1/13/23, 2:25 PM Anita Desai | Literary Articles

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WRITER'S PROFILE Showing posts with label Anita Desai. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anita Desai. Show all posts CATEGORIES
Mohammad Ataullah Nuri Saturday, May 2, 2020
on Academia A Farewell to Arms (1)
Anita Desai's 'Where Shall We Go This Summer?' Absurd Drama (5)
: Summary and Analysis African Literature (11)
Anita Desai's Where Shall We Go This Summer? decribes the cruelty and callousness of Agamemnon (2)
urban life. It marks a return to the autonomous world of inner reality. When Sita is with child Agha Shahid Ali (1)
again she panicks at the thought of bringing a new. , She runs away to a small island to American Literature (32)
avoid the harsh reality. Her sudden capitulation comes as an anti-climax. Sita, a sensitive,
Amitav Ghosh (6)
emotional and middle-aged woman feels alienated from her husband and children. She
Anita Desai (1)
undergoes acute mental agonies. She silently- suffers in isolation because of her sharp
Aristotle (6)
existentialist sensibility and explosive emotionality. The novel is a pointer to her angst and
ennui of her anguished soul. Her character consists in her inwardness, introversion and the Arnold (5)

resultant psychic odyssey. Sita tries to visualise the world of her dreams. But ultimately she Bengali Literature (4)
intensifies her desire to recapture the experience and excitement in her. Therefore, she British Fiction (20)
comes to a dilemma to decide as to where she should go that summer. Charles Dickens (8)
  Chaucer (1)
Chomsky (11)
Classics (12)
Sita in Where Shall We Go this Summer ? is over forty. She hangs between married life and
Clear Light of the Day (1)
her self-fulfilment. While she is awaiting the birth of her fifth qhild, her experiences of a
house wife and mother as well accumulate in her deep anguish. She feels no genuine Cotton Mather (1)

happiness in her marital context. Her hopelessness rises and makes her insensitive, cruel Death of a Salesman (5)
and alien to her husband and children. Her insanity drives her back to preserve the sense Derek Walcott (3)
of sanity by escaping from her routine life in a Bombay apartment to rush to Manori, an Derrida (1)
Island in the West-coast. Her immature longing torments her. Her bondage to Raman and Descartes (1)
children creates conditions those are responsible for the misfortunes. She is termed mad Dr. Samuel Johnson (7)
and she is enitrely out of the common cord of life. In plain words she tells her husband:
Edward Said (1)
"What I am doing is trying to escape from the madness here, escape to a place where it
Elaine Showalter (2)
might be possible to be sane again...,
ELT (17)
 
ELT Terms Difined (20)
Emily Bronte (6)
Sita loses her grip on life and develops in mind uncertain and unrealistic attitude towards Emily Dickinson (3)
life. Though she rebels against the birth of the fifth child, she has certain longing in her English History (9)
heart which she misses entirely. She wants to protect her unborn child against the cruel English Language (2)
atmosphere in which she is living. In a freak of madness she aims at abortion and flies to
English Literature (2)
the Island:
Great Expectations (7)
Greek Literature (7)
In order to achieve the miracle of not giving birth. Wasn't this Manori, the Island of
miracles? Her father had made it an Island of magic once, worked miracles of a kind. She Hamlet (5)

has grown tired of the life of dullness and disappointment of her family. She, therefore, Heart of Darkness (2)
wants to seek her childhood as a place of her happiness again. This Island may provide her History of English Language (15)
a refugee camp safe from her family life, away from the humdrum life of Bombay. By going History of English literature (9)
there she tries to connect the changes, distortions and revelations between the present and Homer (2)
the past in her middle age. Her longings or lust for the miracles associate her vision and
Indian Literature (18)
she finds no answers to her deep anguish rather, she finds herself like a jelly fish stranded
Indian Literature in English (2)
on the sand-bar slowly suffocating and unable to survive on the sands of life. For a change
Indian Poetry in English (23)
in her present existence she desires shelter in the Island: She saw that Island illusion us a
refuge, a protection. It would hold her baby safely unborn, my magic. Then there would be Irish Literature (4)

the seal, it would wash the frenzy out of her, drown it. Perhaps, the tides would lull the John Donne (2)
children too, into smother, softer beings. John Keats (5)
  John Locke (2)
Kafka (1)
Kamala Das (17)
The betrayals, treacheries, confusions and compromises lead her into intense suffering.
Kim by Kipling (2)
Though the Island holds no magic now for her, the illusion tramples upon her. The
Latin American Literature (2)
companionship is now a myth of her motherhood. She attempts for a futile search for some
Life and time of Michael K (3)
purpose in life. Her anxiety, concern and
Linguistics (13)

