Creative Saplings (CS) (ISSN: 0974-536X) CODEN: CSABCJ is an international peer-reviewed (refereed), open access, monthly online journal of English language and literature from India. Creative Saplings has an expert editorial board and reviewers to analyze and select literary works from the English language, literature, and criticism. Creative Saplings publishes the unpublished, most original, and scholarly articles of students, scholars, and academicians from all over the world.
SAFE: (Society For Academic Facilitation and Extension, Regd.), Sai Neeharika, Patiyali Sarai, Badaun
A Call to Save the Earth: A Study of the Phenomenon of Climate Change through the Anthology Dhara: A Paradise Worth Fighting For
This paper aims to study the phenomenon of climate change that’s occurring all over the world through the short stories and poems presented in the anthology called “Dhara: A Paradise Worth Fighting For”. It chooses to focus specifically on some of the works to illustrate how our planet is on the brink of destruction, and if man does not see the error of his ways soon, a terrible storm awaits on the horizon that will show no mercy when it arrives. The paper discusses the multifaceted ways in which climate change affects us. It not only affects people on a biological level but also on a societal and economic basis. The paper also sheds light on how vulnerable communities are disproportionately affected by climate change and are at a much higher risk of falling victim to injustice. Through a close examination of the book, placing special emphasis on certain pieces, it attempts to bring attention to the fact that the future of the planet, as well as humanity, is at stake.
Climate change, global warming, Earth, environment, eco-criticism, eco-feminism
Copyright (c) 2025 Saptaparna Dey https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Representation of prudence and Maturity at The Teenage: A Thematic Study of Anne Frank's Autobiography
This research explores the maturity of a teenage girl during the horrible circumstances of the Second World War. Anne Frank’s diary does not only present external conflicts but also figures out the inner psychological growth and resilience. At the age of thirteen, her writing reflects the everyday concerns about friendships, disputes, and existential challenges. She talks about the consequences of war, which confront the harsh realities of human identity, massacre, and the pathetic condition of women. Her relationships with the residents of the secret annex accelerate her maturity in complex surroundings, like the acceptance of flaws, adjustments, morality, and ethics. She dedicates herself to studying while hiding, which helps her to understand the surroundings, friendships, relationships and curiosity to know the world. She has nothing to prove, no hidden agendas to keep secret, and no propaganda to spread except for the revealing of truth with the help of writing, which poorly screams from the victims’ side. She believes that only a diary can provide a great source of comfort and support because she expresses her thoughts with the great innocence and sincerity that only a child can possess. The diary still makes it real for those who read and for those who come after her; it is only by keeping the memory of the wound alive, by remembering and sharing, that people can find true emotions. It is a kind of testament to the indestructible human will to preserve and survive in the face of the most adverse circumstances. Her diary as many times as it is read, and its inspirational dialogue brings the catharsis closer. She has space to express herself in the most honest and candid of terms, which bears her soul on every page of the diary. So, this research deals with the results and consequences of war, which include social anxiety, social disorder, trauma, psychological dysfunctions, and disfunctions, and the suffering of the survivors.
Copyright (c) 2025 Abhishesh Verma https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Representation of Loss and Dislocated Identity in Intizar Husain's An Unwritten Epic
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-style-textoutline-type: none; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dpiwidth: .75pt; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-linecap: round; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-join: bevel; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-pctmiterlimit: 0%; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dash: solid; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-align: center; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-compound: simple; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: HI;">Intizar Husain has gained recognized reputation as the chronicler of the after-effects of the Partition in Urdu literature in South Asia. Born in undivided India in 1925 and migrated to Pakistan in 1947, he has watched and undergone the complicated question of an unsettled homeland. Immersed in the memories of the pre-partition era, a deep sensation of loss and homesickness resonates in his fiction. His short fiction deals with the theme of Partition and its various issues directly or indirectly. One of the most hard-hitting stories, 'An Unwritten Epic, 'expresses the multiple problems of the Partition. Portraying the inter-village conflict, communal violence, and the associated euphoria for the creation of Pakistan as the story's backdrop, Intizar Husain presents the extraordinary life and the tragic fate of a village wrestler, Pichwa, in the fictional village named Qadirpur situated somewhere in a remote district of the United Province in pre-Partition India. Pichwa is a bully renowned for his fighting skills with the club (lathi). He never leaves an opportunity to show his dominating muscle power to his opponents. The story's narrator is so captivated by Pichwa's heroic charisma that he becomes obsessed with composing an epic in prose using the creation and freedom of Pakistan as its background. This obsession with Pichwa's heroism and the idea of an epic reflects the narrator's idealism and his desire to find meaning in the chaos of the Partition. 'An Unwritten Epic' captures the profound loss and identity crisis associated with dislocation. Uprooted from his stable and established surroundings, Pichwa is wholly lost once he reaches an unnamed town in Pakistan. His sense of identity and belongingness undergoes a tremendous change. Pichwa, who could become an epic hero, is rendered just as a symbol of victimhood and loss, with tragic ironies that follow. He is the powerful symbol of dislocation that embodies the loss of home, identity, and belongingness. He is destitute, where his old identity cannot fit in, and the new one remains elusive. The paper aims to analyze how 'An Unwritten Epic' explores the subjectivity of loss and dislocated identity as a profound consequence of the migration to Pakistan. It examines how the story covers the intricacies of social, cultural, and personal turmoil during the migration. It also scrutinizes how Intizar Husain highlights the political upheavals that uproot individuals from their native land and leave them adrift in a fragmented world.
