This paper aims to evaluate fictional publication of Mulk Raj Anand and Richard Wright from the perspective of social justice and liberation. Anand is marked by a heartiest desire to probe India’s marginalized people, while Wright related with logic and artistic temperament for Blacks as social and Psychological humanity. Both novelist believes in human equality and mutual respect, Their humanism manifests itself in a realistic Sketch of the situation by oppressed masses, suffering various types of disability, discrimination and alienation.
Anand’s humanism was the natural outcome of his childhood experiences with synthesis of western though in novel, “Man is the measure of al things”. The simmering anger and impatience that one often feels in his works, are the product of his passion for social justice and human dignity. Anand have been influenced by Marxian thinking and approaches to social reality. His disaffection with religion and his scant respect to superstitions with fears are parallel with Marxism. His socialist and modernist conception about modern India is without doubt an echo of Gandhi, Tagore and Nehru.
Richard Wright resembles Anand in most of his characteristics as a writer. He too is a committed artist with a missionary zeal for the restoration of dignity to his people. He has succeeded in creating credible characters, substantive stories and enthralling with absorbing plots. While Anand doesn’t conceals his sensation and political posturing on occasion, Wright merely shows contradiction and leaves it to the reader to make his own Judgment or inference. Where Wright wants to indicate the arrogance and imperialism of the American, he takes recourse to the ironic or satiric mode.
K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar has devoted a Chapter to Mulk Raj Anand. The writer pays a rich tribute to Anand for his portrayals as outcome of his personal knowledge and experience of such out castes in his life, and identification with their lot. He declares ‘Untouchable’ as most compact and artistic, ‘Coolie’ as most extensive in time and ‘two leaves and a bud’ as the most effective piece of sarcasm and satire. Iyengar comments the terrific intensity and concentration of the ‘Big Heart’ and Anand’s familiarity with the treated themes. Later, he expressed appreciation of the Anand for autobiographical strand, secure of history and narrative power critical comments on “Private life of a Indian Prince”. He further aids the Anand’s remarkable quality as vitality and sense of actuality. Iyengar’s critics is quite perceptive and unbiased in his book, ‘The elephant and the lotus’: A study of the Novels of Mulk Raj Anand.
Owens, Louis. Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel. University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, 1992,1994
Communism gradually gripped the throats of Southeast Asia due to inadequate leaders, like Lou Sears and Joe Bing. Their egotistical ways surely made a pessimistic impact on Sarkhan, and the natives of the country. On the other hand, there were leaders like Homer Atkins and John Colvin who’s best interest were for the Sarkhanese. Their devotion and desire affected the natives and economy in remarkable ways. Throughout this novel Homer Atkins was concerned “The Ugly American” because of his outward appearance. However, the true ugly American was revealed in the behaviors of Lou Sears and Joe
Zakaria captivates is readers at the beginning of his essay, he uses descriptive language and appeals to his audiences pathos describing what he thought of as the American dream back in the 1970s. He elaborates how over time his view of America changes, especially when he journey’s to the U.S. on a college scholarship. When visiting with friends in the U.S. Zakaria uses imagery to describe the “spacious suburban houses and the gleaming appliances” (Zakaria 461) most Americans at the time and compares it to life in India. Zakaria transitions from his method of comparison of India and America, and
Graham Greene is not, basically, a political writer but a writer who happens to be about politics in his later period of his novelistic career. In The Quiet American, he formed a political imagination that is based on both America and American policies involving colonial prestige. This paper conveys an overall representation that he dislikes America because it is a symbol of all that has gone wrong due to materialism, Godlessness and neutrality.
The reading this week dealt with minorities in America and America’s contradictory nature. It began stories of various Indian tribes who lost their land to the English settlers. The Choctaw and Cherokee Indians who were forced away from their homes towards barren stony mountains. Then Takaki switched his focal point to slavery and its significance within America’s past. Then, the sixth chapter ends with Irish emigration.
