This paper aims to explore varied facets of human relations in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss. This novel tries to discuss, at great length, the grave implications of colonized mindsets for individual, familial and social life. Besides, this paper makes a comprehensive analysis of colonialization, postcolonialism, cultural collisions, cultural encounters, gender bias, immigrants’bitter experiences, insurgency and racial discriminations in respect to the changing pattern of human relations. This, also, shows how human relations, even as influenced by love, longing and crosscultural contacts, are competently handled in a humane manner articulating diasporic experiences of nostalgia and in-betweeness.
Kiran Desai, as the youngest woman to receive the coveted Man Booker Prize, was born in Chandigarh, India on September 3, 1971. Spending her early years in Pune and Mumbai, she had her first education in the Cathedral and John Connon School. After some years of education in Delhi and England, she joined creative writing as though to focus all her attention in the vigorous pursuit of shaping her creative talent.
Built around the fate of a few powerless individuals, Kiran Desai's second novel The Inheritance of Loss manages to explore human relations from varied angle. “Human Relationship is what a writer is involved with. Person to person and person to society relationships-these are two primary concern of a certain writer.”1 The story runs parallel to a large extent in Kalimpong, a small city at the foot of the Himalayas and New York in the United States of America. The Inheritance of Loss gives a graphic description of richly variegated human relationship- husband and wife, father and daughter, father and son, ma...
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Within his writing, Nam Le achieves autonomy by expressing authentic traits through the presence of the novel’s characters. In Le’s novel The Boat, the author introduces key behaviors and personas within the first story of the narrative. Though he could approach culture from a Vietnamese perspective, the writer offers a transnational impression throughout the story. By including various characters in numerous roles, Nam Le appropriately applies and articulates the title of his first story, “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,” which focuses on the ideas of lineage, identity, and inspiration.
In James Patterson’s thriller novel, I, Alex Cross, Alex Cross and his family living in the nation’s capital must solve a beloved niece’s murder, and uncover the truth about the power players of the country -- all while nurturing the growing wound of the loss of a family member. The idea and importance of the connection between loss and familial support and love runs through the entire story, and one key lesson suggests that no matter how the loss of a family member affects the family, the results will often be similar, if not the same: the remaining members strive to support one another and often work together to find the true reason for the loss, always leading to a better and brighter future for everyone.
When Sripathi and his family receive the news of Maya’s and her husband’s fatal road accident, they experience a dramatic up heaval. For Sripathi, this event functioned as the distressed that inaugurated his cultural and personal process of transformation and was played out on different levels. First, his daughter’s death required him to travel to Canada to arrange for his granddaughter’s reverse journey to India, a move that marked her as doubly diasporic sensibility. Sripathi called his “foreign trip” to Vancouver turned out to be an experience of deep psychic and cultural dislocation, for it completely “unmoors him from the earth after fifty-seven years of being tied to it” (140). Sripathi’s own emerging diasporic sensibility condition. Not only must he faced his own fear of a world that is no longer knowable to him, but, more importantly, he must face his granddaughter. Nandana has been literally silenced by the pain of her parent’s death, and her relocation from Canada to Tamil Nadu initially irritated her psychological condition. To Sripathi, however, Nandana’s presence actsed as a constant reminder of his regret of not having “known his daughter’s inner life” (147) as well as her life in Canada. He now recognizeed that in the past he denied his daughter his love in order to support his
Indian diasporic fiction is the narrative of identity crises, alienation, discrimination, nostalgia, a certain inability to return to the roots from where they have descended.
In America, long gone are the days of gender based marital roles where the man financially provides for the family, and where the woman is uneducated, maintains the household, and regards her husband as superior. In today’s western society, education is for all individuals, marital roles are defined by both spouses, and needs are equally important regardless of gender. In contrast, there are cultures still existing who value the old marital traditions. The protagonist, simply referred to as “the husband”, in Divakaruni’s The Disappearance, is a fully developed character who values these old traditions still active in his homeland of India; ill equipped to cope with western culture and unable to respect his wife’s needs, this static character is a victim of his actions.
This research study focuses at negotiating the shifting identities of immigrants and their traumas in postcolonial literature with reference to Lahiri’s fiction. The suffering of every immigrant in achieving a shelter and identity in a foreign land often leads to loss of identity. The qualms, agitation and nervousness of immigrants often increase the issues of identity, and immigrants often feel alienated in the midst of exotic land, they even start to think about achieving new identities. Stuart Hall (1987) a famous cultural theorist discusses the issues of cultural identity and migration as he says “Migration is a one way trip. There is no “home” to go back to”. Change in the place and ambience totally change the circumstances in the lives of immigrants in Lahiri’s fiction, they often try to cling to their own cultural identity and costumes. But the cultural effect is often so strong that it deeply affects the identity of immigrants and they ultimately try to change their identities. Immigrants make an absurd attempt to get mingled in the culture of foreign country. Hall discusses “Cultural identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference” (235).