Loss, Dislocated Identity, Migration, Uprootedness, Partition, Belongingness
Copyright (c) 2025 Sashi Bhushan, Shaleen Kumar Singh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Understanding Power Dynamics Through Speech Act Theory from the Play Final Solutions Written by Mahesh Dattani
Mahesh Dattani’s play Final Solutions highlights the ever-growing problem of Hindu versus Muslim rivalry in this play. The action of the play revolves around communal rivalry, gender discrimination and a dilemma of past and present. Hence, the present study focuses on the language used by the major and minor characters of the play. The power dynamics shown by the characters in this play through their utterances is the topic of discussion in this study. The dialogues where the characters perform some functions have been explored and analyzed by applying the theory of speech act as discussed by J. L. Austin and John Searle in their books. After analyzing particular dialogues on locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary speech acts the real intention of the characters is understood. It is observed that the characters reveal their authority, nostalgia, subversiveness, anger, frustration, prejudices, through speech acts.
Keywords: Power dynamics, Speech act, Locutionary, Illocutionary, perlocutionary
Copyright (c) 2025 Madhavi Nikam, Patil Ram Bhaskar https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Nothing Scares Me More The poem is a ghostly reflection on the dead eye, which is a representation of complete inertia. In comparison to a blind eye that still feels and still reacts, the dead eye is represented as a soul sucking animated eye, its pupil emptied of the soul. Its careless eye, with its unpredictable movements, and its slow fading Association brings the sadistic decay. The speaker looks back at how the dead eye conveys a more profound truth that there is lack of vitality and accountability and brings a silent and obscure message to the dead souls around the dead eye. Finally, the poem touches on the issue of mortality, spiritual barrenness, and deep silence that characterizes the end of life. The Lamp This spiritual adventure is basically what the poem is leading me through where the narrator no longer has to freak out about death but it is more of an opportunity to experience a chilled entrance into some other worldly feeling such as this Shambhala scene. He is basking in beauty, harmony, and healing, and then the Supreme Soul lays a clue that it would like to see this lamp in his heart that that was present when everything was created. The lamp turns out to be off, which is a significant atmosphere of losing innocence, purpose, or moral light, and as such, the narrator has no choice but to strike back to the real world with this heavy sense of regret and the desire to have what was. It is all about spiritual responsibility, achieving the inner radiance, going beyond the mundane, and addressing the hurtling haste of returning to the state of being an ordinary person.
Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The poem is a criticism of the current humanity, which is obsessed with the idea of wealth, status, and material success and ignores the inner consciousness and demonstrates how we as a generation nearly blindly believe that cash and accolades are more important than silent development. It describes life as a short-lived daydream where humans pursue money, authority, and social acceptance and forget about spirituality, empathy, and the valuable relationships, just like we tend to refer to people in groups as squads and followers in class work. The speaker emphasizes that people are absorbed by ambition, pride, and competition and lose sight of their own nature, which is what I observe in college culture, in which the grades become the point. The poem reminds us with the repetition of the fact that he does not know him or herself, that it is a tragedy to forget that inner identity and purpose, which we can still identify with in the recent lecture on psychology that we have had on self-concept. It, ultimately, cautions that such ignorance is an expensive affair due to the brevity of our lives, and thus urges us to begin returning to self-reliance and spiritual foundation, which we all would like to fit into our hectic activities.
