19. CONCEPTUAL FRUIT

 19. CONCEPTUAL FRUIT

Thaisa Frank‟s Conceptual Fruit is a deeply touching story that leaves a pang in the  readers‟ minds. It tells us about a caring father who desperately hopes that technology will help him to make life happier for his mentally challenged daughter. 

Greta is a mentally challenged girl of sixteen. Her father wants to show her a website where she could create a house of her own. This idea evokes only a cold response from 

her mother and brother who do not care much about Greta‟s happiness. The father creates a street called Greta‟s street and a house called Greta‟s house. He tells her that she could fill her house with anything she wants. Greta wants a bowl in every room with peaches in it. The father creates a kitchen and tells her to click the bowl to see the magic. 

Greta clicks the bowl and the word peaches appear. But Greta is disappointed. She wants only r
eal fruits. She doesn‟t understand why people like them when they are not real. The father now creates other rooms. Just when he is about to create a bathroom, Greta reminds him that it is not a real house and people wouldn‟t use it. In fact, they could create anything, but they make no sense to Greta, since they are not real. 

Finally she gets bored of the unreal world of computers and leaves to help her mother. The story ends with the father hoping for a better tomorrow for his differently-abled daughter. He hopes that she would have a house with an orchard and real fruits to put in real blue bowls.