Save Me a Seat

“My first name is Ravi. It’s pronounced rah-VEE, with a soft rah and a strong VEE. In Sanskrit, it means ‘the sun.’ In America, people call me RAH-vee, with the stress on the first syllable. That doesn’t mean anything.” 

Throughout the novel, Ravi suffers from a lack of understanding on the part of his peers and teachers at his new school. Mrs. Beam’s inability to pronounce Ravi’s name correctly demonstrates the rift Ravi feels between himself and his fellow students at Albert Einstein. Ravi knows that he is intelligent and able to perform well in school, but he is unable to make his teachers or his peers see this side of him. Instead, they seem confused by his actions and behaviors. Just like his name, Ravi is used to being held as the shining example of achievement; however, he finds that when he attends his new school, none of his achievements are known and any attempt he makes to impress his peers and teachers usually backfires. The importance that Ravi places upon his name also foreshadows how he will be treated by Dillon later on in the novel: he will not be treated as the sun, but rather as a loser whose name means nothing of significance. However, the inability of Ravi’s peers to pronounce his name also identifies one of the problems associated with Ravi’s personality: he does not stand up for himself. Instead of telling