Critical Appreciation Of Arundhati Roy

2316 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: nuclear war essay

Literature has some purpose to fulfill, some thoughts to be contemplated and some plans to be acted upon for the welfare of humanity. Arundhati Roy is one of the foremost writers of this socially committed tradition showing exceptional awareness of the social crisis and sensitivity to the problems. She is one of the few Indian Writers in English who is actively interested in contemporary social-political issues which is amply evidenced in a number of articles, interviews and books she wrote on various topics in recent years. Arundhati Roy, the author shows acute sensitiveness to her surroundings which is reflected in her nonfictional works, books and essays. She has been an impassioned critic of globalization and American influence and felt …show more content…

Such a time is an hour of reckoning for the writers, intellectuals and all those men and women who listen to the dictates of their conscience. Presenting a grim and dreadful scenario of what the situation will be like if there is a nuclear war, Arundhati Roy observes very succinctly “our cities and forests, our fields and villages will burn for days. Rivers will turn to poison. The air will become fire. The wind will spread the flames. When everything there is to burn has burned and the fires die, smoke will rise and shut out the sun. The earth will be enveloped in darkness. There will be no day_ only interminable night. Temperatures will drop to far below freezing and nuclear winter will set in. Water will turn toxic ice. Radioactive fallout will seep through the earth and contaminate ground water. Most living things, animal and vegetable, fish and fowl, will die. Only rats and cockroaches will breed and multiply and compete with foraging, relict humans for what little food there is…. Burned and blind, bald and ill, carrying the cancerous carcasses of our children in our arms, where shall we go? What shall we drink? What shall we breathe?” (The End Of Imagination 62) . Moreover, who will be sure as to who will survive? The author mocks at the suggestions of some of the medical specialists of taking iodine pills, remaining indoors, consuming only stored water and food and avoiding milk. She woefully laments that it is not so. And hence

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Not Again By Arundhati Roy

    1022 Words  | 3 Pages

    She has criticized the caste system, the Indian government, and now, the United States, which threatens to become the newest world hegemon. Though her opinions are not indicative of those held by the greater Indian population, she serves the useful function of pushing rhetoric to the left, and, in doing so, raises many of the crucial issues that India must address in today’s world. “Not again” is an article criticizing the leaders of America and their foreign policy, which she sees as full of reductionist dichotomies and a thinly veiled attempt to propagate corporate capitalism. As she says in “Not again,” “Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons” (3). Though Roy is clearly denouncing the United States government in her article, the hidden message is the implication that this rhetoric—and action—by the United States can have for developing countries, among them

    Read More

  • Alas, Babylon: Survival and Isolation

    900 Words  | 2 Pages

    When drastic times occur and sweep one of everything they own, do they have a plan of action? Will they be prepared for a life without power, resources, and stability? Many times when people are faced with this situation they find themselves unprepared and unable to live in such conditions. They lose the connections with the world, the water they drink is likely to get contaminated, and the scarcity of goods is a threat to themselves and anyone left alive. Everywhere around them there is death and destruction leaving them isolated in their own dystopia. Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon illustrates a nuclear bomb simulation. In such a way, he gives the readers a taste of isolation and survival needs when facing such drastic times. So the question is: how does one survive in the isolation left behind from a nuclear war?

    Read More

  • Wernher Von Braun: Idealist And Visionary

    855 Words  | 2 Pages

    Seventy-one years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear power is rarely recognized as a solution to the energy crisis. Instead, it is associated with the most violent pits of Hell: warfare. The demands of warfare exhaust the scientific community and deplete its resources, as well as decimating the human population.

    Read More

  • Hiroshima by John Hersey

    1442 Words  | 3 Pages

    Through his uses of descriptive language Hersey exposes to the reader the physical, emotional, Psychological and structural damage caused by a nuclear attack. He shows the reader how peoples are physically changed but also how emotional psychologically scared by this act of horror. Through Hersey’s graphic detail of the horror after the bomb and the effects years after he shock the reader while also give the message that we shouldn’t let this happen again. In the book Hiroshima the author John Hersey exposes that a nuclear attack is not simply a disaster that fades away when the rubble is removed and buildings are rebuilt but an act of horror that changes the course of people’s live.

