Arundhati Roy Analysis

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Abstract: Arundhati Roy’s search for identity asserts that she could not write until it comes from within. She firmly states that she could not be a writer for hire. Arundhati Roy eschews traditional practices and gives free reins to her individual vision. Her literature is neither a means of escaping reality nor a vehicle for parading political, social, religious, and moral ideas. What differentiates Arundhati Roy from the other Indo-Anglican novelists is her capacity to transform the alienation experiences into the monument of living art. Arundhati Roy's characters alienate in order to involve themselves in a frantic quest for their identity. KEY WORDS: Search for identity, trivial and insignificant, psychological and emotional, …show more content…

She could not write even a column like that. Even if somebody offers her a huge sum of money for writing a screen play based on a given theme her answer would be no to it. She firmly states that she could not be a writer for hire. Arundhati Roy eschews traditional practices and gives free reins to her individual vision. Like Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, E.M. Forster, Roy is at once critic and creative writer. Most of the Indo-Anglican novels are the result of a deliberate planning and plotting. In case of Roy, they are an instinctive outcome of her inner motivations and compulsions- her desire to show as well as to see. It is a natural and vegetative growth. The object that triggers her imagination could be very trivial and insignificant Unlike the other Indo-Anglican novelists Roy's predominant concern is not with the society or society forces but the individual psyche and its inter action with social values. She creates an opulent gallery of characters, though dominated by the female. Her protagonists are hyper sensitive females. They are hypochondriacs. Each is presented as an inscrutable individual, enigmatic and eccentric. Neither is they chosen from the common rung of the society nor are their problems related to food, clothing and shelter. They are rebels and their rebellion is not so much directed against society as against individuals. Their problems are neither physical nor social. They are psychical and emotional. Unlike R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and Bhabani Bhattacharya, Arundhati Roy is chiefly concerned with the portrayal of inward or psychic reality of the characters. For her, literature is neither a means of escaping reality nor a vehicle for parading political, social, religious, and moral ideas. It is an exploration and an enquiry. Roy imparts no

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