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The World Is What Was Given, The World Is What We Make:
Albert Camus' Bifocal Credo in The Plague
-- Sreedharan Thoyakkat
The cultural and humanistic crisis, consequent to the corrosive impact of World War II and the German occupation
of France, fractured the sensibility of the French. The period of the rise of Hitler to power appeared to Albert Camus as
the `days of wrath' in the man-made hell and war was no adventure but a disease, like typhus. Camus uses plague as
symbol of this disease in his novel, The
Plague. Different from his earlier stance of solipsist indifference evident in his first
cycle of novels, in the second cycle, which includes The Plague, Camus prefers the ethic of revolt and resistance. The
outbreak of plague in Oran, and the responses of exclusive subjectivity at first and inclusive engagement later on, are
skilfully exploited by Camus to bring out not only the consequences of moral evil but also the problem underlying
revolutionary terror. This paper attempts at examining the complex symbolism of the plague as "the yellow mucus of vice", in the
novel.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Woman as a Metaphor in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale
-- Sonia Chadha
From time immemorial, women have been hapless victims of numerous atrocities in the patriarchal society the world
over. The male members of the species take it as their unquestionable prerogative to keep women under subjugation and
to marginalize their status. A modern version of this subjugation is to consider woman as a mere procreative machine in
a future social structure in the Republic of Gilead, presented by the distinguished Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood,
in her disturbing dystopia, The Handmaid's
Tale. The paper attempts to look at the utter dehumanization of women in
a post-nuclear future, when men turn impotent and seek women slaves as reproductive tools. However, one woman,
Offred, dares to think differently and tries to escape the trap, raising faint hopes for women's emancipation.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Affective Travel: Terror and the Human Rights Narrative
in Véronique Tadjo's The Shadow of Imana
-- Pramod K Nayar
Travel writing, this paper argues, is linked to human rights discourse because it constructs genocidal spaces through
an ethnography of mourning within its narrative of witnessing, the creation of new contact zones of suffering and
violation, and generating an affective literacy about the world as constituted by genocidal spaces. It examines Véronique
Tadjo's The Shadow of Imana, a travel narrative about Rwanda, for this purpose. Beginning with the assumption that
human rights demand a narrative, it explores two major components of Tadjo's work. It is proposed here that Rwanda is
constructed as a `genocidal space' because it is a space of human rights violation. The first part of the paper deals
with Tadjo's `narrative of witnessing'. This `narrative' is generated through two modes: the semi-ethnographic
`observation' mode and the deeply subjective. The narrative also constructs an ethnography of mourning through representation
of `sites of mourning'. Further, it also enacts individual stories of terror. It is in this last that the individual subject
emergesand the individual, as Michael Ignatieff and others have argued, is the locus of human rights. The second part of
the paper develops the idea of `affective geographies'. Adapting the notion of `contact zones' from M L Pratt, it argues
that the emergence of `new' contact zones is built on the recognition of suffering. This `contact zone' is one where
Tadjo encounters violations, deprivation, death and mourning. By folding the singularity of suffering terror into
something larger (an ethnography), Tadjo's travel narrative enables the creation of an entire archive of feelings, and this is
the affective geography of the world. By widening our knowledge of suffering about the world, travel writing creates
an `affective literacy'. This `affective literacy' induced by narratives such as Tadjo's, is the source of the discourse of
human rights.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Democracies and Dilemmas: August Wilson's Fences and Datta Bhagat's Routes and Escape Routes
-- Sunita Rani and Nibir K Ghosh
Well into the new millennium, humankind is still in the process of grappling with basic issues of discrimination,
inequity, oppression and injustice, whether it be in the most advanced of modern democracies like the USA or in the
largest democracy like India. Despite major paradigm shifts brought about by the avalanche of information technology
and scientific advancements, the innate human longing for individual identity continues to remain a major tour de
force in both life and literature. The present paper seeks to examine two plays that deal with subaltern discourses in
comparative parlancethe Pulitzer Prize winning
play Fences by August Wilson (African American), and Routes and Escape Routes by Datta Bhagat (Indian). Fences, Wilson's play, set in the 1950s, is a play about baseball, a national American
pastime. Troy Maxson, in the play, is a garbage collector whose rebellion and frustration set the tone for the play as he
struggles for fairness in a society which seems to offer none. In his struggle, he builds fences between himself and his family.
