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Bhumi Dangi.

Department of English, MK Bhavnagar University

Semester-3 Assignment

Paper- 11 Postcolonial literature

‘Subaltern cannot speak by Gayatri spivak & Commonwealth literature does not exist by Salman Rushdie – merging the theories and trying to see what emerges out of it.’

Commonwealth Literature, Post-Colonial Literature in English, New Literature in English, World Writing in English – these are just some of the terms being used to describe the writings of ‘members’ of the former British Empire.

The number of titles, however, reflects the growing international importance of such writings as evidenced this month at the London Festival of Commonwealth Literature, with writers coming from around the globe. They tentatively include Michael Ondaatje, the Sri Lankan- Canadian author of ‘The English Patient’, the book that inspired the movie that swept the board at the latest Acadaemy Awards ceremony.

The nine-day festival, sponsored by the Commonwealth Foundation and the University of London among others, will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Commonwealth Writers Prize and mark the Year of the Commonwealth in Britain.

It is an important milestone because many universities around the world now have courses in Commonwealth Literature, or some similar nomenclature, and academics are churning out books seemingly at the same pace as the fiction writers, poets and dramatists. Professors who teach the subject say that students who want to study English Literature are increasingly interested in the works coming from the English-speaking Caribbean, Africa, Canada and South-East Asia.

But what IS Commonwealth Literature? Many years after the term came into being, it still causes disagreement, according to Professor Hena Maes-Jelinek, a Belgian expert on the writing from Britain’s former colonies.

In a recent lecture at the Free University of Brussels, Maes- Jelinek said that writers often find the term limiting since it implies a uniform kind of literature and also tends to categorise this writing as outside the British mainstream.

In a famous and scathing essay, the Indian-born writer Salman Rushdie, author of the Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Children, once asserted that “Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist”, and he has been supported in this view by other authors.

“Isn’t this the very oddest of beasts… a school of literature whose supposed members deny vehemently that they belong to it? Worse these denials are simply disregarded! It seems the creature has taken on a life of its own,” Rushdie has written.

He added that the nearest definition of Commonwealth literature he could get sounded patronising because it appeared to be “that body of writing created … in the English language, by persons who are not themselves white Britons, or Irish, or citizens of the United States of America.”

The creation of this “phantom category obscure what was really going on and worth talking about”, Rushdie said, explaining that some so-called Commonwealth Writers had more in common with the ‘magical realism’ of Latin American authors than with other ex- British colonies.

But even if Commonwealth Literature does not exist, the Commonwealth itself certainly does. The (British) Commonwealth of Nations, to give it its original name, is an association of states comprising Britain and its former colonies, along with their dependencies.

The original grouping in 1931 and comprised Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand who, while self-governing, pledged allegiance to the British Crown. The association was expanded and restructured in 1949, when participants agreed to drop both the ‘British’ and the concept of allegiance. Today the Commonwealth is a loose alliance of 53 countries, with a combined population of more than one billion.

‘Commonwealth Literature’ is thus used to cover the literary works from territories that were once part of the British Empire, but it usually excludes books from the United Kingdom unless these are produced by resident writers who originate from a former colony. The great irony, however, is that much of the best literature that has emerged from Britain in the last years has been produced by writers from or with roots in colonies.

    Gayatri Spivak and subaltern

Gayatri Spivak is prominent name in the world of literary criticism. She is heavily bended upon the other moments like Marxism, feminism and deconstruction. What she have done in criticism, are the things where we can find all these things in bit or more.

Term ‘subaltern’ is borrowed from Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. It signifies ‘the oppressed classes. Here Gayatri puts her argument that a subaltern cannot speak his mind. Because he is suppressed by the one who is colonising him. The thing gets worse with colonised woman. Here suppression comes from dual side. As colonisers, in general, does not want anyone to speak against themselves; that is the first part. And the social structure which is more generally patriarchal, does not allow her to speak. Because in patriarchal society, woman is assigned with lot many roles – as wife, daughter, mother, sister. It makes her identity depended upon any male person. So there chances become laser n laser where woman haves her own identity as an individual. She, in one or the other way, finds satisfaction of life in making his man happy. Such conditioning has taken place in her life from days of childhood. So, with passing time, it gets naturalisation.

