The approach employed in the present article is binarism. Theoretically, in my opinion, binarism seems to operate at cognitive level. It pertains to value orientation in the subjective world of human beings and thereby to the world orientation. In order to define the place of a thing in the world and an individual’s association and desirability, we are forced to rely on binary approach of studying the world. Coming to literature, I discuss the binary terms of (historical) fact and fiction. Here, I have tried to apply the binary approach and have tried to analyze the binary value orientation in Arundhati Roy’s novel ‘The God of Small Things. I want to demonstrate that it is the tension between the superior and Inferior in the fiction as well as in fact that forms the subject matter of the chapter one of the novel. The present study is based on the textual interpretation. The focus of the study is to analyze various discourses based on the caste stratification, the patriarchal joint family, the feminist voices, the political grouping etc voiced in the novel.
1 Introduction:
The God of Small Things, the Booker prize winning Novel by Arundhati Roy, is a powerful predicament of a powerlessness of the people so called citizen of India. The novel presents an excellent and deep study and understanding, sociological and psychological, of various social groups and social sections of the society. Roy has succeeded to a great extent to make those voices speak which silenced in the actual and practical, welfare, democratic, socialistic and liberal society in India. Multiple Voices of the various downtrodden sections of Indian society articulate their whims, wishes, aspiration silently. Various groups such as dalits (untouchables), l...
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.... He has discovered or for that matter invented a substitute culprit responsible for what has happened in the form of ‘necessary politics’ as he calls it. Though himself a political man, he successfully throws away the blame of being unsuccessful. He being very professional of what he termed as ‘necessary politics’ is able to emerge unscathed through chaos. Though the same emerging big God has infected his faculties as well but he is able to hide the symptoms like a chameleon hides himself to catch a prey.
Works Cited
Marx, K and Friechrich, E. (1968) Selected Works. London:Lawrence & Wishart Pulications.
Marx, K and Friechrich E. ( 1970) The German Ideology. London:Lawrence & Wishart Pulications.
Marx, K and Friechrich E. (2008) On Religion. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.
Roy, Arundhati. (1997) The God of Small Things. New York: Random House.
Social corruption and inequality are obvious within the deepest parts of India where the rich are fat and uncaring, compared with the lesser castes where “the story of a poor man’s life is written on his back” (Adiga 27). The pressure to escape the difficulty of peasant life can be compared to a zoo, where when Britain left, India became
Owing to India’s diversity, these identities are determined by caste, ancestry, socioeconomic class, religion, sexual orientation and geographic location, and play an important role in determining the social position of an individual (Anne, Callahan & Kang, 2011). Within this diversity, certain identities are privileged over others, due to social hierarchies and inequalities, whose roots are more than a thousand years old. These inequalities have marginalized groups and communities which is evident from their meagre participation in politics, access to health and education services and
In this chapter Mahasweta Devi’s anthology of short stories entitled Breast Stories to analyze representations of violence and oppression against women in name of gender. In her Breast Stories, Devi twice evokes female characters from ancient Hindu mythology, envisions them as subalterns in the imagined historical context and, creates a link with the female protagonists of her short stories. As the title suggests, Breast Stories is a trilogy of short stories; it has been translated and analyzed by Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak and, in Spivak’s view, the ‘breast’ of a woman in these stories becomes the instrument of a brutal condemnation of patriarchy. Indeed, breast can be construed as the motif for violence in the three short stories “Draupadi,” “Breast-Giver,” and “Behind the Bodice,”
Right from the ancient epics and legends to modern fiction, the most characteristic and powerful form of literary expression in modern time, literary endeavour has been to portray this relationship along with its concomitants. Twentieth century novelists treat this subject in a different manner from those of earlier writers. They portray the relationship between man and woman as it is, whereas earlier writers concentrated on as it should be. Now-a-days this theme is developing more important due to rapid industrialization and growing awareness among women of their rights to individuality, empowerment, employment and marriage by choice etc. The contemporary Indian novelists in English like Anita Desai, Sashi Deshpande, Sashi Tharoor, Salman Rusdie, Shobha De, Manju Kapoor, Amitav Ghosh etc. deal with this theme minutely in Indian social milieu.
This report summarizes my Ph.D. Research progress from Jan 2015-June 2015. The focus of the study in this chapter is on Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel, The Palace of Illusion. It studies and analyzes the Mahabharata from a woman’s perspective, i.e. on how Draupadi would have felt and narrated the epic story. The authoress fictionalized history and mythicized it from a new perspective. The Palace of Illusions is a narration of Mahabharata in first person as the protagonist seeing all the events during her life time from her view point. The study explores the portrayal of the myths created by the writer, their divergence from the original text and their point of similarities. The elements of mythopoeia, fantasy, storytelling, fiction and myth making are identified with the struggle of women to regain her lost prestige. Most of the Indian literature is based on patriarchal mythology. Significant theoretical and critical work has been prepared on male-centered myths.
