Ah Bah’s Money Literature

Table of Content

Ah Bah’s Money Ah Bah is a surreptitious, pitiful and ingenious person. Firstly, Ah Bah is portrayed as surreptitious through his secretive behaviour to hide his money away from his father ‘in a corner of the cupboard behind the stacks of old clothes, newspapers and calendars’. This shows how furtive Ah Bah is to conceal his money, as he always hides his money in inconspicuous places such as the cigarette tin in the hope that his father will not notice.

Also, in a bid to prevent his father from obtaining his money, Ah Bah came out of a story whereby ‘a rough-looking Indian had pushed him to the ground and taken away his money’, so as to lead his father the wrong way of thought and to stop suspecting the fact that he is keeping some money with himself, thus showing the great lengths he took in order to safeguard his precious money. Ah Bah’s sneaky behaviour demonstrates how surreptitious he is, as he behaves in a way that shows he wants to keep his whereabouts of the money a secret and do not want it to be noticed.

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Secondly, Ah Bah is portrayed as pitiful through his sad family background caused by his morally-corrupted parents. The sight of his money gave him a lot of pleasure, however, he had to hide them from his father who would spend all the precious money unnecessarily on bottles of beer. Whenever his father is sullen, he would become very aggressive and would ‘begin shouting at anyone who came near’. He even ‘threw an empty bottle at Ah Bah’s mother’, causing Ah Bah to feel very terrified of him. Worst of all, his mother, whom he had always trusted, turned out to have betrayed him as she had taken his money to gamble too.

These shows the sad family background Ah Bah has whereby he has a violent father and a sly mother. He leads a very miserable life as he seldom receive care and concern from his parents. His father is always pursuing him for money, while his mother cheats on him on his money. Ah Bah’s stress over financial matters at such a young age demonstrates how pitiful Ah Bah is, as he needs to constantly worry about whether his cherished stash would be taken away. Lastly, Ah Bah is portrayed as ingenious as he could figure out a variety of ways to hide his money.

Ah Bah is clever and inventive is as he is able to think out of the box to hide his stash ‘outside the house’, instead of the interior of the house. Also, he placed it in ‘the old hen-house’, which is very smart of him, since the old hen-house is unobtrusive, so it is of a low chance that his father could find it. Furthermore, the money was kept ‘in a cigarette tin, behind that piece of wood’, thus hiding it so well that it is highly unlikely to find the money. Therefore, Ah Bah’s innovativeness demonstrates how ingenious he is when he thinks of ways to hide his money as he could pick locations well and knew how to conceal them.

In conclusion, Ah Bah is a surreptitious, pitiful and ingenious person through his secretive behaviour to hide his money away from his father, his sad family background and his innovative ways of hiding his money. Catherine Lim’s depiction of Ah Bah shows me that how miserable Ah Bah’s life is and makes me feel that parents should do their duty and take good care of their children by showing care and concern to them. Parents should also set a good example for their children by teaching them good moral values, unlike Ah Bah’s violent father and his sly mother.

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