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The Existential Predicament: Finding Meaning in a Meaningless World
Get PDFOne of the key issues of Existentialism is taking complete responsibility of one’s life and one’s actions and making no excuses. It might be conceived of as a movement and not a sensibility. One can think of it in many different ways but the literature that has come out in the years when Existentialism first became popular just after the Second World War and ever since, it often has the connotation of being a particularly gloomy philosophy – one that is obsessed with the notions of anxiety and dread. However, the important thing to consider is that the researchers find Existentialism a very invigorating and positive minded philosophy. The purpose of this paper is to highlight all the major aspects of the philosophical outlook and especially the importance of human determination in making constructive changes in life
Depiction of Plight and Subjugation of Dalit Women in Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke
Get PDFBaby Kamble reflects on the subjugation and plight of Dalit women in her autobiography The Prisons We Broke. Kamble, while depicting her experiences of caste discrimination, also attempts to show how the women of the entire Mahar community face similar discrimination and, therefore, this autobiography is regarded as the testimony of the entire Mahar community. On the one hand, it talks about how Dalit women fall victim to exploitation and discrimination by the upper caste people; on the other hand, it projects how these women tolerate similar discrimination by the patriarchal norms within their own Mahar community. This autobiography is a Dalit narrative that has been written from a feminist perspective. It offers a realistic insight into the oppressive caste and patriarchal norms of our Indian society. Thus, through this paper, an attempt has been made to bring forth the subjugation of Dalit women as reflected in Baby Kamble’s autobiography The Prisons We Broke
Solving the Riddle of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code
Get PDFThe paper focuses on analysing the novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. These are the depiction of religion (Christianity), conspiracy theories, myths and history used in the novel. There are five novels by Dan Brown of the Robert Langdon series. These are Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol, Inferno and Origin respectively. The Da Vinci Code is one of the novels of the Robert Langdon series by Dan Brown. Robert Langdon is the central character in these novels. Robert Langdon, the professor in Harvard university, reveals mystery of a murder in Louvre Museum in Paris. He reveals secret plots conspired by various secret societies like the Priory of Sion, the Opus Dei, and the knights Templars. He also talks about Catholic Church conspiracies to gain domination and conspiracy theories about Jesus Christ and his supposed daughter from Mary Magdalene, the royal bloodline conspiracy theory. He also talks about historical Jesus and says that he was not a divine figure. He was also made of flesh and blood like normal people. This novel contains his own version of the history of religion and culture, the search for the keystone to find the mythical Holy grail and conflict between Christian secret societies
Representation of Deaths due to Misrule during the Famine of 1974 in Neamat Imam’s The Black Coat
Get PDFDeath is the irreversible cessation of organismic functioning and human death is the irreversible loss of personhood. Death occurs at different situations and moments and has important significance in various circumstances. The phenomenon of death is present from the beginning of the world and it has been represented differently in literature and culture. If we relate death only in relation to physical loss, the significance of death is narrowed to a specific space. But death has a wider spectrum than that of physical loss. Though most deaths are forgotten, some incidents of deaths are important because of various social, philosophical and historical circumstances. An important phenomenon relating to death is that sometimes mass deaths are caused by state administered misrule. As for example during famine the failure of government to take necessary steps results in loss of numerous lives. Such is the case with millions of deaths during the 1974 famine in Bangladesh under the regime of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Faulty economic policies, mismanagement, black market, corruption and power hunger of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman made havoc on the poverty-stricken people who were forced to die of starvation. Almost 1.5 million people died, but Mujibur Rahman acknowledged only 27000 deaths from starvation. Not only that, those who raised their voices against the misrule of the government are put to death by the state administered mechanism. This terrible situation of Bangladesh during the famine of 1974 is nicely portrayed in Neamat Imam’s famous novel The Black Coat. In this novel Imam very deftly upholds the autocratic rule of Sheikh Mujib which caused so many deaths from starvation. The violent death of Nur Hussain by Khaleque Biswas represents not only the death of an individual but also the violent suppression of conscious voice that has the guts to hold the government responsible for the misery of the people of Bangladesh. The present research article presents the pathetic condition of the people of Bangladesh during the famine of 1974 which made havoc on their lives due to the tyrannical government of that time