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1/13/23, 2:25 PM Anita Desai | Literary Articles
pessimism produce emotional outbursts and she undergoes a search for an escape to be Literary Criticism (28)
alive to her sensitivity. Her arrival at Manori has given her a new life, a new awareness, a Literary Terms (7)
new consciousness. She now realizes "what a farce marriage was, all human relationship.
Literary Theories (19)
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1)
Sita visualizes the world of her dreams and once again she intensifies her desire to
Machiavelli (2)
recapture an experience, an excitement and an innocence. Her instant decision as to where
Magic Realism (2)
she would go that summer, and her decision to go back to the Island of Manori after twenty
years in her journey in quest for her lost innocence. Not only Sita is longing in her heart to Marvell (2)
go to the Island but the Islanders are also waiting for twenty years looking for something. Maupassant (1)
She is disappointed with them and they feel equally disappointed with her. There are Measure for Measure (3)
impossible expectations on both sides. Metaphysical poetry (3)
Native Son (1)
The misunderstanding between Raman and Sita results into marital discord but Sita as an
Nissim Ezekiel (4)
ideal wife tries to idealize the relationship between a husband and wife. She feels that a life
Oedipus Rex (2)
of complete inwardness and subjective approach is not the way to make one's life happier.
Othello (5)
Though she has begun to drift away mentally, she indulges sometimes in introspection and
sometimes in retrospection of her unhappy married life. She is, disgusted with her life and Phaedra by Seneca (3)

her alienation is inherent in her relationship with her father. Naturally she is unable to Philosophy short notes (1)
maintain conformity with the established norms of society. Though she tries to encounter it Plato (5)
effectively, but she misses to communicate her reaction^ against every incident. Thus, she Poetry (1)
is left like a stranger longing for the life of that primitive world. Postcolonial Reading (1)
Postmodernist reading (2)
We see her trying to adjust in the house of her husband's parents after marriage. There she
Pride and Prejudice (4)
feels like a square peg in a round hole. The sub-human atmosphere in the house makes
Psychoanalytic Reading (1)
her inward looking and places her in a suffocating existence. She fails to adopt herself to
society. She moves in a small flat and lives alone with her husband and children. Her life Quartet (1)

there is hardly better, her privacy is disturbed, she finds her existence at stake, she R K Narayan's The Guide (10)
struggles with the monotony of life. The novelist beautifully describes this monotonous Red Badge of Courage (1)
moments of Sita as follows : ... and could not begin to comprehend her boredom. She Riders to the Sea (1)
herself looking on it, saw it stretched out so vast, so flat, so deep, that in fright she Robert Frost (4)
scrambled about it, searchingJbr av few of these moments that proclaimed her still alive,
Roland Barthes (3)
not quite drowned and dead
Romantic Literature (13)
Romantic Poetry (4)
The agonies and the chain of unhappy incidents in Sita's life makes her a strong character
to refuse the dictates of society. It adds to the dimension of her existential character. She Ronald Barthes (3)

does not work on social principles but she desires to live like a saint, a magician and as the S .T . Coleridge (4)
original inhabitants of Manori with Moses and Meriam. When Raman comes to take Samuel Beckett (1)
Menaka for admission to the Medical College, his arrival gives Sita some sort of satisfaction Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day (1)
but at the same time she comes to realise once again the cold actualities of life. Though it is Seamus Heaney (1)
not a positive solution of her problem, yet she looks within herself and a sense of cowardish Seize the Day by Saul Bellow (4)
approach and escapism overpowers her. She feels that she had escaped from duties and
Shakespeare (22)
responsibilities, from order and routine, from life and the city, to the unlivable island, she
Shakespeare's Sonnets (6)
had refused to give birth to a child in a world not fit to receive the child. She had the
Shelley (2)
imagination to offer it an alternative a life unlived, a life butchered. Sbe had cried out her
great "No"" but now the time had come for her epitaph to be written. SLA (5)
Song of Myself by Whitman (3)
Sonnets (3)
Sons and Lovers (5)
Thus, we find that her withdrawal is indicative of a need for love, the free and unquestioning Sophocles (2)
love. This kind of love transcends the self and makes no claims. It is this kind of relationship
South Asian Literature (2)
which she wants from Raman but she does not achieve the goal in her life. When Raman
Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia
comes she wants to lay down her head and weep "My father's dead look after me". But she
Marquez (3)
is told that he has come not for her but or children. At this stage also she has to accept the
Synge (3)
fact that she is a woman unloved.
T. S . Eliot (10)

Emotion, instinct, feeling, reason occupy the central theme of all the novels of Anita Desai. Tagore (2)
The mystery remains unsolved. Sita comes from her maimed or incomplete family. Her Teaching Language Through Literature (5)
mother has run away from her home leaving the children to the care of their father. She Tempest (4)
confeses her longing in life. She is an orphan either factually or emotionally. Tennyson (1)
The Ancient Mariner (5)
The Great Gatsby (3)
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