Existentialism In Arun Joshi's The Apprentice

Arun Joshi’s The Apprentice throws a flood of on a rotten, rudderless, materialistic society with its corrupt amassing of wealth. Ratan, the protagonist, uses the confessional mode to express existentialist phase amid the social reality. As he comes face to face with social reality and realizes phony social norms and consequently suffers like the typical existentialist characters. He exposes the real picture of the society he lives in. On the other hand, he is presented as a victim of the circumstances. Corruption, selfishness, dishonesty are the ways of the society that make him a money minded person. His absurd choice of accepting bribe makes him a man of crisis of character and lends him towards dread despair of his soul. Therefore, The

He holds his own portrait as a mirror to his contemporaries, "the image of all and of no one" (102). The confessional note becomes persistent in The Apprentice in which the protagonist reflects upon his wasteful past after Brigadier 's death and gives as an insight into his degenerate soul to gain some perception of truth in life. As Peter M. Axthelm defines the confessional novel as one which "presents a hero, at some point in his life, examining his past as well as his innermost thoughts, in an attempt to achieve some form of perception" (8). The important aspect of the novel is that RatanRathor fails to confess his guilt or crime before anybody except the young student for the latter reminds him of his father : "You look a little like him (Ratan 's father), if I may take the liberty of mentioning. Fifty years younger, of course, but grave and clear eyed. Not a washout like me" (7). His father 's selfless sacrifice had made such an indelible impression on his psyche that the memory kept haunting Ratan all his life. It is to the image of his father that he is making this honest confession of his fall and degeneration. The Apprentice can be divided into three phases as H.M. Prasad

Throughout the novel it has been seen that Ratan had so ambitious that he does not hesitate to betray his colleagues for a promise of confirmation from his bosses. The insults hurled on him by his friends had the least effect on him. "One day they refused my tea. It was a considerable snub as such things go, but, to my surprise, I discovered that it made no difference to me" (40). A definite degeneration had set in, and the higher he rose in echelons of power, the lower his character fell and vice-versa. The Gandhian purity of means which his father believed in, was replaced by the Machiavellian dedication to the end. His fall can be gauged from two incidents concerning contractors when he was new to the job. Ratan was offered a bribe of ten thousand rupees to change his note on the file of the contractor in question. He turned down the offer although he needed money most, and felt proud and self-righteous. In another incident, he takes a big sum for changing his note on another contractor 's file, although he had no need for money. In the first incident the contractor went bankrupt, and Ratan came face to face with anarchy of the