From Silence to Speech: A Study of Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence
Get PDFIn That Long Silence, Deshpande portrays the life of Jaya, an educated, married writer. As a writer, she should be able to use her thinking and analytical skills to show the problems and contradictions in society in her writing. However, this does not happen for several reasons. She has to surrender to family and societal pressures. Not being able to say or write what she feels like saying or writing, she is forced to write what patriarchal society wants to read or hear. Even though she is educated, she remains silent against the injustices that have befallen her. Not only Jaya but also the other women characters portrayed in the novel— Jaya’s mother, grandmother, cousin Kusum, her widowed neighbor Mukta, and the women in general— have also maintained silence for centuries. Deshpande goes on to show how the social environment, as well as family preaching and practices, play a significant role in this. When Jaya gets time to reflect on the happenings of her life, she finds herself in a dilemma about what to do and what not to do. This paper aims at analyzing the factors, taking into consideration the comments and observations by other critics and theorists as well, responsible for Jaya's crisis in particular and the misery of women in general, as well as showing how, through introspection, Jaya, the representative of modern women, comes out of her victimization and crisis and breaks her long silence
The Soul and Spirit of Morality in Sudha Murthy’s Select Short Story Books for Children
Get PDFThe soul and spirit of morality have been transmitted to children from generation to generation through stories. Stories play a significant role in the mental growth and character-building of children. Storybooks are a wonderful source of inspiration and lay a strong foundation for their future life. Reading storybooks helps children to increase their confidence, handle emotions, and cope up with problems. It also develops their imagination power, language skills, and learning. The multi-faceted prolific children’s author Sudha Murthy’s contribution to the field of children’s literature is a hallmark in Indian English literature. Her children’s stories dealt with the importance of family bonds and concern towards society and fellow beings. The characters in her stories help the children to understand our culture and tradition. The paper tries to analyze three such books of children's stories by Sudha Murthy in the light of the theories of ‘tabula rasa’ and ‘Kohlberg's Theory of moral judgment’. The paper focuses on How I Taught My Grandmother to Read and Other Stories, Grandma’s Bag of Stories, and The Magic Drum and Other Favourite Stories’ and the moral values inculcated in them
Revisiting the Elements of Postmodernism in Salman Rushdie’s Shame
Get PDFPostmodern literature is thought to be typically anti-traditional and anti-foundationalist. It can be said that the major body of postmodern literature is thought to have started from the 1950s onwards. The major postmodern literary features are metafiction, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, writerly text, hybridity, magical realism, foreshadowing, irony, parody, anti-novel, anti-hero, fabulation, surfiction, hyperreality, use of language games etc. The prominent themes in postmodern literature are such as crisis of identity, cultural hybridity, experiences of migrants and their feeling of alienation, the general feeling of rootlessness. Postmodern fiction also emphasizes the disbelief in God as well as the disbelief in the conventional notions of the unified or coherent individual. Salman Rushdie has been studied and researched as a postcolonial writer as there are obvious postcolonial themes in his novels. But we can also study him as a postmodern writer. The paper makes an attempt to discuss the postmodern literary concept of meaningless of life as prevalent in Rushdie’s Shame and to put forth Rushdie as a postmodern writer
Role of Pattern Practices in Teaching Mother Tongue at School Level
