The Theme of Alienation in Kamala Markandaya's Fiction.
THE THEME of ALIENATION IN KAMALA MARKANDAYA’S FICTION.
By:
Mrs. Asha Rai,
Lecturer in English,
Technocrats Institute of Technology, Bhopal.
Alienation, which means emotional isolation or dissociation, has been a very common theme among modern writers. This alienation is a major offshoot of the industrial revolution. Today, it has taken deep roots in everyday life, in science, in philosophy, in psychology, sociology and literature- covering a large panorama of almost every aspect of man’s activity. C. Sengupta says that to certain writers alienation stands for “Self- alienation (self- estrangement)”: a process through which a man become alien or strange to itself, to its own nature through its own actions. Alienation has assumed a great proportion in modern fiction, whether British, American or Indo- African. A number of writers have worked on this theme.
Kamala Markandaya has also dealt with this theme in all its varicolored forms. She shows that a man lives as long as his roots are undefiled and rootlessness or alienation becomes the cause of his death. Her five novels Nectar in a Sieve, Possession, A Handful of Rice, The Nowhere Man and Two Virgins projects the socio-psychological colour of air through this theme and the tragedy cause by it.
A Handful of Rice and Nectar in a Sieve depict alienation caused by poverty and cruel treatment by British. Possession and The Nowhere Man present this theme in the form of biculturalism whereas in the Two Virgins alienation stems from the lure for modernization.
Nectar in a Sieve, Markandaya’s first novel, draws its title from Coleridge, whose lines form an epigraph to the novel:
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live.
It means that work, like nectar, is a source of sustenance and eternity through self fulfillment and when work is done with no hope of returns, it becomes as unprofitable as storing nectar in a sieve. When a man cannot
By:
Mrs. Asha Rai,
Lecturer in English,
Technocrats Institute of Technology, Bhopal.
Alienation, which means emotional isolation or dissociation, has been a very common theme among modern writers. This alienation is a major offshoot of the industrial revolution. Today, it has taken deep roots in everyday life, in science, in philosophy, in psychology, sociology and literature- covering a large panorama of almost every aspect of man’s activity. C. Sengupta says that to certain writers alienation stands for “Self- alienation (self- estrangement)”: a process through which a man become alien or strange to itself, to its own nature through its own actions. Alienation has assumed a great proportion in modern fiction, whether British, American or Indo- African. A number of writers have worked on this theme.
Kamala Markandaya has also dealt with this theme in all its varicolored forms. She shows that a man lives as long as his roots are undefiled and rootlessness or alienation becomes the cause of his death. Her five novels Nectar in a Sieve, Possession, A Handful of Rice, The Nowhere Man and Two Virgins projects the socio-psychological colour of air through this theme and the tragedy cause by it.
A Handful of Rice and Nectar in a Sieve depict alienation caused by poverty and cruel treatment by British. Possession and The Nowhere Man present this theme in the form of biculturalism whereas in the Two Virgins alienation stems from the lure for modernization.
Nectar in a Sieve, Markandaya’s first novel, draws its title from Coleridge, whose lines form an epigraph to the novel:
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live.
It means that work, like nectar, is a source of sustenance and eternity through self fulfillment and when work is done with no hope of returns, it becomes as unprofitable as storing nectar in a sieve. When a man cannot
References: 1. Kamala Markandaya, Nectar in Sieve: (Bombay: Jaico, 1973) p. 25 2 3. Kamala Markandaya, A Handful of Rice (New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks,1966)p. 214 4