The poem is a reflection on how our world and our relationships, in fact, change silently, and as a college kid I find myself looking at the world changing into the world of deadlines and group projects, of the world of the warm and easy strolls on the campus to a cold and emotional world of winter semesters. The friends who once used to be close, friends who think they should go study together over a pizza, are becoming distant slowly, as their hearts are closing like the dorm basement door, it seems that we all are just making casual swings around the hub of the silent halls. That shift generates this feeling of separation and betrayal, in a way of demonstrating how quickly the gentleness of a lecture discussion can get into indifference, in a manner that a class discussion can become cold as soon as the mark is put in. Through all these changes, one thing remains constant to me, and that is myself. In this world where everything in the cafeteria menu, as well as the professor expectations, is subject to change, my very presence of consistency serves as a soothing anchor of its own, giving me the experience that resilience and self-knowledge truly hold in a world of emotional storms.
This satirical tragedy of one act stings us in Owlfahc Hall at Campus de Barbarians, when we get to imagine that we are being subjected to a book-reading when that, in fact, is not happening, but rather exposing the degree of the rifts in our own schools. The face cream and the evergreen and the on screen volunteers dig straight out on censorship, how our voices are muted and how the fear machine of the administration is hyped. They make jokes that seem like a strange amalgamation of humor and sadness, it is obvious that the university is showing a show of intellectual buzz but conceals blatant authoritarianism around every corner. In the background, meanwhile, there is a lot of back-and-forth talk which increases the criticism: Prof. Mangru and Prof. Khairu are playing the imitation of the sycophantic culture supposedly buzzing as OWLFAHC (“Organizer Who Loves Flattery And Hates Chivalry”). Then there is a younger couple of Batuk and Kautuki pushing through the straining relationship that is essentially a reflection of how the emotional bondages with the institution hold us together. Meanwhile, two scholarly figures Billy and Nilly sneak in and discuss beauty rituals as though they are the real performances, ridiculing how the university is so preoccupied with empty chatter rather than with actual education. All culminates in a head clash between a heroic Teacher and the Head of the Department. The Head becomes all complacent regarding his patronage connections and how he has undermined merit, and the Teacher defends himself-- screaming that the thing is knowledge and that you cannot put it out with decadence. When the Teacher eventually accuses the fear and flattery in the last act, the entire colonialism air of our academic space actually bursts open, and the scene is concluded with a call of integrity, resistance, and actual intellectual freedom.
Feminist Storytelling and Healing: Trauma, Voice, and Testimony in Postcolonial Literature
The paper is essentially an inquiry into historical literature which is not just about unearthing the untold histories but about digging at the silent histories which are submerged beneath people’s traumas and have got caught in our memory as a collective. I will also research such feminine narrative voices as Toni Morrison, Bama, and Githa Hariharan to understand how their voices strive to introduce such suppressed voices into the discourse. Their writings are not just a record of torment, but a survival strategy, an intergenerational recovery and strength. Based on the theory of trauma and feminist epistemology, the current argument is that narrative is a significant site of identity reconstruction, past historical reconciliation, and pain agency.
Trauma, Postcolonial Literature, Toni Morrison, Bama, Githa Hariharan
Copyright (c) 2018 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The Decline of Formal Writing in the Age of Chat Applications
With the emergence of the instant digital communication systems, everything is different in the way people write, and so is the case with us, older children who have already experienced the smartphone era. Language evolves with society, however, what we are experiencing with chat apps such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Snapchat, and Instagram is not a mere shift to language. It rewrites the entire cultural framework of how we conduct our communication, in written form. The essay is discussing that speed, convenience, and that just-because-quick emotional shorthand is replacing the old rules of appropriate sentences, grammar, punctuations and reflective thought. Socio-linguistically, I am examining the ways in which this informal and chat-based writing alters the way we think, share emotions and even our literacy in general. Surely, this change is not entirely negative, but it does make us wonder whether our present communication behaviour can be called progressive or it is simply wearing something priceless.
