Vaidehi Hariyani

The White Tiger is the debut novel by Indian author Aravind Adiga. It was first published in 2008 and won the 40th Man Booker Prize in the same year.] The novel provides a threateningly humorous perspective of India’s class struggle in a globalized world as told through a reflective narration from Balram Halwai, a village boy. 1.)     How far do you agree with the India represented in the novel The White Tiger? “India is two countries in one. One is India of light and India of darkness.” – Arvind Adiga “The White Tiger” This novel represents the “India of darkness”, it is a hard core reality which cannot be denied. So yes I agree that novel represents “real” India. Of course people living a good life in urban space may find it boring and also the extremists may find that India is not presented well, but in India we do have places where darkness of corruption and much more is prevalent now also. Like Charles Dickens, Adiga presents the literatu...

The Waste Land is a long poem by T. S. Eliot. It is widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. It is published in 1922 1.)     What are your views on the following image after reading 'The Waste Land'? Do you think that Eliot is regressive as compared to Nietzche's views? or Has Eliot achieved universality of thought by recalling mytho-historical answer to the contemporary malaise? T.S.Eliot and Friedrich Nietzsche are quite different in their thinking. Nietzsche had proclaimed “God is Dead”; he doesn’t believe in any power like God. He believed in “Superhuman”, who believes in his own self and has great will power; While T.S.Eliot believes in spirituality and religion. I disagree that Eliot is regressive as compared to Nietzsche’s view. Eliot goes into the past but he is very much in present also. He uses many references from the past, different myths, religions etc. to give a mess...

'The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling', often simply as 'Tom Jones', is a comic novel by the English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. The protagonist of this text is a foundling whose parents are unknown. Therefor he is considered as a fallen person. He has affairs with many girls, but he is good hearted person. We can see that Fielding brings in an antihero in the picture. Normally we see that the protagonist is a man of character. Tom lives an adventures life facing all the injustices strongly. At the end we see him getting fruits of all his struggles. He is also a helpful person. If we try to deconstruct this text, then we can see that in order to show Tom good other women characters are given less importance. There are many major and minor characters in the play. We can say that the women characters are only in minor role. Importance is not given to the women. They are not at the power position. They are given a subordinate position. We c...

“The Birthday Party’ is a play by Harold Pinter which falls under the category of Absurd Theater and Comedy of Menace. The main subject of the play and the film is trivia. Before proceeding further let us look at some key aspects of the play as well as the film. Comedy of Menace -This phrase is part of the title of a British play called The Lunatic View: a Comedy of Menace, by David Campton. Irving Wardle, a critic in the 1950s, emphasized the phrase when writing a review of the plays of Harold Pinter. It makes you laugh but you feel a threat or danger at the same time. Pinteresque –is related to British play wright, Harold Pinter, “Pinter’s plays are typically characterized by implications of threat and strong feeling produced through colloquial language, apparent triviality, and long pauses”. There are two types of silences as Pinter puts one when no word is spoken and the other when perhaps a torrent of language is being employed. Trivia – An unnecessary event. It ...

Paradise Lost is an epic poem in clear verse by the 17th century English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The primary rendition, distributed in 1667, comprised of ten books with more than ten thousand lines of verse. A moment release followed in 1674, masterminded into twelve books with minor amendments all through and a note on the versification. It is considered by pundits to be Milton's real work, and it paved his notoriety for being one of the best English writers of his time. The lyric represents the Biblical story of the Fall of Man: the slipup of Adam and Eve by the fallen blessed messenger Satan and their ejection from the Garden of Eden. Milton's motivation, expressed in Book I, is to "legitimize the methods for God to men". Satan is the primary real character presented in the poem. He is a disastrous figure who portrays himself with the now-popular quote "Preferred to reign in Hell over serve in Heaven." Adam is the primary human mad...

Chetan Bhagat is one of the popular and also very controversial novelists in the contemporary time. His novels have made Indians read English novels. Cultural Studies have opened up the windows to study popular literature. It is very interesting to study Bhagat’s Novel as a part of academics. It is a rare thing that you can study a book of a writer who is alive and very famous at the contemporary time. Novel – One Night @ Call Centre Author – Chetan Bhagat Published in - October 2005 Genre – Fiction Chetan Bhagat has been both loved and criticised a lot. Some believes his writing quite Bollywoodish and less intelligent. But Bhagat writes keeping in mind the contemporary readers. One Night @ Call centre is one of the most read novels of Chetan Bhagat. There are many ways to review this novel. I would like to review this book from the angel of Cyberpunk. First let us see plot of this novel:- This novel moves around the story of six people who are working in ...

 Every age is an age of progress as well regress also. Charles Dickens very well represents the darker side of the Victorian time. Though there was progress but deep down there was a tremendous criminal era developing. In the present time, if the writer writes something like this then the books are banned. It must be a matter of courage for a writer to highlight the defects during that time. Let’s see something about this in brief. Oliver Twist, or The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens and was first published as a serial 1837–39. The story is of the orphan Oliver Twist, who starts his life in a workhouse and is then sold into apprenticeship with an undertaker. He escapes from there and travels to London, where he meets the Artful Dodger, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal, Fagin. Though being in the company of criminals, Oliver is a good boy. We can say that Oliver is a lotus between th...

It is a remarkable work of Literature. Here we see the mirror image of our society. At first when I read this book before my U.G, I felt that it is for kids. But during my P.G, I got a different insight to see this book. Let’s see something in brief about this text. Gulliver's Travels is a prose satire by Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift. It is both a satire on human nature and the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature. He himself claimed that he wrote Gulliver's Travels "to vex the world rather than divert it”. The book became popular as soon as it was published. John Gay wrote in a 1726 letter to Swift that "It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery." This text is divided into 4 parts. Gulliver- the protagonist visits four different lands like Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa and Houyhnhnm. Each part has its own imp...

The text I am going to write about is a Gothic Novel. It is always fun for me to read text with gothic elements. It increases our curiosity to know more and more about it. Let’s see something about this in brief. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley. It is a story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a weird but wise creature in an unusual scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition of the novel was published anonymously in London in 1818, when she was 20. Her name first appeared on the second edition, published in France in 1823. This text is written when electricity was new in town. So we can see the contemporary effects of that time in this novel. It also highlights the over excessiveness of anything. We can see the good verses bad effects of Science. Victor creates a creature and then he himself rejects that creature. Being rejected by ...

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best recognized for his poetry and short stories, mainly his tales of mystery and the macabre. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. Some of his famous short stories are “The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Purloined Letter", "The Cask of Amontillado", "The fall of house of Usher", "The Gold Bug" and many others. Poe’s stories are full of gothic elements. Poe represents the psychological complexities in his works. His most recurring themes deal with questions of death, including its physical signs, the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning. Poe had a keen interest in cryptography, which can be seen in his stories like “The Gold Bug” and “The Purloined Letter”. All his stori...

The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is an 1850 work of fiction in a historical setting, written by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. The book is considered to be his "masterwork". Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston, Massachusetts, during the years 1642 to 1649. The Scarlet Letter is a novel set in Puritan Boston. Storyteller of the novel is custom house surveyors who discovered this story. And afterward he portrays the account of an Adulteress Hester Prynne. This text brings in the ridiculous cultural norms of the Puritan society. The treatment of women and men are so different. In the beginning of the novel Hester was remaining on platform in light of committing Adultery. Dimmesdale and different ministers solicit her to uncover name from father of Pearl however Hester declines to give name of her kindred heathen. So she needs to wear Scarlet ‘A’ on her chest image of Adulteress Hester. Amid this Roger chillingworth comes, who, we later come to know is the ...