In the novel A Passage to India, written by Forster, he is bias towards the women in the novel. The society when Forster wrote the novel in the 1920’s had different views on women than it has today a...
Though globalised and at the pinnacle of technological success, the world fails to respect the fellow human as a living creature. People have started respecting others for money, power and caste. Humanity and brotherhood are at the verge of extinction. Loss of humanity is going to be the identity of mankind, who lost their conscience in the darkness of discriminations like caste, religion, language and race. The issue is discussed elaborately by Bama in Sangati, who in the preface of her novel declares, “Sangati, which has as its theme the growth, decline, culture, and liveliness of Dalit women, changed me as well. Even in times of trouble, boredom, and depression, the urge grew to demolish the troubles and to live happily. To bounce like a ball that has been hit became my deepest desire, and not to curl up and collapse because of the blow”
The debut novel by Arvind Adiga was published in 2008 and talks about the life of Balram Halwai, the son of an auto rickshaw puller who lived in a village in Dhanbad with his grandmother, parents, brother and extended family. The story has been told from Balram’s point of view who spent his childhood in ‘darkness’-in the impoverished area of rural India-in poverty and illiteracy, as he had to drop out of his school because his family had to arrange for his cousin’s dowry and so they couldn’t afford to pay for his education. His name itself is the proof that the dominant caste system in India has divided its population into higher and lower social classes. Balram’s frustration is evident from the fact that he critizes the caste system and points
Gandhi’s first hand experiences in dealing with discrimination began in South Africa. In Chapter VII ‘Some Experiences,’ Gandhi recalls on his first days of his arrival the incident at the Durban court where he was asked to remove his turban. He refused and left the court. He quickly learned that Indians where divided in different groups. “One was that of Musalman merchants, who would call themselves ‘Arabs.’ Another was that of Hindu, and yet another of Parsi, clerks. The Hindu clerks were neither here nor there, unless they cast in their lot with the ‘Arabs.’ The Parsi clerks would call themselves Persians. These three classes had some social relations with one another. But by far the largest class was that composed of Tamil, Telugu and North Indian indentured and freed labourers.” Gandhi learns the plight of the indentured laborers later on in his stay in South Africa.
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.
Nicholas B. Dirks. (2011). Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton University Press
The oppression of women and their struggle for equality can be seen throughout several cultures, one specifically is set in India through the novel The God of Small Things. This struggle for equality is descriptively illustrated to portray the dynamic differences in social status that occur between men and women. Roy depicts the oppression that women experienced in India under the patriarchal system, while illustrating the glorification that patriarchy received which in turn hindered gender equality, as well as facilitated sexism toward females.
Indian Writing in English has a special status in English Literature owing to its treatment of women characters. Short stories help the writers to project select characters in an impressive way to the readers. In Indian context the status of woman in a society and her treatment is very different from those of her European or American counterparts. Women are depicted both as a good and evil in literature by various writers. However, in no literature is a women stereotyped as was done in Indian literature. Away from the mythical stereotyping of women, Ruskin Bond portrayed his women in a different way. The female characters of his short stories range from a small child to a grandmother. These characters are as powerful as men and have left a strong impression on the readers. I have chosen following eight short stories for the critical analysis of Ruskin Bond’s Women in this paper.
The measured dialogue between Reader and Editor serves as the framework through which Gandhi seeks to discredit accepted terms of civilization and denounce the English. These principle characters amply assist in the development o...
Fiction has its major contribute to in the literary world of Indian English. Fiction has been the most influential form of literary expression. It has acquired an esteemed position in Indian English literature. It considers that the novel is the greatest and most adequate form of literature to express the skill and thoughts. The fiction has formed incredible change in the Indian English literature, and it has become the tradition in Indian literature. The fiction has retained the thrust from Gandhian age. The fiction is the best mean to expose social realism, the trio, Mulk Raj Anand, R.K.Narayan and Raja Rao has given new aspect to the Indian English literature. The three trios expand the novel form and it becomes the important for social improvement. The main changes occurred with the writing of this trio was to transfer the west impression from Indian fiction. The Indian English fiction took a innovative twist with the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children in the 80’s. In the nineties, however fiction writing has broken down new grounds and created new