Formal Writing, Digital Communication, Texting Culture, Language Change, Chat Applications
Copyright (c) 2020 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Laughter as Liberation: Humour as Resistance in Indian Feminist Literature
People think that Indian feminist literature is all about relaxing and laughing in the background of humour; it is an ingenious means that the writers are employing to question the forces of patriarchy, castes and social taboos. It is such a secret weapon in the disguise of comedy. The current paper is a close examination of the utilisation of humour by authors like Shashi Deshpande, Meena Kandasamy, and Bama, in attaining control, silencing challenge, and a breaking of oppressive rules. It is just a matter of reversing the script so that we can witness these authors do something quite daring. Our work will be guided by the feminist theory, Dalit feminism and intersectionality to contend that humour is not just a joke. It is corporeal possession of the agency, and it makes disparagement criticism and makes trauma personal testament. Ultimately, the paper concludes that humour provides the Indian feminism with the distinct method of survival, reclaiming power, and rebelling. Laughter becomes a strong language that keeps us alive and struggling to get a better place.
Humour, Feminist Writing, Satire, Indian Literature, Dalit Feminism, Resistance, Intersectionality
Copyright (c) 2019 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Rebel with a Cause: Realism and Resistance in Deepa Mehta’s Cinematic World
The filmography of Deepa Mehta stands out as a unique niche in the discourse of Indian and world cinema. Her work as a diasporic auteur cuts across the sidelines of nation, gender and identity and critiques the orthodox of patriarchy and culture at the same time. The paper questions the main movies of Mehta, Fire (1996), Earth (1998) and Water (2005) to shed some light on how she balances insurgency with realism. It suggests that Mehta realism is not only a formal aesthetic tool but rather a tool that is political in essence an act of resistance against the silence, censorship and ingrained hierarchies. The paper, therefore, arrives at a conclusion that the films of Mehta are a revision of the concept of realism as rebellion, which gives voice to the oppressed and discloses the gaps in the traditional understanding of Indian modernity.
Deepa Mehta, realism, rebellion, feminism, postcolonial cinema, gender, patriarchy.
Copyright (c) 2015 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Rewriting Gender Roles: Feminist Reinterpretation of Mythological Narratives
Mythological stories form the basis of many cultures as they are passed down through generations, serving as a means of conveying values, beliefs and traditions. Mythological tales generally idiolize and glorify male prowess. Gender inequality in mythology is a complex issue which is deeply ingrained in the socio-cultural fabric of the Indian society. This representation often mirrors the gender disparity in our lives as well. These narratives frequently portray women in subordinate roles which directly reflects the patriarchal norms prevalent in the society. Revisionist mythology takes these ancient tales and caters them to the modern readers by reinterpreting them. One of the prevalent themes of the revisionist mythology is the point of view of a female character which helps the reader in understanding the situation of females in the ancient times. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Kavita Kane, through their revisionist mythological novels, provide a new outlook on traditional narratives that challenges the existing gender bias and creates a platform for female empowerment in mythological retellings. The paper discusses and argues that the modern retellings have created an alternative feminine discourse by breaking the ideological male canon and also aims to explore the gynocentric myth created by these women writers.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ragini Raghav https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Tehmina Durrani’s My Feudal Lord: An Advocate of Feminist Defiance
The novel My Feudal Lord explores the story of Tehmina Durrani, raised in one of the most influential families of Lahore. But her marriage to one of Pakistan’s most eminent political figures, soon turned into a nightmarish experience for her. Her violent and over-possessive husband forced her to endure in silence for fourteen long years till she broke silence through her autobiographical work ‘My feudal Lord’. Her story provides extraordinary insight into the deplorable position of Muslim women caught in the vicious circle of Muslim society.
