To ‘appropriate something’ in the Oxford English Dictionary is explained as “The making of a thing private property, whether another's or (as now commonly) one's own; taking as one's own or to one's own use” (OED). Some Anglophone Indian novelists wrote their works in English although their mother tongue is a different one. India has various languages, besides Hindi and English, which are present and currently spoken in individual states of India. Nevertheless, Hindi and English are contemporary the official languages of the Republic of India. Raja Rao once said that “[w]e cannot write like the English. We should not. We cannot write only as Indians. We have grown to look at the large world as part of us” . Anglophone Indian novelists always …show more content…
The novel was seen by “The Guardian” as “[t]he first literary manifesto to point to an Indian way of appropriating the English language” (Alterno). Kanthapura is a microcosm of India in that a simple village grandmother illustrates the events. She narrates the story in English, which is suspicious because a grandmother in a small Indian village rather speaks an Indian language, as Hindi or Urdu, than English. The focaliser of the story is Moorthy, who understands and speaks English, since he studied in the city. As mentioned in the introduction, Rao never wanted to write as the English, because Indians are shaped by their own culture that influences their writing and language. Therefore, Rao appropriated English as the novels literary language to simplify the traceability of the story through its special narration. Many aspects could not have been told, if a young inhabitant of the village would have told the story without the old women’s wisdom. The “tempo of Indian life” (Rao) and culture should be transmitted through the eyes of a grandmother because she would be more reliable than a young narrator. The reliability of a young narrator would be questioned because (s)he never could have gained that impressions of Kanthapura and the events surrounding the villagers. Nevertheless the appropriation of English can be examined in the writing style of Rao, which he described as “not
In the novel, action speaks louder than characters. Each character in the novel represents the dark reality of the society. Locution and the composition of provocative verses leave gaps, which should be filled up by the readers. The character of Lakshmi is the epitome for many unknown and unnoticed Lakshmies, who are the victims of Trafficking and Sexual Slavery world-wide. Through Lakshmi’s stream of Consciousness the readers get conscious about the atrocities done to poor children and women for the sake of money.
Malkani, Gautam. Londonstani. Rotten English: a literary anthology. By Dohra Ahmad New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007.
...ds them, in accents they are accustomed not to trust” (Lahiri 108). This too is a form of double-consciousness as both Ashoke and Ashima are aware of the loss of culture, of their own identity in their children as their children shun India and by extension Bengali culture, and no longer sound like the people they miss and love back in Calcutta. It is extremely sad, because in order to make a better life for themselves and for their family they came to America, but because of the search for opportunity, they also lost their sense of identity in their children even though they tried their hardest to create a kind of Bengali community in America as well. Quietly, unlike Dre, Ashoke, more than Ashima comes to understand that he cannot push his culture upon his children, especially Gogol, and instead allows Gogol to navigate being Bengali and being American, for himself.
Kothari employs a mixture of narrative and description in her work to garner the reader’s emotional investment. The essay is presented in seventeen vignettes of differing lengths, a unique presentation that makes the reader feel like they are reading directly from Kothari’s journal. The writer places emphasis on both her description of food and resulting reaction as she describes her experiences visiting India with her parents: “Someone hands me a plate of aloo tikki, fried potato patties filled with mashed channa dal and served with a sweet and a sour chutney. The channa, mixed with hot chilies and spices, burns my tongue and throat” (Kothari). She also uses precise descriptions of herself: “I have inherited brown eyes, black hair, a long nose with a crooked bridge, and soft teeth
Throughout ‘To the Welsh Critic Who Doesn’t Find Me Identifiably Indian’, Arundhati Subramaniam argues that the “the business of language”, or the language that one speaks, should not dictate one’s identity. This becomes crucial in her poem as she uses this argument in response to a Welsh Critic, who does not identify her as being Indian. The poem substantiates her perspective of language through various techniques. For instance: Subramaniam reinforces the critic’s cultural assumptions in a defiant tone; she questions him, repeatedly, about language and eventually she challenges him, insisting he should explain to her how he would receive her as “Identifiably Indian”.
