Alienation is one of the greatest problems confronting modern man. The 20th century
Especially the postwar period has been called the ‘Age of Alienation’. Edmund Fuller remarks that in our age man suffers not only from war persecution , famine and ruin, but from inner problem a conviction on isolation , randomness , meaninglessness in his way of existence. There are several layers and kinds of alienation that is powerlessness, meaninglessness , formlessness and isolation which are nothing but different manifestation of alienation. In today’s society, alienation means historical discontinuity, loss despair, with rejection not only at the past but also the present. And it is their human problem that has occupied Anita Desai’s primary interest. She has presented the dilemma of the modern man effectively.
Anita Desai is today, the most well known among Indian women novelist in English. She completed her education at University of Delhi. At present, she is the member of the Faculty of Mount Halyoke College Massachusetts, U.S.A. Thrice she was short listed for Booker Prize and also won the Sahitya Academy Award. Her early novels concentrate on the feminine sensibility at war with the hostility and callousness of a male centered universe and her later novels deal with existence of modern man who is trapped in island of loneliness and society she lays on the exploration of human mind.
Aims and Objectives:-
This research is an attempt to study the theme of Alienation in Anita Desai’s novels, Cry the Peacock , Voices in the City and Fire on the Mountain. I have chosen this topic because this is one of the major problems of modern man which gets reflected though the novels of Anita Desai. Man fails to perceive today the very purpose behind life and the relevance of his existence in a hostile world. The impact of modernization and industrialization changing the values of life. Today man becomes too ambitious –all this has made an increasing and often disturbing demands on the individual consequently resulting in their rootlessness. There are some causes behind the loneliness of the modern man. And this problem is brilliantly exposed through the novels of Anita Desai.
In this dissertation I would like to discuss the alienated characters of Anita Desai’s novel, their domestic life, social status and the reasons behind this alienation. I would also like to study how she presents this issue through her novels. Does she come out with some kind of solution etc.
Main Body of Research
Loneliness of the individual is persistent theme in Anita Desai’s novels. The sensitive human beings suffers from sense of alienation which could reach the intensity of an existential malaise. Reasons that provoke dislocation in the individual self could be the oppressive or hostile nature of the society, the emotional distancing of a partner in marital alliance or the state of exile as immigrant. It can lead to frustration, longing for escape or even suicide.
1. Cry, the Peacock:-
In this novel, we have in Maya self examination and exploration of the alienated human psyche. Here is the study of young , sensitive girl obsessed by a childhood prophecy of disaster , whose extreme sensitivity is rendered in terms of immeasurable human loneliness.
2. Voices in the City:-
This novel brilliant exposition of the alienation suffered by certain dislocated individuals trapped in the claustrophobic life of the metropolis. Nirode, Monish and Amla re-enact the emotional trauma of the sensitive souls caught in the lonely islands of their selves.
3. Fire on the Mountain:-
This novel explores the alienation of Nanda Kaul and her great grand daughter Raka. Nanda Kaul the central character caught in the web of loneliness belong to the category of oppressed woman has chosen as her residence the isolated house on the ridge of a mountain at Carignano in Kasauli.
Research Method:-
I will do this research with the help of secondary sources e.g. journals, reference books etc. and with the help of deep study of the novels which I have chosen for this dissertation.
Scope and Limitation of the Study
This dissertation deals with only the theme of alienation in Anita Desai’s novels, Cry the Peacock, Voices in the City , Fire on the Mountain. It will not deal in other themes like marital disharmony, Indian culture , facets of feminism etc.
Conclusion:-
A prominent theme running through the novels of the Anita Desai is the loneliness of human being stranded in this isolated island of human destiny. The burden of existence hangs heavy on most of the characters. The reasons behind choosing these topics is that it is related to the contemporary , twentieth century lifestyle. Today man is facing the problem of alienation , rootlessness and emptiness of life. The novels which have been chosen deals with the theme of alienation It also deals with her domestic life which represents Indian middle class families. The characters in this novels are everyday characters which represent modern man who is trapped in island of loneliness. This will be the sphere of work in this dissertation.