Eminent, fearlessness, nightmarish experience, over –possessive, Feminist Defiance
Copyright (c) 2025 Nishi Singh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Guardians of Nature: An Ecocritical Exploration of Tribal Spirituality and Wisdom through Documentaries
Due to increasing modernization on Earth, the basic needs of humans have increased. Considering themselves as centers, humans are excessively exploiting the valuable gifts received from nature without thinking. Due to which there has been an increase in comparison between modern materialistic development and sustainable development. Ways of sustainable development are being explored. Tribal people are a living example of this sustainable development. The spirituality and ecological wisdom of tribal people develops eco-consciousness within them due to which they consider it their duty to protect nature from those who harm it. The research paper explores ecological wisdom and spirituality in the lives of two tribes, Dongria Kondh Tribe and Yanomami Tribe, through the lens of two documentaries Niyamgiri: The Mountain of Law and The Last Forest. The research paper shows how these tribes respect nature not just as a resource but as a living spiritual entity. Through the documentaries, mythology, traditional ecological knowledge and beliefs of the tribal people that have been passed on from one generation to the next have been highlighted. After studying both these selected documentaries and through the research paper, an attempt has been made to know that the role of tribal spirituality is very important in maintaining the ecological balance. This study emphasizes on rethinking the relationship of man with nature.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sanjoly Paliwal https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
From Search for The Mother to Search for Two Indias- A Study of the Representation of New India in Three Indian English Novels
A major theme of recent Indian novels in English is the portrayal of the New India with all its glory and darkness in varied scale. This portrayal has often been criticized as part of the postcolonial exotic or celebrated as the progress of the postcolonial nation. There are many novels which have represented both these aspects of New India—the progress and the darkness— without overt castigation or celebration. This paper is concerned with such three Indian English novels-- Kunal Basu’s Sarojini’s Mother (2020), Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s Secret Daughter (2010) and Jaishree Misra’s A Scandalous Secret (2011)—all of which deal with the search for biological roots as major characters come to India in search of their parentage. The argument of this paper is that besides this thematic similarity all these novels expose the two faces of New India—both its light and darkness without any conscious attempt to moralize or castigate. This paper discusses how the search for real mothers turns into search for real India with all its success and failures but the conclusions of these novels put the emphasis on emotional enrichment and maturity rather than on mere fact-finding or exoticizing.
New India, postcolonial exotic, castigation, celebration
Copyright (c) 2025 Rakes Sarkar https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Navigating Guilt: An Examination of the Phenomenon of Guilt in Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom
Guilt is a recurring undercurrent in Jerry Pinto's Em and the Big Hoom. This moving story explores the daily realities of a family which is dealing with mental illness and struggling with the complex and frequently debilitating sensation of guilt. A psychological crisis in a family and the concomitant emotional and mental conundrums eventuate in an insulated existence with parochial concerns as an inevitable outcome of it. The precarious existence that a family is forced to live, engulfed in the quagmire along with the victim and encumbered by the impairing depressive episodes, is the subject of this paper. Drawing on ideas like survivor's guilt, maladaptive guilt, and the inherited emotional burdens within dysfunctional family systems, the intricacies of emotional inheritance and self-blame are examined through Pinto's candid depiction of a family dominated by the mother's bipolar illness and the father's silent fortitude.
Guilt, Mental Illness, Family Systems Theory, Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder
Copyright (c) 2025 Ambika Madhur, Prof. Shailendra P. Singh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Mapping English Poetry from Bihar: A Snapshot of Twenty-Two Swans in the Lake of Life
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-style-textoutline-type: none; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dpiwidth: .75pt; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-linecap: round; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-join: bevel; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-pctmiterlimit: 0%; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dash: solid; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-align: center; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-compound: simple; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">This paper maps English poetry from Bihar highlighting twenty-two poets who have made Bihar speak its rich tradition of quest and cultural ethos. Though this poetry has its roots in local soil, it transcends the local boundaries and becomes universal by virtue of its fusion of cultural rootedness, philosophical questionings and modern poetic expressions. Thematically and technically, this poetry is rich enough to quench the thirst of readers across the globe by its universal concerns of life, death, love, society and spirituality. Babu Avadh Biahri Lall, R. K. Singh, Prabhat Kumar Singh, Pashupati Jha, Punita Jha, C. L. Khatri, Kalpna Singh-Chitnis, Binod Mishra, Tabish Khair, Sumirasko, Bhaskarananda Jha and Abhay Kumar are some of the significant English poets who have touched almost every aspect of life—be it social, political or religious or cultural.