The metaphor of `fences' also refers historically to the American practice of keeping black people bound within the limits
of slavery. Similarly, Datta Bhagat's Routes and Escape
Routes presents, in a dramatic fashion, three generations of
Dalits represented by Uncle Kaka, a long-term participant in the Ambedkar movement; the successful and ethical
professor, Satish; his progressive Brahmin wife, Hema; and the angry and impatient student Arjunall of them projecting
differing responses to a situation of Dalit need and caste violence.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
A Portrait of the Popular Philosopher
as a Mystic Songster: A Study of Basavaraj Naikar's Light in the House
-- N S Gundur
This paper is an attempt at examining Basavaraj Naikar's Light in the House (2006), a fictional narrative on Sharif Saheb
of Shishunala, the 19th century Kannada mystic poet. First, the article gives an overview of the literature available on
Sharif Saheb. Then, it argues that while constructing in plain English the image of Sharif as a popular philosopher,
spiritual songster and a man in possession of occult power, Basavaraj Naikar is at his best in recording the
19th century milieu. However, he exploits the genre of novel to the extent that Light in the House remains a novel as a biographical
history. Further, it states that the novel has a few insights to offer into the life of the saint and that it is very successful in
meeting the requirements of the non-Kannada readers. While pointing out the challenges that one usually encounters
when dealing with a historical personage like Sharif, the paper concludes that Naikar's attempt by all means deserves
appreciation for various reasons.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Past Present and Past: Expressionism
on the American and Indian Stage
-- Sudha Rani Kaja
Arthur Miller, one of the renowned playwrights of America, is famous for his fantastic playwriting technique. He is
the one playwright who projected middle-class America with its flaws and merits. He always believed in theater as the
mirror of society and is known for successfully experimenting with expressionism on the American stage. Eventually, Death of a Salesman was translated into many languages in the world and staged in different countries. The dramatic
technique became so popular that many playwrights were inspired. Mahesh Dattani is one such popular Indian English
playwright who uses expressionism successfully on the Indian stage. Dattani is a committed theater practitioner from Bengaluru,
a south Indian city. He runs his theater group known as Playpen and stages almost all his plays himself before he
allows others to do them. His interest in middle-class Indians is evident in his writings. The present paper closely studies the
use of expressionism by both these playwrights situated on either side of the globe. Though they are writing about
different societies, their intention seems to be the sameto show the inner personality of a person or a society. It could be
the person in the society or the society itself in which a set of characters live. Miller makes use of expressionism to reveal
the psyche of Willy Loman, and thus, brings to our notice the great American dream with an average American caught in
it. Dattani picturizes the underbelly of middle-class Indian society, its psyche, and various issues concerned with it.
The present paper also examines these two playwrights' usage of the theatrical technique closely.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Joyce Carol Oates's The Gravedigger's
Daughter and Martha Nussbaum's Development Ethics
-- Srirupa Chatterjee
Joyce Carol Oates has often been charged with sensationalizing and commercializing issues of poverty and violence.
