Fiction

In the short story by Ray Bradbury a husband and wife talk over coffee about a weird dream that they had, which said that the world would end sometime that night. The woman was scared because of her denial and anxious feelings which caused her to not accept reality. After a while she decided to talk it out with her husband and she was able to let go of her fear. The theme of the story is that one doesn’t really have to be big and bold to be considered brave, but accepting ones reality and being calm about it is another way to be brave. In the coming paragraphs, I will be explaining about the story’s theme, analysis, and characterization. The short story it shows that fear, and denial often marked by just pure rumors blocks people from understanding the situation at hand. Even though the husband and wife had the exact same dream the wife was ignorant enough to brush aside her husband’s comments.

What the husband said exactly was “what would you do if you knew it was the last night of the world.” The wife replies with “what would I do? You mean seriously? I don’t know. I hadn’t thought.” It seems to show that she is too scared to except her reality, which stalls her conversation with her husband and prevents them from speaking openly to each other. Once her husband keeps mentioning to her about the end of the world, the wife starts to question herself about the world ending and possible ways it can end. She thinks it could be the “hydrogen bomb” or the “atomic bomb”. Because she is feeling so fearful and is in complete denial with reality and about her apocalyptic dream, she starts to anxiously think about other explanations as to why the world might be ending. Of course, her feeling this way will only hurt her relationship and the reality that is at hand. In the story it suggests that only someone who comes to accept their reality can turn that fear into bravery.

At work, there is a man who noticed his coworker Stan Willis who was looking out the window, and he noticed that there was something that was clearly bothering him. Stan talks about the dream he had and the man admits that he had the exact same dream the night before. This caused Stan to be “not surprised, but quite relaxed in fact.” After that happened he finally managed to release his anxiety and fear knowing that he was not alone. This caused Stan to look out the window with calmness and assurance. The man asks his wife about the claims that the world will end that night, she admits that she had the exact same dream the night before as well. She said that “she did not want to say anything”, because she thought she was alone.

This highlighted her fear because of her reluctant to tell anyone. However, she finally came to terms with her reality and it made her and her husband to face their own fate they were fearful from. The next paragraph will be about the characters and how they are all very similar. The man who is unnamed in the story is one of the story’s main protagonists. He is a middle aged man and a white collar worker in the 1960s. The man has a strange dream that the world is ending in a matter of days. However, the dream did not say that the end of the world will be violent it will simply just be “the closing of a book.” The woman who is the wife of the husband has two children who are not named. She is also having a very similar experience to her husband and that is the dream that she experienced a few nights ago. The woman told her husband about it after her husband confessed, but she pretended to be startled to make it seem like it never happened to her.

She did not want to tell him because of her fear of her being the only one who had the dream. However, it was a dream that many people have had too. A quote that sparked all of this is when the man said “well, better start thinking about it.” This caused the woman to start thinking deeply about the situation which pretty much sums up the experience she had as a character. Another character who was greatly influential in the story is Stan Willis. Stan Willis was the only character who was named in the story. However, he was the coworker of the man who is unnamed. He had a confrontation with the man about his strange apocalyptic dream that he had the night before. The man reveals to Stan Willis that he in fact had the exact same dream as him, which Stan was not too surprised about. However, the man telling him that this experience happened to him too calmed him down and made him realize that he definitely not alone on this.

It was a domino effect between the characters and how this experience made Stan Willis confess because of the man’s concern, and how after that happened the man confessed to his wife which in turn made her confess. There is a real similarity in the characters and how them realizing that their not alone made their anxiety and fear drop massively. Even after that experience they also came to the realization that the end of the world is coming and that they need to be brave about it. The next paragraph will be about the point of view the story is told and example quotes that prove this.

The short story, story is told in the first-person point of view. The reason is that the narrator is telling his story from his point of view. Ray Bradbury who is the narrator uses words like “I”, and “we”. An example quote in the story where he uses first person is “I wonder what everyone else will do now, this evening, for the next few hours.” It’s first-person because he uses the word “I” in the sentence. Another example that the narrator uses is “we haven’t been too bad, have we?” Ray Bradbury uses “we” in the sentence which is a word that refers to first person’s point of view experience. In the last paragraph, I will discuss on the short story as a whole, and how it all ties to the main theme of the story.

