How has post colonialism affected our perception in the novels “No Longer at Ease” by Chinua Achebe and “Samskara” by U.R Ananthamurthy?

Authors

Aaryan Manoj Nair, CUNY New York City College of TechnologyFollow

Document Type

Report

Publication Date

Spring 2018

Abstract

A study in post-colonialism is a highly enticing endeavor. In the modern society, postcolonial literature is largely underappreciated in contrast to the more opulent reception of the Victorian or Elizabethan era of literature. The truth is, even today, modern perceptions of many colonial nations are largely constructed by their colonial masters. There is certainly a bias due to the influence of Western Hegemony and its monopoly on global media. The Western world still possesses a tendency to discredit anything which does not conform to its democratic liberalist ideals without glancing at other local factors. In the modern world, while the last remnants of these wild stereotypes still exist, there have been successive waves of postcolonial writers who seek to rectify the stereotypes created by the Western World through its media. In the world of post-colonialism, African, Indian, and Caribbean authors have been the frontrunners in showcasing the adverse effects of the colonization with several threads running similar in authors such as Chinua Achebe, Raja Rao, and V. S Naipaul. Alongside these came a series of literary essays which critiques the colonial era books for its one sided Eurocentric bias. These essays have contested colonial themes like institutionalization, valorization of the English literary study and marginality. Particular secondary source authors I have referred to understand the gravity of post colonialism include Homi K Bhabha, V. S Naipaul, Edward Said, and Bill Ashcroft. For my preliminary research, I’ve chosen two divergent novels. The first novel “No Longer at Ease is an emphatic widely appreciated work of Chinua Achebe in the field of post-colonial study. The second novel “Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man” is a translated work of a cerebrated author- U. R Ananthamurthy. The portrayal of social degeneracy is thoroughly expounded upon in this translated Kannada novel. Its intents its ire at Brahmins- “the bourgeoisie of colonial India”, a supposedly elite aristocratic austere community, exercising its hypocrisy by being extremely indulgent towards materialistic objects at a particularly inopportune time- the death of a man, and his final rites.

Comments

Unpublished student paper.