Get PDFThe school curriculum maintains the quality learning through various innovative methods of language teaching; it comprises the practices usually followed for the betterment of students who are expected to understand the basic knowledge of their mother tongue. To ensures the quality of such valuable practices the students are made to learn how to write and speak making use of these practices in an acquisition rich atmosphere. The school education department of Tamilnadu has made it mandatory that every student at primary level must have the fluency in reading and writing, and the expected capability of using their mother tongue before they enter the middle school. It is a highly challenging task for the teachers teaching mother tongue to make the students master their language skills, particularly that of reading and writing. The role of pattern practice is mainly to focus on teaching mother tongue with creative method and make the students learn the mother tongue easily adhering to the precepts of school curriculum. In this way, designing syllabus requires a huge change in ensuring the effective teaching of mother tongue at primary level. When we follow the simple pattern practices in teaching mother tongue at school level, the constructive and promising results are quite discernible. Pattern practice teaching comprises the basic language and grammatical structures through which the students manifest substantial capability in reading and writing skills
Self-Making Without Inheritance: Harriet Jacobs’s Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl
Get PDFThe slaves, especially women, are more vulnerable than the men to the oppressive system of slavery. It does not only seize the idea of self from a slave (which constitutes a human being, and slavery seeks support from and utilizes the existing laws by which all the legal rights of the slaves are hijacked) but also it puts them (women) into a constant struggle to negotiate, not just for the construction of their ‘selves’ but for their motherhoods and the right of being called wives of their husbands and so forth. The masters, the white, adopt numerous evil strategies which sabotage the slaves forming strong bondage between husband and wife; and parents and children. The masters and slaveholders separate the slaves to run slavery smoothly; for if they are kept together, there will grow a strong relationship among the slaves as they will share feelings, emotions, and sentiments, which may result in gathering a possible resistance against the entire slavery. In such a heavy check on the formation of family bondage, Jackobs’s spoke persona, Brent adopts several strategies, which not only help but also construct her identity and liberate herself as well as her children from the claws of slavery. Thus, this paper examines how the emergence of motherhood becomes the prime factor for negotiating and constructing self-identity, not for herself– Brent but also for her children, out of nothing– inheritance. Moreover, it has created awareness among the communities that despise slavery against slavery, afterward uprooting slavery forever
Multiple Hues of Marginality and Assertion in Jokha Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies
Get PDFMarginality is not only a state of tangible/physical suffering but also a condition of mind. However, the nature of both is complementary to each other as the troubled psychic state results only from material reality. The adjective ‘celestial’ in the title seems to negate any material claims to one’s deprived state as emanating from structural inequities. The marginal state of major female characters in Jokha Alharthi’s (b. 1978) the Man Booker International Prize-Winning novel Celestial Bodies (2019) has its basis in the patriarchal functioning of society. Marilyn Booth writes, “The impact of a strong patriarchal system on both women and subordinate men is unsparing but it shapes different generations, and individuals, distinctly as it leads to both suffering and confrontation” (x). All three sisters Mayya, Khawla and Asma in the Celestial Bodies have their own trajectories of hidden pain. Apart from it, marginality as observed in the case of Zarifa, the female slave who unconsciously submits herself to a better life, results from ignorance as she does not find anything appalling even in being a concubine to Merchant Sulayman, the slave owner. Another note of marginality stems in the portrayal of Habib and his son Sanjar who view slavery as an “involuntary human servitude” (Wright n.pag.) and hence break themselves free from the shackles of bondage by leaving the house of Sulayman. While the former realizes that despite being his wife, Zarifa is also his master’s keep which is a blow to his masculinity; his son also identifies selfish motives in Sulayman’s doing a few things for his betterment. Another victim of a husbandly suspicion is Fatima, the wife of Sulayman whose death remains a mystery until it is learnt that it was her husband who hastens her to a poisonous death as her affair with a slave is suspected. Mayya’s daughter London’s marginal state cements the vulnerable status of women as despite from a rich family she is treated in terms of her supposed weak gender as her voluntary marriage to a peasant’s ends in a fiasco. The present paper seeks to provide answer to different types of marginalities found in the Celestial Bodies along with charting out a course of passive to active resistance as adopted by different characters