The short story The Last Night of the World is a very beneficial story that you can take lessons. The theme of the story is about how everyone has a fear of accepting reality and they begin to soon realize that everyone is experiencing the exact same thing which causes them to accept it and move on. This experience builds the courage and bravery of the characters. All the characters in the story have the same dream but they all confessed at different times. The story was like a domino effect where one confession led to another. The main lesson is that if you ever feel scared of accepting your reality just remember that other people are going through the exact same thing so you are not alone. Also, you accepting that reality will make you stronger and that can only be a good thing for you.

In the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel and the play “A Raisin In The Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, characters are faced with complicated relationships, however the characters ultimately came out stronger than ever before. In Night Elie‘s relationship with his father undergoes a change in the first concentration camp. In the novel, Elie says: “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed”(Wiesel, 30). Elie had never had a strong relationship with his father until they had been sent off to their first camp, Auschwitz. Elie, and his father, get separated from the rest of their family (mother/wife and sister/daughter). Understandably, Elie and his father‘s life was flipped upside down, neither could adjust the new difficult lifestyle that had been thrown on them.

Elie and his father had never had a close relationship until they were all they had left for each other; though the suffering was horrible at least they had each other. Elie and his father went through some terrible conditions and witnessed everything side by side. Elie says, “My hand tightened its grip on my father. All I could think of was not to lose him. Not to remain alone” (Wiesel 30). Elie could not stand the thought of losing his father, through all the pain and loss that the pair had endured, his father stayed by his side. Neither father nor Elie could loose one another; they depended on each other and were all that had left of a family. Though Elie had his father and his father had him, Auschwitz changed them both tremendously, During Elie and his father’s time in Auschwitz, the pair experienced horrendous conditions and watched innocent people die.

“Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for the machine guns,“ (Wiesel 10). Elie felt as if he and his father were going to be stuck at the Auschwitz camp until their death. For days on end, Elie went without basic necessities of life, such as water, shelter, food, and place to relieve himself. “The heat, the thirst, the stench, the lack of air, was suffocating us, All of us,” (Wiesel 26) For nine long months, Elie endured the suffering of Auschwitz until finally he was forced to march to Buchenwald. Elie eventually gets liberated and goes back to a regular lifestyle, but Elie’s life would never be the same. He lost his father, his mother, and his sister. Elie’s life would never be normal again but he had been given the chance to start a new life and create his own family. Though he would never forget the terrible life he had, it taught him one thing: to always appreciate life, regardless of it’s difficulties.

In A Raisin In The Sun, Beneatha undergoes numerous changes in her personal relationships especially with her mother, In the novel, she says: “I see, I also see that everybody thinks it‘s all right for Mama to be a tyrant” (Hansberry, Act I)! Her mother, Lena, believes heavily in her religion, where as Beneatha believes in the power of men and science. The obvious differences of their beliefs cause them to knock headst Though Beneatha’s relationship with her mother fluctuates throughout the play, so does her connections with George and Asagai. George pushes Beneatha to deny her culture, while Asagai enriches her and shows her what it’s like to embrace her heritage. In the play, Beneatha says: “I want very much to talk with you. About Africa. You see, Mr. Asagai, I am looking for my identity” (Hansberry, Act 1).

Though Beneatha struggles with her options, money versus culture, her ultimate battle is with her mother, Lena’s newfound money inspires multiple problems with her children. Walter’s obsession with money and Beneatha’s aspiration for a degree in medicine tears Lena apart. In the play, Lena says to Walter: “You ain’t proud of nothing your dad and I done” (Hansberry, Act I), Walter‘s obsession with the Liquor store blinded his love for his mother and his sympathy for his family. On the other hand, Beneatha’s drive to become a doctor is admirable, but the way that she talks to her mother about it is not. Though the family goes through multiple set backs and Lena began to feel overwhelmed, her children finally realize that family is more important that money.

