LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 15:11 November 2015
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.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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A Study of the Existential Dilemma in Arun Joshi’s
The Strange Case Of Billy Biswas

Prof. Manminder Singh Anand

Abstract

Existential quest and coming to terms with reality have been the ruling passions of protagonists in Arun Joshi’s novels, starting with Sindi Oberoi in ‘The Foreigner’. Arun Joshi’s second novel, The Strange Case of Billy Biswas (1971) is “yet another variation on the paradigmatic pattern of the doomed existential quest for values in a mad, bad, absurd world” (Guruprasad 161). The theme of anxiety, frustration and resultant alienation, which first appeared in The Foreigner, is further developed here, though with different orientations—through the “experience that boarded on the traumatic” (123) of its protagonist Bimal Biswas affectionately referred to as Billy by his friend Romesh Sahai, the witness narrator of the story. This study is intended to explore further the depths of alienation and anxiety and to see how, in Billy Biswas, Arun Joshi comes up with a protagonists who tries to harmonise the existential dilemma with the Indian ethos of acceptance.

Keywords: Billy Biswas, Arun Joshi, existential, angst, anxiety, foreigner

Introduction

The novel ‘The Strange Case of Billy Biswas’ by Arun Joshi has in it many echoes of The Foreigner, though the two novels differ in their major themes, and their locales and techniques. Both the novels are single-character based, and are mainly preoccupied with the sensibilities, beliefs, quests and the destinies of their heroes. To begin with, Sindi Oberoi and Billy Biswas both feel alienated from the environment in which they have been brought up. But whereas Sindi seems to be more or less a foreigner and an alien till the end, Billy is at least able to find a meager amount of fulfillment in his escape to primitivism. Hence, it many be said that the writer’s vision in The Strange Case of Billy Biswas is not so bleak, dark, pessimistic and cynical as to make his hero feel alien to his world. Billy at least feels a sense of belongingness in the tribal and primitive way of life. But even here the vision cannot be regarded as quite optimistic, for the writer is considerably bitter about the civilized world. Billy has to pay a heavy price for giving up his so-called cultured life. The book ends with the hero realizing the insensitivity of the civilized world towards a gesture of conscientious dissent. And yet there are affiliations that show unmistakable family connections between the two books. For one thing, the central characters in both the novels have one foot in India and the other outside India. Both are, for another thing, first an alien to their native sensibility and then get absorbed and directed by the native, Indian, ethos.

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

Prof. Manminder Singh Anand
Assistant Professor in English
Dasmesh Institute of Higher Education
Zirakpur (Mohali)
Punjab
India
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