The present paper seeks to prove that Oates's powerful depictions of America's disenfranchised and violence-ridden world
is no mere ploy of sensationalism or catharsis but a leitmotif that enables her to expose the lack of dignity and the
absence of basic human rights in the lives of the powerless. In her recent novel, The Gravedigger's Daughter (2007), Oates forcefully articulates the problematic of racial discrimination, economic deprivation and violence that characterized
the status of immigrant Jews in post-World War II America. The despicable condition of the Schwart family in The Gravedigger's Daughter is strikingly similar to what developmentalists like Martha Nussbaum call the absence of
all `capabilities'. Nussbaum's `capability approach', which assesses human development not through crude measures
such as Gross Domestic Profit (GDP), but by measuring an individual's growth vis-à-vis the quality of life, can be seen as
an appropriate tool in the analysis of literary texts such as Oates's, which often deal with economic and cultural
deprivations. By reading The Gravedigger's
Daughter in tandem with Nussbaum's development ethics, the present paper seeks
to establish how Oates's radical social critique calls for reinstating the basic rights of the poor and an immediate revision
in the field of human development.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Jim Crowism: The Catalyst
for Bigger Thomas's Violence
in Richard Wright's Native Son
-- Ahad Mehervand
Native Son (1940) introduces Bigger Thomas as an African American character whose meaningless life suddenly
gets meaning after accidentally murdering Mary Dalton, a white wealthy lady, in Chicago. Indeed, Bigger feels that the
murder has opened a new world of many possibilities for him; having broken Jim Crow conventions, and for the moment
having escaped penalty, he feels amazingly free. It is not an exaggeration to say that the murder has been a catalyst for a
dramatic and liberating change of identity. This paper is an examination of the ways in which Jim Crow laws, practices
and conditions shape the individual personality of Bigger. By delineating some of the acts of Bigger's violence and
comparing them to the acts theorized by Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth, the paper demonstrates some of the advantages
that stem from an approach that interprets Richard Wright's text through the framework offered by theories of
postcolonialism. Wright makes it clear that Bigger's violence stems from his internalization of the social taboos upholding Jim Crowism.
He shows the extent to which Jim Crow demands interfered with relations between black and white peoples, to the
point where neither side trusted the other and their mutual hatred was pathological. The most obvious effect that these
laws had was to paint black people as dangerous to white society, thus helping to lead white people to the view that
blacks needed to be segregated in black ghettos. Bigger's reaction to segregation, and to the inequalities it embodied
and propagated, shows the extent of his anger towards and resentment of whites.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Saul Bellow's Herzog in the Light
of Susan Sontag's Essay "Against Interpretation"
-- Ritu R Agarwal
An attempt has been made in this paper to justify that Saul Bellow's novel Herzog embodies the crux of Susan Sontag's essay "Against
Interpretation", which holds that form is not an additional component but is essential like
content. Herzog, a 1964 novel, shuns all givens, explores and dissects Herzog's mind, whose second wife has recently left him
for his best friend and who is trying to regain a foothold on his life. This, however, is done in a novel way without
the confines of a system, using innovative techniques. Susan Sontag's links with the aesthetics of symbolism are clear, as
she mentions, "the beauty and visual sophistication of the images should be seen". In this respect, we can appreciate
Saul Bellow's work as he too has evoked the complexity of the characters through various uses of symbols and
images. Flowers, clock, house, kitchen, city environment, darkness, and sea are some of the symbols which catch our
attention. Unconventional usages, innovative phrases and striking combinations have lent a charm to the novel, and
in this respect, Herzog is a befitting example of Sontagian analysis of anti-interpretation. Thus, we find that
Bellow's pervading theme, as well as his technique, are explorative and not didactic. Its moral fervor
is in its storytelling energy, not in its position taking. The novel has the power to absorb the readers by the energy that
it contains.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
The Delta Approach
to English Language Teaching
-- S P Dhanavel
The Delta Approach to English Language Teaching (ELT) is a novel method for teaching English grammar and
discourse. It relies on acronyms and abbreviations for imparting English grammar and discourse skills to students. It is useful at
the tertiary level for remedial purposes, though it can be profitably used at all levels.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Language Attitudes and Popular Culture: A Critical Discourse
Analysis Study of the English Language in India
-- Bindia Bhalla and Gurupdesh Singh
India is a multilingual country, where English as a language
occupies a significant position. Most of the communication tasks in
semi-government and private sectors are now carried out in English. The demand for English language proficiency
is reflected across the Indian media, in the articles published in newspapers and magazines. This paper explores
newspaper and magazine articles that represent English as a prerequisite to secure corporate jobs in India. Using Critical
Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the framework, specially Fairclough (1992) techniques of analysis, an investigation has been
carried out into the way these texts marginalize candidates who are not adept at the English language and present better
chances of employment for candidates possessing excellence in English. Such an exploration unveils the discourse practices
and the underlying ideologies about the English language in the contemporary society and the corporate job sector in India.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
BOOK REVIEW
A Thousand Splendid Suns
-- Author: Khaled Hosseini
Reviewed by Sonali Das
© 2009 IUP holds the copyright for the review. All Rights Reserved. |