The writing styles of ane Eyre and Never Let Me Go hold few similarities. Where the former describes settings and actions at length and in-depth, the latter leaves the readers wondering about the workings of the world. Further, ane Eyre is written in the third-person perspective and almost exclusively in the past tense. Never Let Me Go has a not-quite—reliable first-person narrator and is written with extensive use of flashback, thus utilizing the present and past tenses. However, they do have some similarities. The most notable of these is the theme of gazing or watching and hiding or being hidden. in the case of Jane, she was trying to hide in her first home, through the use of the curtain, and later she hid behind herself, so to speak, in the presence of Rochester and other characters.

She also has, theoretically, the entire world in which to hide—and which she can explore—but she cannot find peace until the very end, and continues her game of hide-and-seek up until the final pages. Kathy H and her childhood friends, namely Ruth and Tommy, also hide, but their entire world is the boarding school Hailsham, a place with more luxury than others comparatively and one for “special children.” They hide from each other, not always in the literal sense—though often for Tommy, a victim of bullying, it was literal—and from their teachers and guardians. Bullying is also something that ps both texts. In ane Eyre, bullying is a theme from the first few pages when John throws a book at the ten—year—old Jane. This continues in a less physical way with Rochester and his emotional and mental abuse of the older and extremely dependent Jane.

Like a tsunami surging from the depths of the ocean. People will run away from fate to no avail, only to be engulfed by its merciless rampage. Fate is the uncontrollable events that occur in one’s life. In the epic story Oedipus the King by Sophie cles, fate is depicted as inevitable. The characters seek out oracles to undermine their impending futures. However, the characters fail to escape their destiny Oedie pus, the protagonist, challenges his inescapable future, yet his impulsive and curious personality adds oil to the flames. It is these flaws that cause him to, run away, kill his father, curse himself, and ultimately lead to his demise. Nevertheless, it is these same character flaws that lead to his redemption. A major flaw that Oedipus embodies is impulsiveness. His acute rashness is depicted both verbally and physically in a collection of scenes.

A prime example of this tragic flaw can be perceived during his altercation with the blind soothsayer, Teiresias. After exchanging words ofspite, Oedipus intensifies the discussion by yelling foul words directed at the revered prophet. He exclaimed, “Not twice you shall say calumnies like this and stay unpunished,“ With this, he threatens the holy man. This leads to the true enlightenment of his destiny, hastening the story to its bleak climax. Another example of Oedipus‘s impulsiveness is directly subsequent to his conquering of the Sphinx. When he enters his home city, he resolves to find the murderer of his biological father, Laius, Oblivious to the truth, Oedipus boldly and impulsively says, “Upon the murderer, I invoke this curse whether he is one man and all unknown.”

However since he murdered his own father, he indirectly curses him self. His quick temper plus his rash decision-making end up anchoring his chances for success. In addition to an uncontrollable temper, Oedipus has a curious personality that can be deemed a blessing or a curse; in his case a curse His hunger for the truth literally blinds him towards the end of the story. His curse of curiosity enables him to obtain more knowledge than he was given. For example, during his symposium with Teiresias, Oedipus bombards the soothsayer with questions regarding his origin and his future. Frustrated at Oedipus’s conduct, Teiresias retaliates with lines filled with subliminal information about the hero’s grim future. The soothsayer exclaims, “he’ll have no joy of the discovery blindness for sight and beggary for riches his exchange he shall go journeying to a foreign country“. In this line, Oedipus learns the truth of his miserable life As a result, he becomes drunk in grief.