There emerged a new way of looking towards history—from the angle of subaltern. Cause it is duty of an intellectual to make visible position of the marginalised. Thus Subaltern studies project was launched during 1982 in leadership of Ranjit Guha. It challenged all the freedom fighters moment which took place in India. According to this study, some elite class people like Gandhiji, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Javaharlal Nehru, Lokmany Tilak are the most celebrated freedom fighters whereas some of the tribal people who have sacrificed their lives have no place in history. So, this history has deconstructed the idea of all the freedom fighting movement.

Gayatri have given a perfect concept-map which speaks a lot –

Social Formation	Subaltern	Dominant Group	Ideology
Class	Working Classes	Capitalist bourgeois	Capitalism
Empire	Natives	Europeans	Colonialism
Patriarchy	Women	Men	Gender
Nation	Ethnic Group	Majority	Homogenization and nationalism

Thus she speaks up for all the classes where domestication takes place in one or the other way. And this happens in such a way that one feels helpless to do anything but to sacrifice. It becomes very much difficult to free the mind which once was colonised. There is a very interesting saying in English. –

“Once a victim, forever a victim”

    ‘Commonwealth literature does not exist’ – Salman Rushdie.

What does Commonwealth mean?

“Commonwealth,^[3][4] is an intergovernmental organisation of 52 member states that were mostly territories of the former British Empire.^[4] The Commonwealth operates by intergovernmental consensus of the member states, organised through the Commonwealth Secretariat, and non-governmental organisations, organised through the Commonwealth Foundation. English noun ‘Commonwealth’ in a sense means ‘public welfare, general good or advantage.”

-         Wikipedia.

Thus, commonwealth nation means the nations which were previously ruled by British raj. And now they have been established as free countries. As they were ruled for so many years, they perhaps may not have proper system to handle out everything. That is why there emerged ‘Commonwealth Foundation’ to give a helping hand to such nations.

‘Commonwealth Literature’

As a part of Commonwealth Foundation’s cultural programme, some group of international literary organizations came together. They helped commonwealth writers to develop their writing craft. They started giving some prise for such literatures. For example ‘short story prize’. This is how the term ‘Commonwealth Literature’ comes in existence.

Many of the writers have accepted and started using the term. They have begun to work as a commonwealth writer. While some writers denied to accept it. One of the prominent voices is of Salman Rushdie. He very strongly disagrees on the point that he questions even the existence of term- Commonwealth  Literature, in one of magazines. He very clearly considers it ‘unhelpful’ and even ‘distasteful’. It was an Interview where Rushdie have given these words. In the same interview, two contemporary writers were there. Shiva Naipaul and Buchi Emecheta. Rushdie found that they also think in the same direction. That is why; the interview got published under headline like this ‘Commonwealth writers . . . but don’t call them that’.

The Commonwealth Pen: An Introduction to the Literature of the British Commonwealth  By A. L. McLeod

English Postcoloniality: Literatures from around the World  By Radhika Mohanram; Gita RajanGreenwood Press, 1996

Towards a Transcultural Future: Literature and Society in a 'Post'-Colonial World By Geoffrey V. Davis; Peter H. Marsden; Bénédicte Ledent;

Class, Culture, and the Colonial Context: The Status of Women in Buchi Emecheta's the Joys of Motherhood By Derrickson, Teresa

Traveling with Joyce: Derek Walcott's Discrepant Cosmopolitan Modernism By Pollard, Charles W

These are some of the examples of commonwealth literature article. 



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Bhumi Dangi.

