Volume 5 : Issue 2 (2018)

EXISTENTIAL ANGST IN THE SELECT WORKS OF ROHINTON MISTRY

The Indo – Canadian Diaspora writing is one such phenomenon where writers like Rohinton Mistry, Uma Parameswaran, M. G. Vassanji, etc. have received wide critical acclaim. The writings of all these authors have one common theme: the expatriate experience and their alienation from the socio-cultural atmosphere. Rohinton Mistry has marveled as a writer in the field of Diaspora writings and his works are often the mixtures of history, human sensibility, issues of identity, and problems of ordinary life, Indian ethos and the enigma of existence. His works often are the reflections on history and express existential angst. ‘Existential Philosophy’ – whose key figures include Jean Paul Satre, Albert Camus, Soren Kierkegaard, and Martin Heidegger – focuses on the human as an isolated creature delving into an alien universe where life has no purpose and significance as it moves from nothingness to nothingness. The same philosophy of alienated universe is what the writings of Rohinton Mistry attempts to suggest as the characters of his works move through their historical past to the present of their host country. His novels Such a Long Journey (1991) and A Fine Balance (1995) deal with the ‘balancing’ of this existential angst of the humans in an alien world – the adopted country. Thus, he depicts his character’s suffering and frustration and their survival. The present paper aims at the discovery of the ‘existential angst’ of the characters as found in the aforementioned fiction of Rohinton Mistry and critically analyze them in the light of Existentialism.

Existential angst, Alien universe, Human suffering, Purposelessness

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