Another scene where Oedi pus‘s curiosity gets the better of him is when he has a chat with Iocasta, his royal wife, but his mother as well. As they talk about the murder of Laius, Oedipus ques- tions Iocasta about the details. He asks “Don‘t ask me yet,~rtell me of LaiusiHow did he look? How old or young was he?.” Iocasta replies with honest answers and Oedipus soon realizes that he was to blame for the murder of his father, Laius. This puts the hero into a deeper stage of grief, dragging him to his depressing end. Ironically, Oedipus‘s faulty characteristics become the cornerstone to his ref demption. Although his curiosity lands him in an unlucky position, it moves the story forward and lets Oedipus confront his destiny. His impulsiveness is a major flaw without a doubt.

It ends up making Oedipus kill his father, curse himself, and seal his own fate. However, it is this rashness that Oedipus blinds himself after find, ing out the truth. Lacking the ability to see, Oedipus understands what is truly meaningful to him and repents for his sins. Oedipus’s tragic flaws are the greatest faults he has hinders him from overcoming his destiny and turns him into a failure, a true tragic hero. Nevertheless, these aspects lead to his great redemption, where he repents for his sins and becomes a shrewd individual. As Oedipus benefits morally from hisjourney, the reader alike is enlightened of an important moral. The scenes in the story sum up to the saying that ignorance is bliss. The storyline compels both the reader and Oedipus to live in a more thoughtful way.

N. Scott Momaday’s short story, “The End of My Childhood“ depicts a young man who has experienced a dramatic twist in his life, which he refers to as the metaphoric end of his childhood. He is leaving the world he knew in his youth behind to the new world of the military academy and his newfound adulthood. On his last day in Jemez, his hometown, the author ventures to a place he has been to many times. However, this time he views the place very differently than ever before since it is his last time going there. He ventures back to this spot in order “to be alone with [his] thoughts”. This reveals that he is a thoughtful young man, and is experiencing an old place in a new way through his different perspective this time. However, when he reaches the familiar mesa he does not take the path he has taken in the past and instead takes a new one on the north end.

This decision parallels the change of his path to the military academy, as well as his change in perspective from a youth to a young adult His taking this new path is also representative of him literally taking a new “path” in life. He remarks how, “it was difficult to climb, and when I got to the top I was spent,” and that “I could see the whole valley below, the fields, the river, and the village” (Monday 1). This portrays how the new turn in his life will not be easy and that he will encounter many difficulties. However, he will reap the rewards in the end, After lingering around the area and taking in the views he begins to look for a path down the mountain. When he finally finds one he reassures himself with the remark that, “ it was safe enough.” This shows that the reader is hesitant and that he is not completely confident in what is to come in his new life.

The boy begins to climb down and, as he continues, it becomes harder and harder. Halfway down he encounters a “deep funnel-shaped formation.” At that moment, he “had to make a decision” however, once he looked around he realizes that there “could be no turning back.” This displays that he can not turn back to the safety of his childhood. His inevitable venture into adulthood has hit him, and he will have to evolve into this new change. He begins to carefully make his way down, but gets stuck between a rock. The only thing below him is the ground and the, “forebodingjagged rocks.” He shares how he, “saw with terrible clarity the things of the valley below. They were not the less beautiful.” Here he truly comes to the realization that the era of Childhood has ended, yet the beauty that he experienced in his youth will continue into his adult life. This is representative that everything will work out and be okay. This experience was a pivotal moment in the narrator‘s journey and realization of his situation, which is a metaphor for reaching adulthood.

Sophocles, I am filled with ancient greek tragedies such as Oedipus the King. In the play Oedipus the King, we follow Oedipus as he makes an endeavor to save his city. Thebes, from a curse that is causing deaths among the cattle and people. In order to save Thebes he has to find the murderer of the past King, Laius. Oedipus goes to a wise elderly blind man, Tiresias, to find out who the murderer of Laius is. Tiresias, tells Oedipus the prophecy of Oedipus. He shall be proved father and brother both to his own children in his own house to her that gave him birth, a son and husband both; a fellow sower in his father’s bed with that same father that be murdered”. This means that Oedipus has slept with his own mother and murdered his own father who was the last king of Thebes. Oedipus does not believe Tiresias, however, soon he starts to doubt himself.