Department of English, MK Bhavnagar University

Semester-3 Assignment

Paper 10 - American Literature

Comparative studies:

William Wordsworth & Robert Frost (poets)

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William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 and died on 23 April 1850. He and his friend Coleridge almost worked together for the writings. Both of them together published ‘Lyrical Ballads’ and the new age begun. This is how; he becomes major figure in English Literature. The time in which the writers have lived is the time when a moment ‘French Revolution’ took place. We cannot say anything with certainty but after reading his poems, we see that he tried to escape something. He tried to hide himself from some kind of harsh, burning political issues. As the only poem “London” talks about several issues.

Let us see views of writer for poetry. He was perhaps first major writer who tells that “poetry should be in simple language.”

—      Poem-

 ‘Spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, recollected in tranquillity’

(Preface to the “Lyrical Ballads”)

He has given such definitions for poetry, poet, diction and language of poetry but he has broken the rules given by him only. As we can see that some of his poems are pregnant with layers of meanings which layman cannot understand.

‘TELL me, ye Zephrys! That unfold,

While fluttering o’er this gay Recess,

Pinions that fanned the teeming mould

Of Eden’s blissful wilderness,

Did only softly-stealing hours

There close the peaceful lives of Flowers?’

n “A Flower Garden At Coleorton Hall, Leicestershire”

‘The peace which other seek they find;

The heaviest storms not longer last;

Heaven grants even to the guiltiest mind’

n “The Forsaken”

As perhaps I have no right to expect from a Reader of an introduction to a volume of Poems that attentive perusal without which it is impossible, imperfectly as I have been compelled to express my meaning, that what I have said in the Preface should throughout be fully understood, I am the more anxious to give an exact notion of the sense in which I use the phrase poetic diction; and for this purpose I will here add a few words concerning the origin of the phraseology which I have condemned under that name.

The earliest Poets of all nations generally wrote from passion excited by real events; they wrote naturally, and as men: feeling powerfully as they did, their language was daring and figurative.

 In succeeding times, Poets, and men ambitious of the fame of Poets, perceiving the influence of such language, and desirous of producing the same effect, without having the same animating passion, set themselves to a mechanical adoption of those figures of speech, and made use of them, sometimes with propriety, but much more frequently applied them to feelings and ideas with which they had no natural connection whatsoever.

A language was thus insensibly produced, differing materially from the real language of men in any situation. The Reader or Hearer of this distorted language found himself in a perturbed and unusual state of mind: when affected by the genuine language of passion he had been in a perturbed and unusual state of mind also: in both cases he was willing that his common judgment and understanding should be laid asleep, and he had no instinctive and infallible perception of the true to make him reject the false; the one served as a passport for the other.

The agitation and confusion of mind were in both cases delightful, and no wonder if he confounded the one with the other, and believed them both to be produced by the same, or similar causes.

Besides, the Poet spoke to him in the character of a man to be looked up to, a man of genius and authority.

Thus, and from a variety of other causes, this distorted language was received with admiration; and Poets, it is probable, who had before contented themselves for the most part with misapplying only expressions which at first had been dictated by real passion, carried the abuse still further, and introduced phrases composed apparently in the spirit of the original figurative language of passion, yet altogether of their own invention, and distinguished by various degrees of wanton deviation from good sense and nature.

It is indeed true that the language of the earliest Poets was felt to differ materially from ordinary language, because it was the language of extraordinary occasions; but it was really spoken by men, language which the Poet himself had uttered when he had been affected by the events which he described, or which he had heard uttered by those around him.

ROBERT FROST

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California, to journalist William Prescott Frost, Jr., and Isabelle Moodie.^[2] His mother was a Scottish immigrant, and his father descended from Nicholas Frost of Tiverton, Devon, England, who had sailed to New Hampshire in 1634 on the Wolfrana.

Frost's father was a teacher and later an editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin (which later merged with The San Francisco Examiner), and an unsuccessful candidate for city tax collector. After his death on May 5, 1885, the family moved across the country to Lawrence, Massachusetts, under the patronage of (Robert's grandfather) William Frost, Sr., who was an overseer at a New England mill. Frost graduated from Lawrence High School in 1892.^[4] Frost's mother joined the Swedenborgian church and had him baptized in it, but he left it as an adult.