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
This also allows her to become conscious of women roles in society and teaches her on how to express herself in these problems. And in today’s literature, she is known for being a stand out and…
- 499 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
For this assignment, we will use what you learned in the Discussion Board entries and the MLA documentation information to form an essay on two or more works we have read.…
- 392 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
Flores 1 Demi Flores Professor Perin English 121 October 20, 2014 English 121 Midterm Essay “The novel is not the author’s confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become” (Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being). On many occasions, authors and artists use their work to put forth a message and stimulate awareness and discussion about a particular subject, usually (but not limited to) a political issue. Many children’s novels are used to teach younglings about equality or societal norms and manners. Margaret Atwood is an author that is no amateur to stimulating awareness about her concerns.…
- 1114 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
In many of the works we have read thus far, a character is isolated or alienated from or in conflict with his or her culture and/or environment. Two prime examples of this dilemma include Leonard Mead in “The Pedestrian,” and Miss Brill in “Miss Brill.” Labeled as outcasts whether willingly or unwillingly, the main characters struggle to identify with their current environment. Throughout these short stories it is evident they become more and more detached from their surroundings.…
- 404 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
Notes of a Desolate Man not only depicts a homosexual man’s wonder of the issue of life and death, of love and loneliness, but is a work that quests beyond that. One of the issues it addresses is the question of the collective identity, seen in that how the characters struggle between their Selves and the collective Other. That being said, this paper aims to discuss the question of collective cultural identity in the novel by focusing on the process of the protagonist, Shao, in using writing to position a new self confronting the collective. It argues the transcendence of the narrator’s self at length in crossing…
- 624 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Bibliography: of Twentieth – Century Women 's Literature. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1993. Gillespie, Carmen. Critical Companion to Toni Morrison. A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work. New York: Facts on File Incorporated, 2008. Li, Stephanie. Toni Morrison. A Biography. Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2010. Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark. Whiteness and Literary Imagination. Cambridge: Paperback, 1992. Soanes, Catherine. Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Taylor-Guthrie, Danille. Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994. Thomann Tewarson, Heidi. Toni Morrison. Hamburg: Rowohlt – Taschenbuch – Verlag, 2005.…
- 4740 Words
- 19 Pages
Best Essays -
Alienation is a common theme in the short stories “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and “Soldiers home”. In both these stories the main characters tend to alienate themselves from others and from the world around them. Meanwhile these characters Bartleby and Krebs have many things in common they are also in some ways different. They are both alienated but sometimes in different ways and to different extents.…
- 1224 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
At the onset, women are presented in In Custody as inferior to men. Yet as the novel progresses, Desai develops…
- 1152 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
Kiran Desai, author of Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard is an excellent writer with a flexible style of writing that can alternate between an invading, noisy tone mimicking the dirty cities full of loud inconsiderate people and a beautiful, dreamlike tone mirroring the heavens. Her novel is full of vivid imagery and precision which allows the reader to truly connect with her characters and their environment/setting. The novel is based around two key settings; the city of Shahkot and the guava orchard. Both of these settings are important as they help to reveal key themes and symbols of modern society and humanity.…
- 474 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
