LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 13 : 2 February 2013
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Satiric Strain in Manoj Das’s Sharma and Wonderful Lump: A Postmodernist Analysis

Sameer Kumar Panigrahi, MA, Ph.D. Scholar
Subash Chandra Ray, Ph.D.

Abstract

Any enquiry into the place of satire in contemporary literary canon encounters a notable absence. In fact, satire remains as one of the museum genres of the past – despite the obvious evidence that it has become one of the most practiced modes in today’s fictional writings. Casting aside the stringent rules advocated by Swift, Fielding, Dryden and Pope, Postmodern satire is marked by exuberant excess and a fine interplay between fantasy and realism. The present paper strives to study Manoj Das’s Sharma and the Wonderful Lump – an outstanding satire of postmodern Indian writing in English. The story shares that delight in the works of the great masters of the genre. Although the narrative is dotted with more direct critiques of the socio-political sanctity of both Indian and USA, the movement is towards abandoning the mundane materialism for sacrosanct spiritual living.

Key Words: satire, postmodernism, individual, social, spiritual

In the postmodern narrative Hutcheon says that “satire is extramural (social, moral) in its ameliorative aim to hold up to ridicule the vices and follies of mankind, with an eye to their correction” (43). Manoj Das’s satire is aimed more at the individual than at the society. He emphasizes more on the follies and vices of the individuals than directly on the improvement of society. Exposition and attack are the dual systems in the domain of satire. Das exposes more than he attacks and comments more than he criticizes. His aim is to expose good-humouredly the pretence, hypocrisy, vainglory, pomposity, spiritual sterility, sexuality and the like depravity of people of present era. He ridicules the failing in the individual and limits his ridicule to corrigible faults. The satire Sharma and the Wonderful Lump employs fantasy to stress human limitation and to ridicule those who believe they are exempted from those limitations by creating embellished characters to mock real ones. Satire is similar to fantasy in that it is a method of extremes, like Sharma with the wonderful lump and the ridiculous proportions to which it is inflated so as to mock the frivolities made common by everyday appearance. Thus in this satire the writer employs fantastic characters to achieve its critical purposes and fulfills the characteristics of fantasy by taking readers away from physical reality while simultaneously raising fundamental questions and insights into how that reality works, more specifically about society’s intellectual and moral shortcomings.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Sameer Kumar Panigrahi, Ph.D. Scholar
North Orissa University
Baripada
Mayurbhanja 757003
Odisha
India
sameersiddu@gmail.com

Dr. Subash Chandra Ray
Reader
HOD PG Department of English
Bhadrak (Autonomous) College
Bhadrak
Odisha
India
sbhray@gmail.com
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