Although known for his later association with rural life, Frost grew up in the city, and he published his first poem in his high school's magazine. He attended Dartmouth College for two months, long enough to be accepted into the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. Frost returned home to teach and to work at various jobs, including helping his mother teach her class of unruly boys, delivering newspapers, and working in a factory maintaining carbon arc lamps. He did not enjoy these jobs, feeling his true calling was poetry.

Adult years

In 1894 he sold his first poem, "My Butterfly. An Elegy" (published in the November 8, 1894, edition of the New York Independent) for $15 ($411 today). Proud of his accomplishment, he proposed marriage to Elinor Miriam White, but she demurred, wanting to finish college (at St. Lawrence University) before they married. Frost then went on an excursion to the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and asked Elinor again upon his return. Having graduated, she agreed, and they were married at Lawrence, Massachusetts on December 19, 1895.

Frost attended Harvard University from 1897 to 1899, but he left voluntarily due to illness.^[5][6][7] Shortly before his death, Frost's grandfather purchased a farm for Robert and Elinor in Derry, New Hampshire; Frost worked the farm for nine years while writing early in the mornings and producing many of the poems that would later become famous. Ultimately his farming proved unsuccessful and he returned to the field of education as an English teacher at New Hampshire's Pinkerton Academy from 1906 to 1911, then at the New Hampshire Normal School (nowPlymouth State University) in Plymouth, New Hampshire.

In 1912 Frost sailed with his family to Great Britain, settling first in Beaconsfield, a small town outside London. His first book of poetry, A Boy's Will, was published the next year. In England he made some important acquaintances, including Edward Thomas (a member of the group known as the Dymock poets and Frost's inspiration for "The Road Not Taken"^[8]), T. E. Hulme, and Ezra Pound. Although Pound would become the first American to write a favorable review of Frost's work, Frost later resented Pound's attempts to manipulate his American prosody. Frost met or befriended many contemporary poets in England, especially after his first two poetry volumes were published in London in 1913 (A Boy's Will) and 1914 (North of Boston).

In 1915, during World War I, Frost returned to America, where Holt's American edition of A Boy's Will had recently been published, and bought a farm in Franconia, New Hampshire, where he launched a career of writing, teaching, and lecturing. This family homestead served as the Frosts' summer home until 1938. It is maintained today as The Frost Place, a museum and poetry conference site. During the years 1916–20, 1923–24, and 1927–1938, Frost taught English at Amherst College in Massachusetts, notably encouraging his students to account for the myriad sounds and intonations of the spoken English language in their writing. He called his colloquial approach to language "the sound of sense.

In 1924, he won the first of four Pulitzer Prizes for the book New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes. He would win additional Pulitzers for Collected Poems in 1931, A Further Range in 1937, and A Witness Tree in 1943.^[10]

For forty-two years — from 1921 to 1963 — Frost spent almost every summer and fall teaching at the Bread Loaf School of English ofMiddlebury College, at its mountain campus at Ripton, Vermont. He is credited as a major influence upon the development of the school and its writing programs. The college now owns and maintains his former Ripton farmstead as a national historic site near the Bread Loaf campus. In 1921 Frost accepted a fellowship teaching post at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he resided until 1927 when he returned to teach at Amherst. While teaching at the University of Michigan, he was awarded a lifetime appointment at the University as a Fellow in Letters.^[11] The Robert Frost Ann Arbor home was purchased by The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan and relocated to the museum's Greenfield Village site for public tours.

In 1940 he bought a 5-acre (2.0 ha) plot in South Miami, Florida, naming it Pencil Pines; he spent his winters there for the rest of his life. His properties also included a houseon Brewster Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that today belongs to the National Historic Register.

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M.A. Semester 3, 
Paper 9 - 
The Modernist Literature. 


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Relooking the research

Absurdity of Existentialism in the light if

Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ and Shrikant Shah’s ‘ Apne Badha Akash Niche Ubha chhie’.