Jocasta, his wife, tries to discourage him from finding out the truth about himself. Jocasta knows the truth about Oedipus, yet she refuses to tell him. Jocasta is the main female role in Oedipus the King. Unlike other greek tragedies, Jocasta is knowledgeable and wise. She plays the role of a wife and mother to Oedipus. As a wife she loved Oedipus and gave birth to their four Children two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, and two daughters, Antigone and Ismene. As a parent she tried to shield Oedipus from the truth of his prophecy. Before Oedipus, Jocasta was married to Laius. Jocasta and Laius had a happy marriage together. When Oedipus was born they received the prophecy that Laius is going to be killed by his own son.

This caused Jocasta and Laius to take Oedipus and tie his ankles together and left him outside to die so the prophecy will not come true. They continued to live until Laius was killed by a group of thieves. After his death Jocasta marries Oedipus. Jocasta did not know that the prophecy came true Jocasta believed that her son has died and Laius has been killed by thieves at the crossroads. When Oedipus tells Jocasta she tells Oedipus “Do not concern yourself about this matter listen to me and learn that human beings have no part in the craft of prophecy”. After Oedipus tells her the prophecy she begins to suspect her marriage. After the messenger tells her that Oedipus was found as a baby with swollen ankles by him and then he gave the baby to Polybus she started to realize the truth. Once Jocasta realizes she has done incest she tries to shield Oedipus from the truth. She continues to tell Oedipus that“

But, see now, he, the king, was killed by foreign highway robbers at a place where three roads meet”. She also tells Oedipus in his birth King Laius pierced his ankles and by the hands of others cast him forth upon a pathless hillside. So Apollo failed to fulfill his oracle to the son death at his son’s hands, never came to pass” so the prophecy never came true, Jocasta thought that after telling these stories he would stop looking for the truth. However, Oedipus continued to look for the truth. Once Oedipus knows that the prophecy has come true, Jocasta hanged herself with bed sheets. Jocasta kills herself after Oedipus finds out the truth because she doesn’t want to face. Oedipus, her kids and the public, Jocasta does not want Oedipus to know that she was the one that left him to be killed when he was a baby so he would not kill his father, her husband Laius.

She is scared about that Oedipus will know that was lying to him and try to manipulate him into thinking the prophecy was not true. Her children will also know the truth about their birth, and will know that they are children of incest. She will not be able to live knowing that her husband sees her as a bad person and her children know their origin, Jocasta would rather let her husband and kids live blissfully in a lie than for them to know the truth about Oedipus‘ past. She would have been able to live knowing to she has slept and had kids with her own son as long as she was the only one to know. In Closing, did not want Oedipus to know that the prophecy has came true. Wanted him to continue to believe her story about Laius death and the lie that the prophecy has come tniel Jocasta knew the truth but felt that she needed to protect Oedipus from the truth.

“Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of storytelling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is wrenched out of by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning”.

Arundhati Roy in ‘Come September’

Arundhati Roy’s first novel, The God of Small Things has become a highly admired and immensely popular work. On one occasion, she even declared that The God of Small Things is her first and last novel. It was difficult to predict whether she would write a second novel. Her second novel, a political allegory, However, she is definite that she does not want to write about the village Ayemenem again. She felt that the sense of loss is re-located through her novel.

It is clear from the affirmation that the novel The God of Small Things is about the sense of loss-the lost ethos. The sense of loss is relocated, in the sense that Arundhati Roy had widened her sensibility and activity beyond the village, onto national and global levels. Hereafter Roy would fight to identify and relieve the sense of loss in the larger perspective and issues elsewhere. Her later political activism was its manifestation. Nevertheless, the novel is still the nucleus from where the writer located the micro-source of the lost pathos.

As the novel, The God of Small Things is her first work of fiction; readers become curious to understand more about the novel as well as its writer. It is to be acknowledged that a work of art, especially a novel does not necessarily supply the remedial measures for the problems dealt with in it. Arundhati Roy reveals the excruciating sense of lost ethos in her superb novel The God of Small Things. She attempts to suggest the remedial measures for such irreparable situations in life through her non-fiction.