Soil, traditions, cultural ethos, philosophical reflections, spirituality
Remembering Partition: Literature Across Testimony, Oral Histories, and Postmemory
The literature of the Partition of India has unfolded in successive phases, which signifies changing historical contexts, literary responses, and cultural perspectives. This paper argues that partition literature evolves through three overlapping phases that are defined less by chronology than by mediations of memory. In this context, phase 1 (c. 1947-mid 1960s) organizes witnesses into testimonial realism; phase 2 (c. 1975-1997) reframes the archive through feminist/subaltern oral histories and reflective realism; and phase 3 (c. 1997-present) relocates memory into postmemory’s transnational circuits and digital/visual forms. Across these phases, who remembers (survivor, inheritor), what counts as evidence (document, testimony, image), and how intimacy to the past is aesthetically produced all shift, rearchitecting and reframing South Asia’s cultural memory of Partition. By way of examining representative texts from multiple languages, including Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, and English, alongside critical scholarship by historians and theorists such as Gyanendra Pandey, Urvashi Butalia, Marianne Hirsch, and Alok Bhalla, the paper emphasizes the interdisciplinary significance of Partition studies. This paper also attempts to situate Partition narratives within broader frameworks of trauma theory, memory studies, and border studies, acknowledging the ongoing contributions of oral histories, digital archives, and visual media. This paper, therefore, takes the position that Partition literature, across its varied phases of expression and remembrance, continues to shape South Asian cultural memory in profound yet contested ways.
Partition literature; trauma; postmemory; phases; displacement; oral histories; digital archives, and visual media
Copyright (c) 2025 Medha Nigam, Narinder K Sharma https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
A Critique of The Hungry Tide By Amitav Ghosh through the Lens of Anthropocene
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-style-textoutline-type: none; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dpiwidth: .75pt; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-linecap: round; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-join: bevel; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-pctmiterlimit: 0%; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dash: solid; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-align: center; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-compound: simple;">The Hungry Tide By Amitav Ghosh is set against the background of a large mangrove forest, the Sundarbans in the Bay of Bengal. Ghosh addresses the ecological, economic, and political challenges faced by the marginalised people of the archipelago called the Sundarbans. The novel explores the implications of living and dying in the contemporary moment. Piya’s warm interaction with Orcaella, and Fokir’s knowledge of the struggles with the tides showcase how humans interact with nature on different planes, making sustainable coexistence possible and impossible at the same time. The objective of this paper is to explore the conflicting relation of man and nature as projected in the novel. An attempt would be made to locate how culture and nature are entangled in the lives of the inhabitants of the tide country. It will also examine the ecological issues in the Anthropocene raised in the novel through the presentation of the conflicting coexistence of humanity and nature. Ghosh hints at how human-induced climate change has impacted the region as well as the lives of its inhabitants.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lily Mondal https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Narrative Strategies and Authorial Intent in Good Omens: A Satirical Response to the Changing World
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-style-textoutline-type: none; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dpiwidth: .75pt; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-linecap: round; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-join: bevel; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-pctmiterlimit: 0%; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dash: solid; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-align: center; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-compound: simple;">The paper examines the narrative strategies and authorial intent in Good Omens, a collaborative novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, with a focus on how a text operates as a satirical response to a rapidly changing world. Published in 1990, at the cusp of the new millennium and amid post-Cold War anxieties, the novel engages deeply with themes of apocalypse, prophecy and human folly. Through a rich interweaving of biblical allusions, socio-historical commentary and literary satire, the paper aims to critique Good Omens. The collaborative authorship of Gaiman and Pratchett informs a distinctive narrative voice that merges Pratchett’s satirical sharpness with Gaiman’s mythic and metaphysical imagination. The paper explores how the authors leverage satire not solely for humour but as a deliberate tool for cultural, socio-historical and political analysis, drawing attention to the late-20th-century Western society.
Narrative strategy, collaborative writing, socio-historical context, satire, authorial intent.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sonjukta Chatterjee, Irona Bhaduri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Intersecting Feminism, Power, History, and Myth: Unveiling Empires in Salman Rushdie’s Victory City
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-style-textoutline-type: none; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dpiwidth: .75pt; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-linecap: round; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-join: bevel; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-pctmiterlimit: 0%; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dash: solid; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-align: center; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-compound: simple;">Empires are built and dismantled, and when you excavate a bit in history, you will find that these very forces upon which they are supposed to rest and upon which they should be, are strangely relied on to build and rule them. That is a plot device of the crashing and the coalescing of civilizations. The concept of a lasting empire has been a long time interest among the strong powers of the world. Another grand creation of Salman Rushdie is Bisnaga, fictional name and resemblance of Vijayanagara Empire, in his novel, Victory City. It is attributed to Pampa Kampana, a poet, prophetess, and perhaps architect of a whole world that no longer exists, as attributed with magical powers of varying divinity. The book creates a rich tapestry of ideas which influence commoners and kings with cultural and political influence. The multilayered narrative structure of Rushdie makes it possible to explore the magic realism in a dense way and the plot of the story is even more immersive. One of the main themes is the same due to the female navigations of patriarchal society, their survival among them and hard work to save their unique identities. That is a thread which continues to sound in the novel. I am trying to analyze the intersection of feminism, power, myth and history in the narrative of Rushdie, to reveal the intricate interconnection between the concepts in the context of his novel, Victory City.
