, is a Gaudiya
Vaishnava Hindu religious organisation. ISKCON was founded in 1966 in New
York City by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Its core beliefs are based on
the Hindu scriptures, particularly the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavata Purana, and
the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, which has had adherents in India since the late
15th century and American and European devotees since the early 1900s.
• The Hare Krishna movement is a branch of Hinduism, formally known as
Gaudiya Vaishnavism. Its name comes from its chant — Hare Krishna — which
devotees repeat over and over.
 Historical Approach
• Bhaktivedanta Manor
• By 1972, three years after its founding, ISKCON's Radha Krishna Temple at Bury
Place, in central London, was proving too small to accommodate the growing
number of devotees there.[7] The popularity of the movement had much to do with
former Beatle George Harrison,[8] who had helped establish the temple,[9] in
addition to endorsing Krishna Conscious principles in his 1970 solo album All
Things Must Pass.[10] One of the first British devotees,[11] Dhananjaya Das, recalls
Prabhupada suggesting that he ask Harrison if he would care to help with their
predicament, to which the musician replied: "I would be very much honoured."[12]
 Historical Approach
• International Socialist Organization
• The ISO advocated replacing the capitalist system with socialism, a system in which society's collective
wealth and resources would be democratically controlled to meet human need by those who produce that
wealth, i.e. the working class. The organization believed that this working-class majority could end
capitalism by leveraging their power over production through mass strikes.[5]
• Berlin Wall

• The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Germany in 1961 to 1989

• To stop this, on August 13, 1961, the Communist government of East Germany built a wall separating
East and West Berlin. The wall was built to keep the country's people in. But the Soviets and East
German government said it was to keep capitalism out.
 Historical Approach
• The Rose Garden is located in the south east corner of Hyde Park, south of Serpentine
Road near Hyde Park Corner.
• The Garden opened in 1994 and was designed by Colvin and Moggridge Landscape
Architects. The design was developed from the concept of horns sounding one's arrival into
Hyde Park from Hyde Park Corner. The central circular area enclosed by the yew hedge is
imagined to be the mouth of a trumpet or horn and the seasonal flower beds are the flaring
notes coming out of the horn.
• The rose planting is mixed with herbaceous planting, creating rich seasonal flower beds and
strong scents. The spectacular seasonal bedding is a hugely popular feature; the gardens
attract high numbers of tourists particularly in the summer months and are still popular
throughout the year with local residents and office workers as a quiet contemplative place.
 Historical Approach
• Rotten Row is a broad track running 1,384 metres (4,541 ft) along the south side of Hyde
Park in London. It leads from Hyde Park Corner to Serpentine Road. During the 18th and 19th
centuries, Rotten Row was a fashionable place for upper-class Londoners to be seen horse
riding. Today it is maintained as a place to ride horses in the center of London, but it is little used.
• Harare (/həˈrɑːreɪ/;[3] officially Salisbury until 1982)[4] is the capital and most populous city
of Zimbabwe. The city proper has an area of 960.6 km2 (371 mi2) and an estimated population
of 1,606,000 in 2009,[5] with 2,800,000 in its metropolitan area in 2006. Situated in north-eastern
Zimbabwe in the country's Mashonaland region, Harare is a metropolitan province, which also
incorporates the municipalities of Chitungwiza and Epworth.[6] The city sits on a plateau at an
elevation of 1,483 metres (4,865 feet) above sea level and its climate falls into the subtropical
highland category.
• There is a road in Harare, Zimbabwe named Rotten Row
 Historical Approach
• The Holocaust Memorial in Hyde Park, London, was the first public
memorial in Great Britain dedicated to victims of the Holocaust.[1][2] It lies to
the east of the Serpentine Lake,[1] in The Dell, an open-air area within the
park. Since its unveiling in 1983 remembrance services have taken place at
the memorial every year
• Planned memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.
 Historical Approach
• A Speakers' Corner is an area where open-air public speaking, debate, and discussion are
allowed. The original and best known is in the northeast corner of Hyde
Park in London, England. Historically there were a number of other areas designated as
Speakers' Corners in other parks in London, such as Lincoln's Inn Fields, Finsbury
Park, Clapham Common, Kennington Park, and Victoria Park). Areas for Speakers' Corners
have been established in other countries and elsewhere in the UK.
• Speakers here may talk on any subject, if the police consider their speeches lawful, although
this right is not restricted to Speakers' Corner only. Contrary to popular belief, there is no
immunity from the law, nor are any subjects proscribed, but in practice the police intervene
only when they receive a complaint. On some occasions in the past, they have intervened on
grounds of profanity.