Many naive people, like myself for example, would see a book titled The Indian Lawyer, by James Welch, for the first time thinking that it must be about Indians with horses and bows and arrows trying to get revenge, but this novel written by James Welch is nothing of the sort. It is about the modern Indian, in today’s modern world, with modern problems, but written in a unique way. The book is written in many different characters points of views, and it adds a tremendous amount of detail and understanding to the story. In this paper I will discuss three of the main characters points of view and why this helped illuminate the story even more. By telling the story through multiple points of views, which gave more insight, it showed the reader
Louise Erdrich’s short story “American horse” is a literary piece written by an author whose works emphasize the American experience for a multitude of different people from a plethora of various ethnic backgrounds. While Erdrich utilizes a full arsenal of literary elements to better convey this particular story to the reader, perhaps the two most prominent are theme and point of view. At first glance this story seems to portray the struggle of a mother who has her son ripped from her arms by government authorities; however, if the reader simply steps back to analyze the larger picture, the theme becomes clear. It is important to understand the backgrounds of both the protagonist and antagonists when analyzing theme of this short story. Albetrine, who is the short story’s protagonist, is a Native American woman who characterizes her son Buddy as “the best thing that has ever happened to me”. The antagonist, are westerners who work on behalf of the United States Government. Given this dynamic, the stage is set for a clash between the two forces. The struggle between these two can be viewed as a microcosm for what has occurred throughout history between Native Americans and Caucasians. With all this in mind, the reader can see that the theme of this piece is the battle of Native Americans to maintain their culture and way of life as their homeland is invaded by Caucasians. In addition to the theme, Erdrich’s usage of the third person limited point of view helps the reader understand the short story from several different perspectives while allowing the story to maintain the ambiguity and mysteriousness that was felt by many Natives Americans as they endured similar struggles. These two literary elements help set an underlying atmos...
By utilizing an unbiased stance in his novel, Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe promotes cultural relativity without forcibly steering his audience to a particular mindset. He presents the flaws of the Ibo tribe the same way he presents the assets—without either condescension or pride; he presents the cruelties of the colonizers the same way he presents their open mindedness—without either resentment or sympathy. Because of this balance, readers are able to view the characters as multifaceted human beings instead of simply heroes and victims. Achebe writes with such subtle impartiality that American audiences do not feel guilty for the cruel actions of the colonizers or disgusted by the shocking traditions of the tribesmen. The readers stop differentiating the characters as either “tribesmen” or “colonizers”.
Regardless of culture, label and race, Leonard Peltier is one of the strongest positive role models from my growth into adulthood. As I began re-researching his story, I began to struggle. Contemporary views on non-Indian writers writing on Indian themes are not always positive. As I continued to develop the piece about the strong influence Peltier had on my views and myself today, I recalled my indoctrination into the imbalances that exist within the United ...
Prasad, Amar Nath. “Identity Crisis in V.S.Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas”. Critical Response to V. S. Naipaul and Mulk Raj Anand. Edited by Prasad, Amar Nath. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2003. Print.
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...
Gairola, Rahul. “Burning with Shame: Desire and South Asian Patriarchy, from Gayatri Spivak’s ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ to Deepa Mehta’s Fire.” Comparative Literature 54:4 (Fall 2002). 307-324. EBSCOhost.
Mahesh Dattani writes on the burning issues that beset the post-independence Indian society, whether it is communal discord, politics and crime, growing homosexuality or the gender bias. He uses stage to condemn many of the drawbacks prevailing in society. His plays depict marginalized groups of society, people who are considered misfits in a society where stereotyped attitudes and notions reign supreme. His plays have varied content and varied appeal.
His appeal is to the higher Indian classes not to oppress other humans being because of poverty or because they are of a lower class, but to provide them with the respect and the human dignity that is the birth right of every human being. One can see the anger with which Anand has written Coolie but yet he has been able to balance the realism with the actual truth without adding any extra contract to the real life situations of the collies in India. However Charles Dickens was incapable of controlling his anger in his novels but Mulk Raj Anand did a better job of controlling his anger about the oppression and the social injustice that he saw around him and managed to portray a balanced view of reality in his novels. (Agarwal,
V. S. Naipaul, the mouthpiece of displacement and rootlessness is one of the most significant contemporary English Novelists. Of Indian descent, born in Trinidad, and educated in England, Naipaul has been placed as a rootless nomad in the cultural world, always on a voyage to find his identity. The expatriate sensibility of Naipaul haunts him throughout his fiction and other works, he becomes spokesman of emigrants. He delineates the Indian immigrant’s dilemma, his problems and plights in a fast-changing world. In his works one can find the agony of an exile; the pangs of a man in search of meaning and identity: a dare-devil who has tried to explore myths and see through fantasies. Out of his dilemma is born a rich body of writings which has enriched diasporic literature and the English language.