Feminism, magical realism, power, myth, empowerment, recalcitrance, identity crisis and renaissance.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sooraj Kumar https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Indigenous Identity and Cultural Hybridity in Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-style-textoutline-type: none; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dpiwidth: .75pt; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-linecap: round; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-join: bevel; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-pctmiterlimit: 0%; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dash: solid; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-align: center; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-compound: simple;">While the concepts of identity and culture carry political and ethical implications, they also play an essential role in representing the post-colonial experience as it is lived. The process of transplantation leads to the emergence of a culture of exile. The formation of an undifferentiated identity occurs within a context influenced by both the conscious and unconscious past, as well as the realities of migration. This context serves as a representation of the experience. Though still connected to specific localities and cultures, the disruptions of space and time can reveal the complexities of self and culture within their original contexts. This dynamic allows for multiple forms of belonging, potentially fostering a sense of holistic identity while rejecting rigid and simplistic notions of existence. This condition does not merely promote a singular subjectivity or make itself inaccessible to social structures or personal experiences. The argument presented in this article aligns with the exploration of how human agency, expressed through narrative, positions itself within broad, imperfect theories or meta-narratives that shape larger forces in the development of alternative spatial and political discourses. Personal and collective cultures, along with contextual references, are fundamentally contingent and unstable, remaining open to interpretation.
Somerset Maugham, Indigenous, Identity, Hybridity, The Painted Veil.
Copyright (c) 2025 M Dhakchayani, N. Sathiyarajan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Forging a Family: Subverting the Heteronormative Family Structure and Navigating Identities in the Anime Spy X Family
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-style-textoutline-type: none; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dpiwidth: .75pt; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-linecap: round; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-join: bevel; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-pctmiterlimit: 0%; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dash: solid; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-align: center; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-compound: simple;">Anime, with its global popularity and mass engagement, is a cultural form that is positioned at a strategically significant juncture where the demarcation between high culture and popular culture gets blurred. The medium and form of anime that include stunning visual storytelling styles not only attract the audience towards it but also allow the medium to explore serious and mature themes like death, grief, etc., in a nuanced manner. The anime series Spy X Family, which was released in April 2022 and is based on an eponymous manga by Tatsuya Endo, leverages the intricacies of the anime form to portray serious issues like war, poverty and corruption in a way that is simultaneously sensitive and light-hearted. The premise of the anime series centres on an international spy code-named Twilight who is assigned a mission to gather intelligence about a hostile country that might initiate a nuclear war in the future. The secret mission requires Twilight to forge a faux family so that he can easily blend into society. He manages to assemble an eccentric faux family that involves an assassin and an orphaned telepath as his wife and daughter, respectively. The family that Twilight forges for the mission is ironically called the Forger family, however, the family name is not merely a silly word play, it is more than just a pun. It subverts the heteronormative family structure that is based on blood kinship and creates space for alternative family dynamics. This paper analyses Spy X Family by focussing on the series’ portrayal of counter-normative family structures, interpersonal dynamics, the negotiation of multiple identities and how it dismantles the socio-cultural constructedness of heteronormative family configurations.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sreya Mukherjee https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Gender Perspectives in Ambai's Short Stories,'The Forest 'and' Gifts
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-style-textoutline-type: none; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dpiwidth: .75pt; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-linecap: round; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-join: bevel; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-pctmiterlimit: 0%; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dash: solid; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-align: center; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-compound: simple; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Introduction of the Writer: Ambai is a Feminist researcher focussing on women’s issues through her works. C.S.Lakshmi wrote her fictional literary works like novels and short stories under the pseudonym Ambai. She wrote her non-fiction, articles and published research papers as C.S.Lakshmi.She published her first literary work, a novel ,’Andhi maalai' in 1966.Her short story ‘Siragugal Muriyum' published in 1967 received a good response. The kitchen in the corner of the house, A Purple Sea, In the Forest, a Deer, are her popular works. Her short stories are characterized by her passionate writing on gender issues suffused with satire, humour, love for nature and need for ecological balance.In 2021, She won the Sahitya Academy Award for her collection of short stories‘ A Red-necked Green Bird’.