Bhumi Dangi

(Third Year B.A)

Existentialism

Existentialism is mainly a European philosophy that originated before the turn of the twentieth century, but became popular after World War II (1939 – 45). In simple words Existentialism is the term which contains theory of our existence. Nowadays science has its own vista and acknowledgement it is nothing else but collections of reasons. Slowly and steadily science developed as a stream, people started looking for the reasons behind every single incidence and some literary genius found life itself an incident. Although, I may not consider science to as the cause, of the firm but basically roots of Existentialism lies in the scientific bent of mind. The questions that make you feel agitated from within. Whenever you are coming on a maturity level in your life, such kinds of questions have to rise from your mind which may not have any answers.

 A more technical definition of existentialism reveals the reason for its name. Existentialism is the study of existence. If you take existence to be everything that exists — such as chairs and tables, people — all philosophy, science, and religion would seem to have the same subject. But existentialism isn’t the study of everything that exists; it’s the study of existence itself — the study of what it means for something to exist at all as opposed to not existing. It’s also the study of what it means for something, as opposed to nothing, to exist at all. Of course, the primary focus of existentialism is a particular kind of existence, the kind of existence that includes existing things like you, because you’re aware of your existence and capable of questioning it.

The seeds of existentialism may be traced back to an earlier period of the history of philosophy. During the 18th century reason and nature were given more importance, objectivity was very much emphasized, leading to industrial and technological developments and science was given utmost importance. From the scientific viewpoint, man was also regarded as an object. Man became a slave to machines in developing industrial society. Against this situation existentialism emerged as a protest against the society and asserted the supremacy of individuality of man.

It deals with the following fundamental issues

1.      Existence precedes Essence

2.      Importance of Subjectivity

3.      Man’s Freedom

4.      Criticism of Idealism

5.      Criticism of Naturalism

6.      Criticism of Scientific Culture

7.      Attention on Human Weakness and Security

Themes such as freedom, decision, and responsibility are prominent in all existentialist philosophers. These matters constitute the core of personal being. It is the exercise of freedom and the ability to shape the future that distinguishes man from all other beings that we know on earth. It is through free and responsible decisions that man becomes authentically himself. Another group of recurring existentialist themes includes such topics as finitude, guilt, alienation, despair, moods, changing feelings, emotional life of man and death. Discussions of these have not been prominent in traditional philosophy, yet they are discussed at length in existentialism. For the existentialist man is never just part of the cosmos but always stands to it in a relationship of tension with possibilities for tragic conflict.

Who is an Existentialist?

According to Alain Badiou-

A writer of absurd, of despair, of empty skies, of incommunicability and of eternal solitude in sum, on Existentialist.

Kierkegaard, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Jean Paul Sartre, Harold Pinter are writers and founders of the term. As we all know the history of W.W.II, Existentialism came in existence by this horrific notable event. Divided into two parts, Existentialism is a strange philosophy because it contains question only every question are answered here ultimately nothing, it contains emptiness, solitude within.

If shows purposelessness of life. How strange is life! Which seem to be the most sensible things have no aim ultimately? That is why, a group of thinkers and critics consider the term as pessimistic.

 But think this emptiness, the nothingness is mystery because, once you got the answer, you’ll surely lose its charm. Life contains mystery with that emptiness its one of the most important psychological conditions to be survived. After all it is up to you that how you think about it.

Hence, the term may followed by the two different aspects, (point of view), Optimism or pessimism pessimistic point of view may lead us to an gloomy life but by expanding our limits of horizons, we may able to feel it on the other shades of colour.

Existentialism in ‘Waiting for Godot’

“Waiting for Godot” is Beckett’s despondently portrayed interpretation of how mankind derives meaning from life. Vladimir and Estragon believe they have made a conscious choice to wait for Godot. They find a lot of comfort in passing the time through their trivial conversations while munching on carrots and turnips. Even more importantly, though, they have each other to help pass the time. It is indeed the journey that makes life most meaningful: the freedom of choice, the trivial daily routines, and the inspirational companionships on the journey through life.

