Crisis of Identity: A Study of the Major Characters in Indian English Novelists with Special Reference to Arun Joshi

Author(s): Dr. Jeetendra Bairwa

Abstract:

The present article is an addition to the study of Arun Joshi's novels in the context of the theme of crisis of identity and cultures in the postmodern world, in the wake of colonial hangover, economic depressive psychological split-up as well as existential angst and freedom of choice. Main characters in Joshi's novels find themselves in such a mess from which they find it hard to get extricated. The one planet is deceased and the other powerless to be born. The worldly affluence is not enough. Run away from outer world to inner keeps one occupied. Brought up on the western literacy and philosophical phobia in Sartre, Camus Malamud, and other American novelists, Joshi finds it a usual enthusiasm to write about the crisis of identity almost in the same spirit in which the seventeenth century English authors assumed to be melancholy. His novels are structured in immediate socio-cultural striations, and are concerned with moral and spiritual problems of the contemporary Indians. The complex stresses and strains in the sensitive mind of his protagonists are the outcome of the dual forces of native ethos and Western influences. They suffer from uprootedness, cynicism, evils of materialism, loss of faith and identity crisis.

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Pages: 11-16     |    4 View     |    0 Download