She has emerged as a serious social activist, participating in the protests against political, social and religious suppressions of human rights in any form and anywhere in the country and abroad. Her concern and empathy with the victims and her indignation against those causes of oppression are well known. Her commitment is clearly manifested. This peculiar stature of the novelist encourages us of The God of Small Things to probe into beyond her first work of fiction.

In fact, Arundhati Roy enjoys semi-formal methods, outside fiction. For her, these semi-formal instruments like conversations are “a flexible way of thinking aloud, exploring ideas, personal as well as political, without having to nail them down with an artificially structured cohesion and fit them into an unassailable grand thesis”.2 Arundhati Roy concedes that there exists a vast world of materials, somewhere between the spoken and the written word. The curious student is in need of this material to explain the lost ethos and its possible reclamation. In such a predicament, the only source available to him is Roy’s non-fictional writings, free-lance essays, articles and her vibrant outbursts.

It must be admitted that Roy’s novel The God of Small Things can be enjoyed and admired as it is, without resorting to her other works of non-fiction. However, it is equally true that the knowledge of Roy’s political stands, social attitudes and human concerns, shall enable us to derive more aesthetic enjoyment and intellectual satisfaction. Hence, in this article, all possible efforts are made to enlarge and enlighten the implied issues found in her fiction, with the help of Roy’s pronouncements found in her non-fiction.

For Arundhati Roy, as she confesses that fiction and non-fiction are different techniques of storytelling. However, at the same time she says that fiction dances out of me and non-fiction is wrenched out by the agony and suffering of this shattered society. She adds that the theme of her fiction and non-fiction is the same-the relationship between power and powerlessness. At the same time, the creative fiction and wrenched non-fiction suggest the qualitative difference between them.

It is interesting to note that Arundhati Roy is not happy, when she is described as an activist. The term writer-activist, according to her, is strategically positioned to diminish both writer and activist. It suggests that a writer is shy to publicly take a political position. Similarly, the term activist implies a coarse and crude end of the intellectual spectrum. It can be easily understood as to why she deprecates the distinction. Her concern for the predicament of the present dalits and adivasies drives her to involve in every issue. She asserts that one is not involved by virtue of being a writer or an activist. One is involved because one is a human being.

Arundhati Roy, in her conversation with N.Ram, Scimitars of the Sun, reveals the underlying principles of her both fictional and political writings. She affirms that she was writing on behalf of herself. In her writings, if she romanticizes, it is the freedom. In answer to the accusation that she was not original, she comments:

When one is writing to advocate a political position, or in support of a people’s movement that has been yelling its lungs out for the last fifteen years, one is not trying to be original, one is adding one’s voice to them for them to be heard. Almost by definition one is reiterating what they are saying. My essays are not about me or my brilliance or my originality or lack of it. They’re not meant to be a career move-they are about re-stating the issue, they’re about saying the same things over and above…

If The God of Small Things is the statement of the problem, the non-fictional works are the possible solutions suggested to annihilate the problem. If the novel is the body, the political essays are its public apparel. In an exclusive interview by Urvashi Butalia, published in Outlook magazine, titled, I had two options writing or madness, Arundhati Roy said: “I’m not unduly worried-because I believe in literature. You judge a writer by her writings. My book is my best ambassador.”

The statement is an explicit signpost towards understanding her fiction and non-fiction. The post-colonial literature in India abounds with the theme of marginalization and the oppression of subaltern groups and individuals. However, the authors of this branch of literature highlighted the desperate sufferings and the helplessness of powerlessness that these groups or individuals usually undergo in today’s world. Arundhati Roy also successfully draws such a picture in, The God of Small Things.

What makes her different from others is her philosophy, a governing ideology, not diminished by either fame or wealth that came to her after the publication of the novel. In the novel, she has beautifully drawn a wonderful silhouette of a few oppressed and depressed characters in Ammu, Velutha, Rahel and Estha along with angelic Sophie Mol. These characters embody the social and political vision of the author. However, unlike other fiction writers, she unambiguously states her social and political stand without fear, favour or appeasement in her political essays.