Beckett, throughout the play, presents human purpose through the bleakest possible fashion. The play is encompassed by uncertainty. Will Godot ever come? What day is it? How long have we been together? How old is he? Is Pozzo really blind? Did the same boy come yesterday? All these questions and many others are left unanswered. Beckett has also stripped theater to only its bare essentials. He casts only five total characters; all are introduced with little or no background information. All that is given for the setting is that it is evening on a county road.

In Jean-Paul Sartre’s book, Existentialism and Human Emotions, he says,

“I cannot be anything unless others recognize me as such. In order to get any truth about myself, I must have contact with another person. The other is indispensable to my own existence, as well as to my knowledge about myself” (Sartre 38).

Vladimir recognizes Estragon as a necessary companion and vice-versa so each is able to qualify himself as a meaningful person. The two characters derive much of their self worth from their companionship and what they do for one another. Estragon seems week and irresponsible, so Vladimir always comes to his aide. For example, Vladimir helps Estragon get his boots on saying, “Yes yes. Come on, we’ll try the left first.” (77). Vladimir is also the one that seems to be responsible for feeding Estragon. When Estragon violently says, “I’m hungry,” Vladimir cheerfully responds, “Do you want a carrot,” as if feeding Estragon is his most appealing duty (18, 16). Both these examples contribute to Vladimir feeling that his life is meaningful. Vladimir and Estragon certainly share the strongest desire for companionship.

This is apparent in the following dialogue:

Vladimir: Gogo!

Estragon: Didi!

Vladimir: Your hand!

Estragon: Take it!

Vladimir: Come to my arms!

Estragon: Your arms?

Vladimir: My breast! (85-86).

Waiting for Godot is an existentialist play because it has all the ingredients of existentialism per se in it. It is an existentialist play because ‘Existentialism’ as a term stands for one’s awareness of one’s being and questiong it at the same time. ‘Waiting for Godot deals not only with the existence or identity but also deals with man’s mental condition. For instance, Vladimir and Estragon continuously complain of the slowness of the time passing and do their best to hurry it with their futile diversions.

No one comes in the play t the very end and waiting becomes the only way of humans which may define their existence. Here we find existentialism knit closely to the content of the play and the outcome is the absurdity of the reality of human existence.

Exitentialism in Gujarati Literature by focusing upon Shrikant Shah’s ‘Aapane Badha Akash Niche Ubha Chhie’

Shrikant Shah is one of the most revered Gujarati Existential writers others like Adil Mansoori,  Chinu Modi (Dayal na pankhio, Photographer), Hasmukh Baradi (Kalo Kamlo); Labhshankar Thaker (Pilu Gulab ane hu) ; Mahesh Dave (Mane Orishyo Dekhay chhe) shrikant shah (Tirad); Madhu Ray (Into na sat rang),

Gujarat writers used to read this philosophy and they were very much influenced by the works and the term itself.  Gujarati writers, therefore, tried to feel it without going through the pain of it and as a result the end product is a body without its soul.

‘Apane…’ is an existential play by Shrikant Shah. The style of writing is absurd. In this play, there are six characters and here, we should take protagonist as an existential person.  Protagonist Rajesh is dead before 2 years at the time shown in setting of the play. He had a family consisting of a wife, a daughter, a brother and a friend, in a way a complete happy family, a ‘perfect family’ but the problem is raised with the death of Rajesh not for the vacuum that is created by Rajesh, but the problem for Rajesh as being an existential character.  His friend, utpal was taking his place in the life of his wife. Her brother was handling his business. The problem is not that he is absent but his ‘absence’ has not affected their lives. First phrase of the play suggest that his existence lies only in the memory of their family members.

mari hasti mari pachhal a rite visrai gai,

angali jal mathi nikli ne jaga purai gai”

utpal: jara agal chali ne radiyogram upar padela tara patidenva photo ne undho padi de ne?

rekha: kem ? rajesh no dar lage chhe?

utpal: rajesh dar lage tevo manas kyarey na hato. rekha tu mara mitra ne anyay kari rahi chhe.

rekha: kem jane hu tm rajesh ne olakhati j n hou?

