Fiction is considered to be an art of creation. Just as God has created the world, the writer also presents a new world of imagination, where things are more comprehensible and beautiful than they ordinarily are. The writer through his works creates a new universe. He is influenced by the conditions of the age in which he works and creates. In the words of David Daiches “it is no doubt largely true that an age is reflected in its literature which reveals the tides of thought, the vagarities of emotions, the springs of actions that animated it men and women” (Dhull 1).
Indian writers in English constitute a significant group. Widely acclaimed as a gifted writer and winner of many awards, Chetan Bhagat has also carved a place of himself in the Indian writers. Endowed with a searching psychological insight and capable of writing an intense prose work, Bhagat seems to have sensed the interest of young India and wants it to be communicated to his readers.
In this paper, the gestures of post-coloniality in Chetan Bhagat’s novel One Night @ The Call Center have been discussed, where post-colonial aspects are exhibited in varied forms and with varying implications. Over the past few years, post-coloniality has emerged a site of creative engagement with the identity crisis of oppressed/subordinate self. It has been used as an umbrella term, under which exist imperialistic, hegemonic attitude and a colonized oppressed society. Writers of this post-colonial fiction have been engaged in this context depicting both the Indian culture and the hybridization of native culture on account of western impacts like dress, ideology and cultural activities. Jahan Ramazani defines it as, “Post-colonialism, is concerned with what has ...
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Dhull, Anar Singh. “Social Consciousness in the Novels of R.K.Narayan with Special Reference
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Singh, Renu and Shikha. “Multicultural Context of Chetan Bhagat’s 2 States: The Story of My
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I think that the good novelist tries to provide his reader with vivid depictions of certain crucial and abiding patterns of human existence. This he attempts to do by reducing the chaos of human experience to artistic form. And when successful he provides the reader with a fresh vision of reality. For then through the symbolic action of his characters and plot he enables the reader to share forms of experience not immediately his own. And thus the reader is able to recognize the meaning and value of the presented experience as a whole. (Kostelanetz 10)
Dubey,A.P. (2008). Modernity and the problem of cultural identity. New Delhi: Northern Book Centre Publications
Literature has played a large role in the way we perceive the world and it can affect the way in which we think about things. Edgar Allan Poe along with Mark Twain are two of the most influential authors that our world has ever seen. Their descriptiveness and diction has had a huge impact on their readers for centuries. Poe’s gothic style of writing was very enthralling and suspenseful; it left you wanting to know what was going to happen next. Whereas, Mark Twain was a very humorous author that intended to amuse all that read. The descriptiveness that was incorporated by these world-renown authors is tremendous.
Fiction as we know it today is considered to be a relatively new genre compared to poetry and drama. The tradition of fiction started with myth and legend and allegory. But the fictional characters in these imaginary worlds were mostly one-dimensional abstractions, personified as Love, Greed, War, or even Faith. The evolution from allegory to novel (and short story), from the sermon about an abstraction in human guise to the story of the individual whose personal experience might have universal application, took a long time.
As Indians living in white culture, many problems and conflicts arise. Most Indians tend to suffer microaggressions, racism and most of all, danger to their culture. Their culture gets torn from them, and slowly, as if it was dream, many Indians become absorbed into white society, all the while trying to retain their Indian lifestyle. In Indian Father’s Plea by Robert Lake and Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie, the idea that a dominant culture can pose many threats to a minority culture is shown by Wind-Wolf and Alexie.
A successful writer is he who is able to transmit ideas, emotions, and wisdom on to his readers. He is cable of stirring emotions and capturing the reader's attention with vivid descriptions and clever dialogues. The writer can even play with the meanings of words and fuse reality with fiction to achieve his goal of taking the reader on a wonderful journey. His tools are but words, yet the art of writing is found in the use of the language to create though-provoking pieces that defy the changing times. Between the lines, voices and images emerge. Not everyone can write effectively and invoke these voices. It is those few who can create certain psychological effects on the reader who can seize him (or her) with inspiring teachings, frightening thoughts, and playful games with the language. These people are true writers…
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "The Burden of English." Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia.
The novel by Jhumpa Lahiri demonstrates that children of immigrants do not always feel closely tied to their country of origin, but rather, they feel American, living both in the private sphere of their home in India and the public sphere of their American experience. The process of the so-called “hybridization” is manifested in the way how Gogol and Sonia live as tourists in their own home country. They act as translators of the two worlds, which do not threaten their identity, but rather enrich it. The author provides a new updated interpretation of the image of Asian-American immigrants, discussing significant intergenerational differences and constructing the complex identity of cosmopolitan immigrants' children.