One statement in the beginning of the book was especially poignant to any one who studies Indian culture, It is easy for us to feel a vicarious rage, a misery on behalf of these people, but Indians, dead and alive would only receive such feelings with pity or contempt; it is too easy to feel sympathy for a people who culture was wrecked..
Recent years have witnessed a large number of Indian English fiction writers who have stunned the literary world with their works. The topics dealt with are contemporary and populist and the English is functional, communicative and unpretentious. Novels have always served as a guide, a beacon in a conflicting, chaotic world and continue to do so. A careful study of Indian English fiction writers show that there are two kinds of writers who contribute to the genre of novels: The first group of writers include those who are global Indians, the diasporic writers, who are Indians by birth but have lived abroad, so they see Indian problems and reality objectively. The second group of writers are those born and brought up in India, exposed to the attitudes, morale and values of the society. Hence their works focus on the various social problems of India like the plight of women, unemployment, poverty, class discrimination, social dogmas, rigid religious norms, inter caste marriages, breakdown of relationships etc.
Anita Desai was in a family where the father was Indian and her mom was German and with this strange and unusual heritage had an effect on the way that Anita understood different cultures. Desai was born in northern Indian town located at the foot hills of the Himalaya Mountains. She grew up in an old part of the capital called Delhi. Her family spoke 3 languages and those were Hindi, English and German but Desai learned English at school first. Desai wrote her first English story when she was 7 years old and published it when she was 9 years old. Anita Desai is also the author of “A Devoted Son” that shows 2 messages on how an India are like and one message on what it is like when you get old and your kids start to take care of you.
During the time period this literature was written India gained independence from Britain, and separated into India and Pakistan. This hurt people who had loved ones in other countries, and was devoted to India, etc. The literature had a prominent loss of self theme because of heartbreak. The motifs pain, addiction, and devotion to a single beloved develop the theme of loss of self through heartbreak in
Ramamoorthy, P. “My Life is My Own: A Study of Shashi Deshpande’s Women” Feminism and Recent Fiction in English Ed. Sushila Singh. New Delhi: Prestige, 1991.
By portraying women that find themselves in extraordinary situations at various points of their lives, Nair and Lahiri-whose novel does not focus primarily on women-challenge the traditional roles Indian women, are ascribed. Most of the women they depict in their novels are particularly strong women who are determined to fight for themselves no matter what. Doing so, they often break the codes the society has imposed on them, either deliberately or as a side effect. Crossing the lines of what is and what is not allowed in human relationships is what Nair's novel examines, as well as the consequences that it brings for all who are involved either directly or indirectly. The characters in “Namesake” are strong women who fight for their rights and are prepared to face the consequences. None of them is, however, able to imagine how different-and much crueler-the real consequences can be from what they expect. There is a great discrepancy between what they imagine would be an appropriate punishment if they cross the lines and what they really have to face when they do. What might seem to be a normal behaviour to a Western woman can have literally lethal consequences if performed by a South Indian middle class woman, acting on a whim or following one's dreams regardless of what the others may say is a behaviour that not only is not tolerated, but is punished rather severely.
Globalisation is one of the issues which has been dealt with seriously in the novel. Globalization is the convergent point of various cultures, emergence of brotherhood, integration, assisimilation et al. But globalization has its demerits also. The people seem to threaten each other, moral values are eroded, societal pressures crop up and eventhough people begin to understand and respect each other, they are thwarted by loss of identity. Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss present such a picture of globalized India. Globalization seems to be both a boon and a bane for the characters in the novel.The characters like Jemubhai Patel, Mr. and Mrs Mistry, Sai, Biju, Nonita and Lolita are the victims of globalization. It seems to be the key cause for both their suffering and progress. As an intelligent writer and careful observer of human behaviour, Kiran Desai fulfills the responsibility o...
Mahasweta Devi, always writes for deprived section of people. She is a loving daughter, a clerk, a lecturer, a journalist, an editor, a novelist, a dramatist and above all an ardent social activist. Her stories bring to the surface not only the misery of the completely ignored tribal people, but also articulate the oppression of w...
The Das parents’ negligent relationship with their children in Clear Light of Day mirrors India’s independence from Britain. Before their deaths, Mr. and Mrs. Das were preoccupied and inattentive to their four children, Raja, Tara, Bim, and Baba. They spent most of their time at the club, playing “their daily game of bridge” (Desai 50). This pastime is so important to them that they neglect to take care of their kids. For example, Mrs. Das tires of “washing and powdering” Baba, her mentally disabled baby, and she complains, “My bridge is suffering” (103). Mr. Das also does not focus on his children and “he [goes] through the day without addressing a word to them” (53). Unfortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Das are unable to ever form a loving relationship with their children because they both pass away. After Mrs. Das falls into a...