Murari Prasad, in his essay, Articulating the Marginal: Arundhati Roy, writes:

Characteristically, she enlarges on her concerns about the manifold maladies of the subjugated communities with focused energy, candour and ire in her recent opinion pieces. Notably in addition we notice the intersection of different discourses of marginality such as feminism, caste segregation and untouchability in the The God of Small Things, as well as her critique of the American domination, neocolonial imposition and global “financescape” in her incisive non-fiction.

In her non-fiction, Arundhati Roy seeks to resurrect the spirit of the dead characters–Ammu, Velutha and Sophie Mol, who epitomize the spirits of feminine aspirations and transgressions, subaltern aspirations and transgressions and artless innocence respectively. In the novel, their lives come to an abrupt and unlucky end. These characters embody the spirit of the writer. Hence, the writer does not wish to leave them dead. In her non-fiction, pning several talks and essays, she seeks to kindle the flame of the burning spirit of these characters in the minds of not just the marginalized but also the humanity as a whole without any sort of discrimination.

While studying and evaluating Roy’s fiction and non-fiction, the most glaring aspect noticeable is her concept of politics and style. In the literary appreciation and assessment a convenient division is made as subject and style, or theme and technique. The theme of her work is the lost ethos but what is her technique in the larger sense. It may be stated that Arundhati Roy’s technique lies in the use of these two words politics and style.

She definitely does not use these terms in their normal and current meaning. For example, the statement that politics and fiction are two sides of the same coin would not concur with the present conception of politics. She also does not show any interest in politics as a party-based activity to grab power or as participation in the governmental machinery. Similarly, she does not connote the term for that cunning intelligence or divisive craft to gain selfish and personal progress and profit.

It is something germinal and intrinsic involving clash, encounter between individuals, classes, especially among the powerful and the powerless; to participate in this fight on behalf of the powerless seems to be her notion of politics. The most sorrowful thing is that politics has lost its meaning, its utility and method as conceived earlier. It was a local or national procedure for choosing a future and working towards one’, but now politics has been robbed of this primary function; it has become truly the last resort of the plebeian scoundrels, who mostly lives from opinion-poll to opinion-poll.

The more far-sighted project to the end of their term of office, no further. This seems to be the reason why Roy wants to infuse the new term with new meaning and vigour. Roy hints at her conception of politics on one occasion that what we need to search for and find, what we need to hone and perfect into magnificent, shining thing, is a new kind of politics. Not the politics of governance, but the politics of resistance.

The politics of opposition. The politics of forcing accountability. The politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain destruction. Such cross-references between her fiction and non-fiction throw more light on each other. Such a study reveals the creative vision of the writer and her ideal of the world-order.

REFERENCES

• Roy, Arundhati. The Shape of the Beast, New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2008. P.242.Roy, Arundhati. Preface in The Shape of the Beast, New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2008. pp.viii-ix.
  Ibid., p.ix.
• Roy, Arundhati Roy. The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2005.p.30.Roy, Arundhati Roy. An Algebra of Infinite Justice, New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2oo2.p.210.
• Dhawan, R.K. Arundhati Roy: The Novelist Extraordinary, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1999. p.12.Ibid., p.222.
• Prasad, Murari. ed., Arundhati Roy: Critical Perspectives, Foreword, Bill Ashcroft, New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2006. p.7.Roy, Arundhati. An Algebra of Infinite Justice, New Delhi:
• Penguin Books India, 2002. p.196. Roy, Arundhati. The Shape of the Beast, New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2008. Pp.17-18. Outlook, 9 April, 1997. p.75. Prasad, Murari. Arundhati Roy:
• Critical Perspectives, New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2006. p.158. Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things, New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2002. p.29. Prasad, Murari. Arundhati Roy:
• Critical Perspectives, New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2006. p.162. Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things, New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2002. P. 328. Ibid., p.32.
  Ibid: pp.215.