The stories and book thus gives the ample examples of successful cultural translation. Lahiri’s characters reveal almost every facets of life, their migration from their native land to their settlement in abroad and thus bring forth different aspects of human life. The stories are the reflection of what Indian immigrants really experience after leaving the country.
In her unornamented style, Lahiri portrays the tension between the family tradition and individual freedom. The central characters of the novel are woven to highlight the social and cultural polarities. While Ashima and Ashok Ganguli are conscious and nostalgic about their ‘home’, this feeling, on the other hand, is simultaneously contested in the characters of the siblings, Gogol and Sonia, who try to ‘root’ themselves in America. The travails of Ganguli seniors is explicative of the two most important phases of the immigrant settlement, viz., nostalgia for the homeland, laced with anxiety and dilemma in a strange land; and secondly, tentative and calibrated attempts at embracing foreign culture while keeping one’s native customs and tradition in perspective. Thus, while they have tried to assimilate the Americanism to the nitty-gritty’s of their everyday life.
She handled typical Indian themes and has successfully depicted the dilemmas and conflicts of women in their interactions and dealings with their partners. Through the aspects of kindness, tolerance and understanding of human relationships this novel can better be accepted by the readers. The despair and disappointments in the life of Jaya is clearly understood by the readers from the very beginning of the novel. She begins the novel by saying
A story can be seen and interpreted in many different ways, and the use of critical lens help the reader get a deeper understanding of what is actually happening in the story. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy can be interpreted using many of the critical lenses, but mostly the cultural, historical and feminists lens. The setting of the story is a small town in India named Ayemenem, in the 1960’s. During this time, the Sino-Indian war was just beginning, and there were many riots and communists marches occurring. This war had a great impact on the story itself, and majorly affected the main characters.
Adiga’s use of monologue is key to the formation of this emotional bond between the reader and Balram as it gives a direct insight into his opinions and reasoning. Throughout the text Balram conveys his story in a first person perspective and often adds his own thoughts as well as perspective on the events. An example of this opinion giving is when Balram states “in this country we have two kind of people”. These kinds of thoughts are commonly displayed throughout the text and characterise him to be an intelligent, interesting person, despite being only “half-baked”. This forces the reader to start to like his character and appreciate his potential. The use of monologue also allows Adiga to further develop Balram’s character with the use of tone. Throughout the text Balram sustains a humorous yet condescending tone again furthering the reader’s appreciation towards him. An ex...
Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is a story of a family stricken with taboos and scandal. The novel is a series of events told in third person often out of chronological order. The God of Small Things is not merely just a series of events or a story solely about Esta and Rachel’s relationship. Rather it is a focus on the taboo love oppressed by the class system in India. All of the culturally taboo relationships play a key role in Roy’s social commentary; Ammu and Velutha, and Estha and Rahel, and even Baby Kochamma and Father Mulligan. With focus on these relationships, Roy can comment on the sexual oppression in India due to the class system.
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.
The language and the set-up are very casual for a first person-narrator taking us through her life. It is very casual and formal, almost like she is telling us about her “everyday-life” so to speak. But when she isn’t telling us and getting us through her everyday life, she is usually talking about her parents, sharing thoughts about them. The thoughts and comment on her parents are a bit different. She is at some moment confronting them and their belief. They can’t grasp why she wont go back to India, and she can’t grasp why they’re so intimately focused on their religion. And that’s is the set-up for the more controversial and sensitive style of language in the
The novel depicts the life of Jaya at the level of the silent and the unconscious. A sensitive and realistic dramatization of the married life of Jaya and her husband Mohan, it portrays and inquisitive critical appraisal to which the institution of marriage has been subjected to in recent years. It centers round the inner perception of the protagonist, a woman who is subtly drawn from inside, a woman who finds her normal routine so disrupted that for the first time she can look at her life and attempt to decide who she really
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.