    Read More

  • A Closer Look at the Bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

    1500 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sawada, Aiko., Bar-On, Dan., Chaitin, Julia. “Life After the Atomic Bomb.” USA Today; New York.

    Read More

  • Self-Interest as a Driving Force in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things

    1426 Words  | 3 Pages

    Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is a novel about how people’s pursuit of their own interests, influenced by the cultural and social contexts in which they live, ultimately determines their behavior. Through utilizing subthemes of self-preservation, the maintenance of social status/the status quo, and power, she portrays Velutha as the only wholly moral character in the story, who, because of his goodness, becomes the target of frequent deception. Roy argues that human nature is such that human beings will do whatever they feel is necessary to serve their own self-interests.

    Read More

  • The Portable Phonograph Analysis

    813 Words  | 2 Pages

    In only a matter of time, the surrounding environment is destroyed, natural sources become contaminated and useless, the temperature drops, and suddenly winter is paying a lingering visit. A nuclear winter. It is a definite possibility in today’s society, a thought that casts shivers down spines. It is the topic that is being addressed by Walter Van Tilburg Clark in his short story, “The Portable Phonograph”, and it is the possible occurrence that is being assessed by James Roberts in the article “How to Survive Nuclear Winter”. In the short story, a group of four men is forced to survive during a nuclear winter, and they have been for a certain period of time. So far, the men have found sources that they can live off of, however, the primary

    Read More

  • The Chrysalids Essay

    883 Words  | 2 Pages

    What would the world be like if a nuclear war erupted? John Wyndham addresses this in The Chrysalids. He makes evident the ramifications of a nuclear holocaust by showing mutation of survivors, the rise of dystopian societies and how a nuclear war would threaten love. John Wyndham is warning the world what would if a nuclear war happened

    Read More

  • Warfare In The Short Story Grace Period By Will Baker

    422 Words  | 1 Pages

    When one thinks about warfare, the average mental picture is usually a movie war scene with soldiers, and planes; very rarely do people think about about the average Joe, trimming his hedge. In the short story “Grace Period”, by Will Baker, there is a man trimming his hedge outside with an electric hedge trimmer when a nuclear bomb is dropped; his wife has gone to get the mail. In “an instant [he felt as] everything stretched just slightly, a few millimeters, then contracted again” (Baker, 1989, p. 7). Although the character does not know what is happening, the reader may realize that this description is a high altitude nuclear burst. The article “Nuclear Weapon Effects”, by John Pike, describes what a nuclear bomb’s effects are and what could happen if one was dropped. Based on clues in the story and the information from the article, the reader can determine what is happening to the man and what he can expect will happen to him.

    Read More

  • The Atomic Bomb Changed the World Forever

    2532 Words  | 6 Pages

    The development and usage of the first atomic bombs has caused a change in military, political, and public functionality of the world today. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki revolutionized warfare by killing large masses of civilian population with a single strike. The bombs’ effects from the blast, extreme heat, and radiation left an estimated 140,000 people dead. The bombs created a temporary resolution that lead to another conflict. The Cold War was a political standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States that again created a new worldwide nuclear threat. The destructive potential of nuclear weapons had created a global sweep of fear as to what might happen if these terrible forces where unleashed again. The technology involved in building the first atomic bombs has grown into the creation of nuclear weapons that are potentially 40 times more powerful than the original bombs used. However, a military change in strategy has came to promote nuclear disarmament and prevent the usage of nuclear weapons. The technology of building the atomic bomb has spurred some useful innovations that can be applied through the use of nuclear power. The fear of a potential nuclear attack had been heightened by the media and its release of movies impacting on public opinion and fear of nuclear devastation. The lives lost after the detonation of the atomic bombs have become warning signs that changed global thinking and caused preventative actions.