Most of Desai's works engage the complexities of modern Indian culture from a feminine perspective while highlighting the female Indian predicament of maintaining self-identity as an individual woman. Cry, the Peacock, Desai's first novel, chronicles the morbid dread, descent into madness, and suicide of Maya, a young Delhi housewife who is trapped in a loveless, arranged marriage to the much older Gautama, a misogynistic lawyer. The novel foreshadows several of the major recurring themes in Desai's works—the problems of independence and communication, the influence of the West, and the tensions between religious and domestic interaction. Set in the late 1950s, Voices in the City depicts Indian society still in transition more than a decade after India's independence from British rule. The novel is broken into four sections—the first three are named after a trio of young adult siblings from a Himalayan village who, separately and for different reasons, have moved to Calcutta. As the narrative follows each sibling individually, Desai illuminates the myriad ways that their respective social class defines their self-identities. In Bye-Bye, Blackbird, her first novelistic foray into a country beyond India, Desai portrays the intense xenophobia and prejudice that manifested in England during the influx of commonwealth immigration in the 1950s and 1960s. The novel opens with Dev, a young man from Calcutta, arriving in England to attend the London School of Economics. He eventually moves in with two old friends, Adit and Sarah, an Indian-English interracial couple. As Dev becomes enamoured with the English way of life, Adit becomes more and more nostalgic for his family's home in India. As in Cry, the Peacock, Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975) centers around a desperate wife looking to escape her marriage. The plot follows Sita, a housewife in her early forties, as she arrives on the rustic island of Manori after a…
- 2239 Words
- 9 Pages
Better Essays -
Anita Desai is an important women novelist in the firmament of Indian fiction in English. She unfolds lot of complex things for example, struggles of innocents, problems of human relationship and decay of Urdu language in her novels. This paper tries to depict how a college lecturer Deven tries to save Urdu language and associates with the age old great Urdu poet Nur. The aim of the two characters is to save great Urdu language in the postcolonial era but both of them have experienced in a negative way. The novelist linked the middle class rural Hindi lecturer and the yesteryear famous poet Nur in connection with the love of Urdu language.…
- 1866 Words
- 8 Pages
Better Essays -
Most of Shashi Deshpande's heroines are neither traditional nor radical in her ideas and practice. She might walk out of her home in protest against her sufferings but gradually realizes that walking out dose not solve her problems. In her writings, she focuses on women’s issues. The women deprived of love, understanding and companionship is the centre of her work.…
- 966 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
THESIS STATEMENT: desai uses humour as a tool to mock the inhabitants of Shahkot. Shahkot is a stereotypical small town in India. She is ridiculing the narrow-minded mentality of the people.…
- 431 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
1. Introduction Desai’s work is known for its rich and colorfullanguage, and detailed presentations ofsetting and character. Hullabaloo in theGuava Orchard presents a fictitious smalltown called Shahkot in North India. The townhas a mixed culture of traditional Indian socialnorms and of modern life, wherein therunaway Sampath Chawla, who just wants tobe left alone, is forced into being a holy man inspite of himself.…
- 653 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
The poetry of Kamala Das has the unique place in Indian poetry in English particularly written by women poets. She has developed the feminine poetic sensibility. There is an expression of her personal and public experiences in her poetry. The ideas, which she has expressed in her poems and in her autobiography, My Story, appear to be similar. She has written a great deal of inward - looking or ‘confessional poetry’. Her poetry is confessional because therein she has revealed her secret thoughts and feelings. Whatever she has disclosed about herself does not carry any sense of guilt or shame. Disclosure makes her feel easy. In her autobiography, My Story, she says, “I wanted to empty myself of all the secrets” (Das, Kamala, 1988: Preface). She doesn’t like to hide anything. She would like to disclose all her secrets. She feels happy by confessing her secret thoughts and feelings. The opening poem of the first volume of poetry, Summer in Calcutta (1965), is The Dance of the Eunuchs which sets the tone and temper of all the poems of this volume. “‘The Dance of the Eunuchs’ is a poem that successfully delineates the contrast between the superficial joy and the inner depravity. The eunuchs become the objective correlative of suppressed desires” (Datta, Vandana: 1995-96:20). Actually she would like to present her inner feelings of frustration through the dance of the eunuchs. “ ‘The Dance of Eunuchs’ objectifies through an external, familiar situation the poet’s strangled desire within … judgment of the sterile, unfulfilled, eunuchlike desires of the woman within the poet”(Kohli, Devindra, 1968:4). It was the summer season in which Kamala Das was looking at the dance of the eunuchs in Calcutta. The eunuch is incapable of performing the sexual act, therefore, of producing a child. She…
- 3538 Words
- 15 Pages
Powerful Essays