The contemporary literature which deals with emotional problems clearly reflects the pathetic condition of modern man. Getting uprooted from native cultural traditions and values, the loss of indigenous language, man’s position as a mere outcast or an accommodated alien, together with multiple injuries and lacerations of the psyche, all account for the theme of identity crisis in the novel.
The identity is a subjective sense as well as an observable quality of personal sameness and continuity, paired with some belief in the sameness and continuity of some shared world image. According to Erikson the onset of the identity crisis is in the teenage years, and only individuals who succeed in resolving the crisis will be ready to face future challenges in the life. But the identity crisis may well be recurring, as the challenging world demands us to constantly redefine ourselves. Given today’s rapid development in technology, global economy, dynamics in local and world politics, one might expect identity crisis to recue commonly now than even thirty years ago Erikson formed his theory.
Anita Desai is the foremost Indian English novelist. A predominant feature of her novels is the identity crisis. Her works have been greatly admired both at home and abroad. Her contribution to fiction writing is quite praiseworthy and substantial. She reflects the intangible realities of life, the innermost depth of the human psyche and chaotic underworld of human mind through her novels. Her outstanding stature as novelist derives primarily from the fact that she had made extensive use of the stream of consciousness technique in her novels.
The treatment of the migrants’ condition in literature is the most engrossing topic exciting intellectual debate. The postmodernist world has been the emergence of interdisciplinary and cultural studies as the major thrust areas of academic exploration.
As Elleke Boehmer states:
The postcolonial and migrant novels are seen as appropriate text for such explorations because they offer multi-voiced resistance to the idea of boundaries and present text open to transgressive and non-authoritative reading (243)1
Thus in the world where identity, origin and truth are seen in postmodernist terminology as structureless assemblances, the writer Anita Desai appears as a very good example in that regard.
Displacement, whether forced or self imposed, is in many ways of calamity. Yet a peculiar but outstanding point to note is that writers in their displaced existence generally tend to excel in their works, as if the changed atmosphere acts as a stimulant for them. The present age of globalization embodies the fluidity of identity and hybrid culture, which are associated with the diasporic phenomenon. Because of the immigration or expatriation, the politics of identity and notion of root persistently appear in academic and critical discourse. The versatile aspects of identity prove an impetus for Anita Desai in her domain of writings.
Anita Desai’s mother was a German Christian and her father was a Bengali Indian. The mixed parentage of complex origin has given Anita Desai the advantage of having double perspective when writing about India and Indians as well as migrants in India and Indian migrants to the west. Longing for her own rootlessness she remarks: I had always imagined that my life would be spent in India. I could not imagine that I would have a reason to leave, but it must have been part of this general uprooting that’s take place.2
Her novel, The Zigzag Way (2004) is set in Mexico and Cornwall, and is narrated by a young American writer, a man who travels to the Sierra Madre for his thesis work on anthropology. He follows his scientist girlfriend to Mexico, only to learn that he would not be welcome to her research site. At a lecture at Huichol Indians of the Sierras, given by the mysterious, exotic Dona Vera, Eric suddenly realizes that the places names she mentioned are those he once heard from his Cornish grandfather, who once worked in the Mexican silver mines. Eric promptly travels in to the Sierras, finds Dona Vera and begins to ask questions about the mines and miners. His quest takes him to the estate of the elderly, imperious and eccentric Dona Vera, who fled Austria during World War II –possibly because of Nazi connections- and married a Mexican man whose family fortune was made in mining. She now lives as “ Queen of the Sierra” and self-appointed proctor of the Huichol Indians. An egocentric, autocratic woman suffering secret torments, she resents Eric’s inquiries about the mines. Dona Vera’s library, however, teaches him about the mines’ labors. Learning that porters carried heavy bags up thousands of stairs in a zigzag direction to take advantage of air currents that helped them breathe, Eric ruminates on his own zigzag journey, his effort to enter the past. Eric’s restlessness and curiosity to search the real roots of his ancestors is the manifestation of Desai’s longing for her quest for identity and felling of rootlessness. She remarks:
One likes to imagine that things have stood still, but so much happens. I have been an observer, and not a participant. And so much has happened to me that to them, my friends and family in India, I am becoming a ghost.3
The elegant ghost story tells of an American academic led by fate to run down Mexican town where he worked as a miner. He immigrated to Mexico, returning to Cornwall on his wife’s death in childbirth. Interwoven with his tale or those of Dona Vera, an imperious anthropologist
with doubtful origins in wartime Europe and his Cornish grandmother caught up in Zapata’s uprising a century before. In Mexico, to follow his girlfriend Em, a medical researcher arrives in an obscure mining town in search of his family past. On the way he encounters the emigrated Dona Vera, a ontime Viennese dancer who run an haciendas doubling as an ethnological research institute, despite never having published anything herself. Gradually the unveiled history of the mining community reveals a past of exploitation by the mine owners under the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship, interrupted by the (ambivalently viewed) revolution of Emiliano Zapata. Eric speaks little Spanish while Dona Vera, who could be either a refugee from Fascism or a Nazi supporter, is a native speaker of neither English nor Spanish and, according to some evil tongues, does not even speak the language of the Huichols’ Indians’, whose cause she serves, Eric his ancestors and Dona Vera all are displaced individuals, migrants with more that one identity and to a greater or lesser extent, lacking in integration with the Mexican surroundings described.
