LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 20:3 March 2020
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss: A Thematic Study

Dr. Y. Kusuma Kumari

Inheritance of Loss

Abstract

The author Kiran Desai paints a world full of bleak, somber, uncertain, and insecure atmosphere for the immigrants like Biju who symbolically represent the whole brood of immigrants, especially, the illegal ones, always groping in dusk of despair for something they need but eludes their grasp. One of the major themes that the author deals with in the novel, besides multiculturalism, is globalization and its attendant disadvantages. Kiran Desai, by turns, is comical and meditative in the novel and exposes the pain of exile and the sad ambiguities of the adverse effects of post-colonialism. The story goes forth and back between Kalimpong and New York City. The characters are extremely ordinary ones struggling to maintain their sense of dignity and self-respect, in the face of the morass of Western civilization. The main theme of the novel is the multiplicity of miseries that the immigrants in general and the illegal immigrants in particular face and the irretrievable loss they sustained, namely, loss of everything they value most. And the title The Inheritance of Loss is highly metaphorical and richly appropriate to the novel.

Keywords: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss, postcolonial hangover, multicultural conflict, globalization, immigrants, alienation.

Kiran Desai published her novel The Inheritance of Loss in 2006. The theme and content of Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, the Booker Prize winning novel is entirely different. Kiran Desai takes a wider canvas of her subject which touches upon various issues that have relevance to the present day life. She has created literary history by being the youngest woman ever to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction at the age of thirty five.

Kiran Desai in her novel The Inheritance of Loss very vividly delineates her characters that pass through vicissitudes of pain and suffering. And she clearly explains the reasons for their unhappy lives.

Multiple themes surface the novel and the main themes are multiculturalism, post-colonial hangover, flagrant racism, religious biases, disparity between one class and another class of people and globalization including insurgency by a majority of ethnic group of Gorkhas, for an independent state.

The author Kiran Desai paints a world full of bleak, somber, uncertain, and insecure atmosphere for the immigrants like Biju who symbolically represent the whole brood of immigrants, especially, the illegal ones, always groping in dusk of despair for something they need but eludes their grasp.

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

Dr. Y. Kusuma Kumari
Assistant Professor, Department of English
GITAM University
Visakhapatnam
Kusumsurendrat.bw@gmail.com
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