Alienation and Crisis of Identity In Upamanyu Chatterjee’s the Last Burden
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Date
2014
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Abstract
The Indian fiction in English
witnessed a new crop of writers who,
equipped with idiom, strove to assert
themselves and strained to express their
observations summative of the human
situation in their writings during the 1980s.
The novels bring to the fore a new
cosmopolitanism in its exploration of the
complex nature of the human experience.
Upamanyu Chatterjee presents man as a
solitary being by nature, who is unable to
enter into any relationship with other
human beings. His second novel The Last
Burden portrays the frightening reality of
the identity crisis and alienation in today's
youth and also the total loss of of traditional
values in the society. Chatterjee projects a
family that is peopled with human deeply
despairing, lacking in warmth and divided.
The burden of love, ties and possession is
most evident in the relationship between
husband and wife and parents and sons.
The protagonist Jamun is frustrated in life
and has not found a true happy
relationship. He does not want to take up
the burden of taking care of his father. But
at the end of the novel he accepts his responsibility. It is an indifferent acceptance
of the burden which society has thrust on
him.