Desai has enjoyed her unique position living in India for a considerable part of her life after which she went to Girton College, Cambridge, followed by her shift to Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Becoming a global citizen has chiseled her perspective still further and also made her explore the condition of the Diaspora in her fiction in a better way. Desai has dealt with a group of diasporic Indians in Britain of the late 1960s in her novel Bye Bye Blackbird (1969); she has also dealt with the character of a migrant Australian Jew in India in her novel Baumgartner’s Bombay (1988). In the novel, Journey to Ithaca, she has shown an Egyptian acculturated in India along with an Italian spiritual seeker in the subcontinent. Finally she has also shown the predicament of a lonely Indian, Arun in USA, in her novel Fasting, Feasting (1999).
Desai is a silver signature in the realm of Indian English literature. Most of her novels reflect the Indian Diasporic sensibility. It is praiseworthy that being scientific background, she fell in love with literature. Her novel, The Zigzag Way (2004), grew out of Desai’s passion for Mexico. She first went there six years ago, during a particular New England writer and immediately felt its affinity to India.
As far as the identity crisis of the novel, The Zigzag Way is concerned; all the characters of the novel are struggling for their own identity. Apart from these, they are also trying their best to achieve identity in contemporary society.
Works Cited
Bhatnagar M. K. and M. Rajeshwar. The novels of Anita Desai A Critical Study. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2005.
Chisholm, Kate. Waves of Mexico. Sept 06, 2004. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books3623319/waves-of -mexico.html
Desai, Anita. The Zigzag Way. Noida: Random House, 2009.
Hettzel, Ellen Enry. A Journey in Mexico. Sunday, December, 19, 2004. <http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2002121893_zigzag19.html
Jaggi, Maya. The Guardian Review. Saturday, 23 October, 2004. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/Oct/23/featuresreviews.guardianreview.20
Jain, Jasbir. Novels of Anita Desai. Jaipur: Printwell, 1987.
Prasad, Madhusudan. Anita Desai The Novelist. Allahabad: New Horizon, 1981.
R. K. Dhawan. The Fiction of Anita Desai. New Delhi: Bahri, 1889.
Posted by Vivekanand Jha at 9:11 AM 0 comments
Labels: Suraj Verma presented a research paper in an International conference entitled" Reflections on identity crisis in Anita Desai's The Zigzag Way"
The identity is a subjective sense as well as an observable quality of personal sameness and continuity, paired with some belief in the sameness and continuity of some shared world image. According to Erikson the onset of the identity crisis is in the teenage years, and only individuals who succeed in resolving the crisis will be ready to face future challenges in the life. But the identity crisis may well be recurring, as the challenging world demands us to constantly redefine ourselves. Given today’s rapid development in technology, global economy, dynamics in local and world politics, one might expect identity crisis to recue commonly now than even thirty years ago Erikson formed his theory.
Anita Desai is the foremost Indian English novelist. A predominant feature of her novels is the identity crisis. Her works have been greatly admired both at home and abroad. Her contribution to fiction writing is quite praiseworthy and substantial. She reflects the intangible realities of life, the innermost depth of the human psyche and chaotic underworld of human mind through her novels. Her outstanding stature as novelist derives primarily from the fact that she had made extensive use of the stream of consciousness technique in her novels.
The treatment of the migrants’ condition in literature is the most engrossing topic exciting intellectual debate. The postmodernist world has been the emergence of interdisciplinary and cultural studies as the major thrust areas of academic exploration.
As Elleke Boehmer states:
The postcolonial and migrant novels are seen as appropriate text for such explorations because they offer multi-voiced resistance to the idea of boundaries and present text open to transgressive and non-authoritative reading (243)1
Thus in the world where identity, origin and truth are seen in postmodernist terminology as structureless assemblances, the writer Anita Desai appears as a very good example in that regard.
Displacement, whether forced or self imposed, is in many ways of calamity. Yet a peculiar but outstanding point to note is that writers in their displaced existence generally tend to excel in their works, as if the changed atmosphere acts as a stimulant for them. The present age of globalization embodies the fluidity of identity and hybrid culture, which are associated with the diasporic phenomenon. Because of the immigration or expatriation, the politics of identity and notion of root persistently appear in academic and critical discourse. The versatile aspects of identity prove an impetus for Anita Desai in her domain of writings.