According to Tanveer Hasan in his case study of Amitav Ghosh’s novels of Indian-American Diasporic Literature, One might argue that there are instances in the characters created by Ghosh who cling to memories more than they cling to their sanity. One cannot of course deny the important role memories have to play in framing or reframing the psyche of an individual, par when they have undergone a harrowing experience such as ‘cultural displacement, factional uprooting, secession claims, and ethnic refugees.’ The clarity with which the characters and the story tellers seem to get in and out of the realms of rational arguments about memory and irrational theories concerning the nostalgia is what makes Amitav Ghosh an author who narrates the tales of experience and not just of plots and
They dresses, words and lives like a foreigner but couldn’t leave their cultural identity as the native of India. As in India, whether the problem is big or small, there will be a person to solve it or they themselves find solutions without breaking their relationship. The people in India will not break their relationship easily like the foreigners. They’ll live together till the end and believes that the relationship was made by God not by man. When there is a revelation, truth, lack of love and care are recovered. The love and care towards children from childhood till the end are done only by the parents of India, though they dislike or angry on them still they’ll do their responsibility as a parent. The identity struggle can also be shown when they have a problem, as a citizen of foreign country they could have broken their relationship when they were not happy with each other. But still, they stay together and live together as a diaspora of Indian culture and solve the misunderstanding, problems and pain. Lahiri’s diasporic writing “Interpreters of Maladies”, brings out the struggle for identity, and commitment of life in the multicultural milieu of Bengal and Boston and the
Mohanty is drawing upon theoretical perspectives of postmodernism to understand difference and by that uncover essentialist and Universalist interpretations (Uduyagiri 1995:159). In particular she is drawing upon approaches familiar to Edward Said’s Orientalism and Focault’s approach to discourse, power and knowledge. Foucault’s theories are especially useful in a postmodernist argument since he acknowledge that there are several structures of power, and that the there is a diversity of localized resistances ( Udayagiri 1995: 161). Mohanty uses Foucault’s conception of power to uncover Universalist categories and how feminist writers define power as a binary structure – to be in possession of power versus being powerless (Mohanty 1991:71). This limited way of theorizing power fails to recognize counteroffensives and the varied forms of power. Mohanty uses Said’s Orientalism to show how the way Western cultural perceptions of the Orient “became a means of controlling the regio...
Literature is an essential part of society in the present day and enables the communication between multiple parties in a written form. Texts can provide a vast knowledge on subjects dependent on content whereas novels are often seen as being purely for leisure and enjoyment. However it can often be seen that prose
Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children employs strategies which engage in an exploration of History, Nationalism and Hybridity. This essay will examine three passages from the novel which demonstrate these issues. Furthermore, it will explore why each passage is a good demonstration of these issues, how these issues apply to India in the novel, and how the novel critiques these concepts.
Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, published in 1980, was perhaps the seminal text in conceiving opinions as to interplay of post-modern and post-colonial theory. The title of the novel refers to the birth of Saleem Sinai, the novel’s principal narrator, who is born at midnight August 15th 1947, the precise date of Indian independence. From this remarkable coincidence we are immediately drawn to the conclusion that the novel’s concerns are of the new India, and how someone born into this new state of the ‘Midnight’s child’, if you will, interacts with this post-colonial state. To characterise the novel as one merely concerned with post-colonial India, and its various machinations, is however a reductive practice. While the novel does at various times deal with what it is to be Indian, both pre and post 1947, it is a much more layered and interesting piece of work. Midnight’s Children’s popularity is such that it was to be voted 25th in a poll conducted by the Guardian, listing the 100 best books of the last century, and was also to receive the Booker Prize in 1981 and the coveted ‘Booker of Bookers’ in 1993. http://www.bookerprize.co.uk/
The Novel, One night @ the Call Center, is written by Chetan Bhagat (A modern Indian writer). Chetan Bhagat is seen as the voice of a young generation in India than an author. The book has won the national best-selling award in India and has also resulted in a huge blockbuster movie. The book is set in the suburbs of Delhi, India, where six people working together at a call center have a life changing night. The six character deal with the daily pressures of a call center life while experiencing serious personal problems. What becomes clear during the course of the book is that the call center job is just a small step in their lives until they have found what they want to do. Chetan wrote this book to inspire India’s young generation to change their country by aspiring higher goals in their lives. Chetan introduces the role of god as an awakening to the characters in the book. He picked the fast growing call center business in India to depict the aspirations and problems of the young generation. This book brings out Chetan’s Point of view, themes revolving around the young generation of India, and consists of deeply troubled characters.