    Read More

  • Rachel Carson And The Cold War Essay

    756 Words  | 2 Pages

    Americans had knowledge of the events taking place during the war, but Carson shed a light on the ripple effects that the environment was experiencing. Silent Spring brings the focus to different threats that had arisen because of the war. In a way, Carson places the blame for the deterioration of the environment on mankind as a whole. In the past, wars had been fought without any use of nuclear weaponry. Carson’s writing really emphasizes the fault of mankind’s decision to hurt the environment. “Along with the possibility of extinction of mankind by nuclear war, the central problem of our age has therefore become the contamination of man’s total environment with such substances of incredible potential for harm – substances that accumulate in the tissues of plants and animals and even penetrate the germ cells to shatter or alter the very material of heredity upon which the shape of the future depends.” (Carson, 181). The writing technique Carson uses in Silent Spring has a way of making the reader feel guilty, especially considering that at the time of publication there was so much environmental destruction occurring. Carson’s writing helped to educate the American population of the harm to the environment caused by the Cold War. Because the war’s dangerous strategies provided such a strong backbone for Carson’s argument, the American public was very receptive of the content and themes presented in Silent

    Read More

  • The Individual vs. Big Brother in 1984

    1184 Words  | 3 Pages

    To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another, and do not live alone — to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone:

    Read More

  • Comparing Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Chinua Archebe’s Things Fall Apart

    3022 Words  | 7 Pages

    Literature is an amazing form of expression. A multitude of things can be said so in so many creative ways. Whether the story that is being told is true or fiction, the important thing is how it is told. The structure of a story is what gives it power, strength and the ability to move readers. Arundhati Roy and Chinua Achebe are two very talented authors who express their stories in two very different and unique ways. Although their stories are structurally different they have many similarities regarding class structure, societal issues, moral and family betrayals, and tragedy.

    Read More

  • Nuclear Weapons Essay

    961 Words  | 2 Pages

    The world and its people have been witnessing very painful misfortunes that have gripped the biosphere and its inhabitants for several years. Nuclear weapons are those armaments which have convoyed humans, since the Second World War until the days we live, in peace and in secure world. Nuclear weapons pose a threat to the world and its beings, which have a tremendous role in the improvement and fruition of life on earth. The history of nuclear weapons proliferations begins with the stressed political situation between the United States of America and socialist Russia, recognized in the world literature as the Cold War. This anxious political situation among United States, Russia and their allies, made the world to introduce for the first time with the destructive weapons that man has ever encountered. As Jim McCluskey argues that there are not any weapons that can homicide millions of people for a short period of time apart from nuclear weapons (McCluskey 1). Indeed, the proliferation and the usage of nuclear weapons have changed the world political leadership's, in order to get the world safer for people and the environment in which they live and function. McCluskey goes on to allege that the peace and security in the world would not prevail if nuclear weapons are existing (McCluskey 2). However, such individuals should be set to throwaway the usage of nuclear weapons, in order that life in this planet will continue even after our death, enabling other generations to live in a safety world. Several individuals and critics claim that the proliferation of nuclear weapons threatens the life of human society, and in meanwhile violating the human rights to live in a safe and peaceful world. Nuclear weapons are proficient of doing mass...

    Read More

  • Environmental Degradation in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger

    2584 Words  | 6 Pages

    Aravind Adiga in his debut novel The White Tiger, which won the Britain’s esteemed Booker Prize in 2008, highlights the suffering of a subaltern protagonist in the twenty first century known as materialism era. Through his subaltern protagonist Balram Halwai, he highlights the suffering of lower class people. This novel creates two different India in one “an India of Light and an India of Darkness” (Adiga, p. 14). The first one represents the prosperous India where everyone is able to dream a healthy and comfortable life. The life of this “Shining India” reflects through giant shopping malls, flyovers, fast and furious life style, neon lights, modern vehicles and a lot of opportunities which creates hallucination that India is competing with western countries and not far behind from them. But, on the other side, the life nurtures with poverty, scarcity of foods, life taking diseases, inferiority, unemployment, exploitation and humiliation, homelessness and environmental degradation in India of darkness.

    Read More

More about Critical Appreciation Of Arundhati Roy

Open Document