Anita Desai’s mother was a German Christian and her father was a Bengali Indian. The mixed parentage of complex origin has given Anita Desai the advantage of having double perspective when writing about India and Indians as well as migrants in India and Indian migrants to the west. Longing for her own rootlessness she remarks: I had always imagined that my life would be spent in India. I could not imagine that I would have a reason to leave, but it must have been part of this general uprooting that’s take place.2
Her novel, The Zigzag Way (2004) is set in Mexico and Cornwall, and is narrated by a young American writer, a man who travels to the Sierra Madre for his thesis work on anthropology. He follows his scientist girlfriend to Mexico, only to learn that he would not be welcome to her research site. At a lecture at Huichol Indians of the Sierras, given by the mysterious, exotic Dona Vera, Eric suddenly realizes that the places names she mentioned are those he once heard from his Cornish grandfather, who once worked in the Mexican silver mines. Eric promptly travels in to the Sierras, finds Dona Vera and begins to ask questions about the mines and miners. His quest takes him to the estate of the elderly, imperious and eccentric Dona Vera, who fled Austria during World War II –possibly because of Nazi connections- and married a Mexican man whose family fortune was made in mining. She now lives as “ Queen of the Sierra” and self-appointed proctor of the Huichol Indians. An egocentric, autocratic woman suffering secret torments, she resents Eric’s inquiries about the mines. Dona Vera’s library, however, teaches him about the mines’ labors. Learning that porters carried heavy bags up thousands of stairs in a zigzag direction to take advantage of air currents that helped them breathe, Eric ruminates on his own zigzag journey, his effort to enter the past. Eric’s restlessness and curiosity to search the real roots of his ancestors is the manifestation of Desai’s longing for her quest for identity and felling of rootlessness. She remarks:
One likes to imagine that things have stood still, but so much happens. I have been an observer, and not a participant. And so much has happened to me that to them, my friends and family in India, I am becoming a ghost.3
The elegant ghost story tells of an American academic led by fate to run down Mexican town where he worked as a miner. He immigrated to Mexico, returning to Cornwall on his wife’s death in childbirth. Interwoven with his tale or those of Dona Vera, an imperious anthropologist
with doubtful origins in wartime Europe and his Cornish grandmother caught up in Zapata’s uprising a century before. In Mexico, to follow his girlfriend Em, a medical researcher arrives in an obscure mining town in search of his family past. On the way he encounters the emigrated Dona Vera, a ontime Viennese dancer who run an haciendas doubling as an ethnological research institute, despite never having published anything herself. Gradually the unveiled history of the mining community reveals a past of exploitation by the mine owners under the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship, interrupted by the (ambivalently viewed) revolution of Emiliano Zapata. Eric speaks little Spanish while Dona Vera, who could be either a refugee from Fascism or a Nazi supporter, is a native speaker of neither English nor Spanish and, according to some evil tongues, does not even speak the language of the Huichols’ Indians’, whose cause she serves, Eric his ancestors and Dona Vera all are displaced individuals, migrants with more that one identity and to a greater or lesser extent, lacking in integration with the Mexican surroundings described.
Desai has enjoyed her unique position living in India for a considerable part of her life after which she went to Girton College, Cambridge, followed by her shift to Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Becoming a global citizen has chiseled her perspective still further and also made her explore the condition of the Diaspora in her fiction in a better way. Desai has dealt with a group of diasporic Indians in Britain of the late 1960s in her novel Bye Bye Blackbird (1969); she has also dealt with the character of a migrant Australian Jew in India in her novel Baumgartner’s Bombay (1988). In the novel, Journey to Ithaca, she has shown an Egyptian acculturated in India along with an Italian spiritual seeker in the subcontinent. Finally she has also shown the predicament of a lonely Indian, Arun in USA, in her novel Fasting, Feasting (1999).
Desai is a silver signature in the realm of Indian English literature. Most of her novels reflect the Indian Diasporic sensibility. It is praiseworthy that being scientific background, she fell in love with literature. Her novel, The Zigzag Way (2004), grew out of Desai’s passion for Mexico. She first went there six years ago, during a particular New England writer and immediately felt its affinity to India.
As far as the identity crisis of the novel, The Zigzag Way is concerned; all the characters of the novel are struggling for their own identity. Apart from these, they are also trying their best to achieve identity in contemporary society.
Works Cited
Bhatnagar M. K. and M. Rajeshwar. The novels of Anita Desai A Critical Study. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2005.
Chisholm, Kate. Waves of Mexico. Sept 06, 2004. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books3623319/waves-of -mexico.html
Desai, Anita. The Zigzag Way. Noida: Random House, 2009.
Hettzel, Ellen Enry. A Journey in Mexico. Sunday, December, 19, 2004. <http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2002121893_zigzag19.html
Jaggi, Maya. The Guardian Review. Saturday, 23 October, 2004. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/Oct/23/featuresreviews.guardianreview.20
Jain, Jasbir. Novels of Anita Desai. Jaipur: Printwell, 1987.
Prasad, Madhusudan. Anita Desai The Novelist. Allahabad: New Horizon, 1981.
R. K. Dhawan. The Fiction of Anita Desai. New Delhi: Bahri, 1889.
Posted by Vivekanand Jha at 9:11 AM 0 comments
Labels: Suraj Verma presented a research paper in an International conference entitled" Reflections on identity crisis in Anita Desai's The Zigzag Way"
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