(radiogram pase jai rajeshna photo ne undho padi de chhe, pachhi najik avine utpal pase besi jay chhe)

With the presence of Utpal, Rekha felt a new world building around her. Utpal then talks with Ashu, who was very well settled in business. Nothing as such changed in the lives of rajesh’s family members; his nonexistence was irrelevant to all of them.

Existence of human being is just like a bubble in the water, he/she wouldn’t matter one he/she is no more. Rajesh s spirit wanted to note the changes and the influence upon his family members on evening his spirit came and noticed these things

rajesh          : (motethi hase chhe.,,) ha..ha..ha…

rajesh hasto hoy a vakhete sampurn andharu thai jay chhe ane farithi sampuran light thay chhe tyare rajesh khurshi par hoto nathi, rekha, beera, utpal ane aashu ae chare jana vato kare chhe. parantu temno avaj sambhlato nathi… matr mime.

turantj andhkar thai jay chhe ane aek spotlight radiogram par pade chhe tya photoframe tatha pani na glass padela chhe.

This play tries a lot to be existential at its core but unfortunately its outcome is soulless. Gujarati Existential writers made an attempt to be existential in their approach but it should not be forgotten that it is to be felt, and not merely produced.

This paper, therefore attempts to take a stand that existentialism as a philosophy (if it can be termed so) cannot be borrowed, as the outcome would mean that it is a lifeless skeleton of thoughts.

References

1.     Beckett Samuel, Waiting for Godot

2.     Shah Shrikant, Aapde Badha Ek Aakash Niche Ubha Chhie

3.     Macquarrie, J. (1968): Existenatialism, Pelican Book.

4.     Sartre, J.P. (2007) Existentialism Is A Humanism, tr. C. Macomber, New Haven: Yale University Press.

5.     Barry Peter (2008), Beginning Theory, New York: Manchester University Press.

-----------------

n  Research was conducted while I was conducting my bachelors. There are several things to add after re-visiting the text. This would go in informal way as these are abstract points which occurred to my mind while studying it in class.

-                     A text is something which has so many things to cater with each n every reading. A text is never static. It always moves on with layers of meanings and the layers opens up itself while visiting again and again. Some of the time it happens we get something totally different than what we have seen before.

-                     As Gandhiji says ‘if in case, I contradict in my statements, consider the last one.’ Because the latest one comes after more sanity, more experience.

-                     Earlier while I was conducting the research work, I found existentialism a very passive, pessimistic, negative term to think upon. But this time, while discussing the text in class, we were given numerous examples and explanation what existentialism would mean. Knowing the fact that what we are doing is of no mean, we are to play our role very skilfully. It is a new vision towards life. It is never pessimistic term but what it does with our mind is – “it is alarming us” as two of the character uses in their dialogues frequently in ‘Waiting for Godot’.

-                     In my research work, I have taken the work “Apne badha akash niche ubha chhie” by shrikant shah. Here i would take another work by equally valent Gujarati writer ‘Labhshankar Thakar’ – ‘vriksh’. First let me introduce writer in brief. Labhshankar Thakar is well-known Guajarati playwright as well as poet, who is very much influenced by the movement Existentialism. He is the one who brought existentialism in Guajarati literature with his contemporary authors like ‘Madhu Rai’.

Visiting play ‘vriksh’ very briefly -

Vriksh is also an absurd play in which a person suddenly becomes a tree. At first family members of that person gets shocked. After some time they realise that this is the matter of news out of which we can earn lots of money. Now they are happy. And they had enough money out of that incident. Now in order to build a bigger house, his own father and wife were ready to cut him (in form of tree) off from roots.

The story otherwise seems very much interesting but what we must feel here is, it cannot go under the umbrella named ‘existentialism’ or ‘theatre of absurd’. Rather the idea of presenting the thing in such a way itself becomes absurd. Lot many perspectives.

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