Patriarchal, identity,symbols of oppression,Ecofeminism,individuality
Copyright (c) 2025 S. Ezhilarasi Subramaniam, V. Jaisre https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Urban Space, Masculinity, and the Poetics of Resistance in the Black Arts Movement
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-style-textoutline-type: none; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dpiwidth: .75pt; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-linecap: round; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-join: bevel; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-pctmiterlimit: 0%; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dash: solid; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-align: center; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-compound: simple; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: HI;">The Black Arts Movement of the 1960s is a point in the cultural and political transformation of the African American literary tradition. The movement, which emerged in the wake of the assassination of Malcolm X, not only attempted to redefine the relationship between art and politics but it was also attempted to redefine the black identity by radically engaging the aesthetic practices. Historians like Yusef ‛M. Akbar and McCree have suggested that such a transition was a deliberate move towards a praxis that preempted the political action of black poets, writers, and visual artists as a coherent way of dissent. Poetry especially was the burning ground where the issue of race, maleness, cultural memory and political awareness were smelt into resistance. A kind of so-called political poetics was strategically written into the poetically rhetoric of the time, i.e. the works of Amiri Baraka, Lucille Lynn, etc., which already predetermined the experience of the community, black solidarity, and the recovery of the historical narrative. Here, the structure and the content of verse was employed in a selective way to question and challenge systems of oppression but at the same time producing possible eschatological visions of a free self. By redefining Harlem and other urbanized areas, which could be readily characterized by the discourse of violence and confinement, surveillance, etc., the movement poets captured not only the reality of the racial oppression but also the potential of group empowerment. Their choice to have the urban experience foregrounded allowed the poets to outline contexts that were materialistically repressive as they were symbolically subversive to locate urbanity-as-such as a space of political struggle and cultural reinterpretation. This paper argues that the poetry of the Black Arts Movement, especially when gathered in book form as in Black Fire, is a technique to transform marginalization in the city into a vessel of cultural and political enlightenment. It illustrates that the aesthetic cultures of resistance, masculinity and collective memory exist in a collaborative manner to recover the black identity which in turn promotes the ideological premises of Black Power. In this manner, the poetics of defiance shared by the movement resonate even now, in the modern movement of racial justice, which serves as a temporal link between the struggle of the past and the modern-day movement.
Black Arts Movement, masculinity, black identity, awakening, resistance,
Copyright (c) 2025 Mereleen Lily https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The Portrayal of Subjective Anguish, Forfeiture, Veracity, Affection and Conviction in Namita Gokhale’s The Book of Shadows
Namita Gokhale is a distinguished short story writer and suffragette novelists in Indian Writing in English. She was born at Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh in the year 1956. She completed her education in English Literature from Jesus College and Mary College, Delhi. Gokhale surpasses her characters to bridge a gap between Indian writing in English and provincial languages. She has written nineteen books which consists of short stories, fictions and non-fictions. Being a feminist writer, she delineates women’s pain of seclusion, corporal disorder, conceptual heaviness, discomforts, sentiments, moods and perceptions. She reflects the excruciating life for a woman, her painful experiences and her quest for survival. The foremost purpose of this research paper is to showcase the personal grief and loss, veracity, affection and conviction in Namita Gokhale’s well-known novel The Book of Shadows. She portrays herself as a protagonist, an acid attack survivor, looser of her love and an alienated entity. Rachita, the protagonist of the novel, serves as a replica of Namita Gokhale. Rachita suffers all the oddities and being an emancipated woman, she finds solitude in the Himalayan hills as she spends her childhood there. She searches to fill the void in order to find true comfort.
Veracity, affection, conviction, personal grief, loss, mental pain, loneliness, self-identity
Copyright (c) 2025 Dr. Kamalakar Baburao Gaikwad Dr. Kamalakar Baburao Gaikwad https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Exploring Mindscape and Landscape in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing
Margaret Atwood being the most significant Canadian novelist, poet and critic is chiefly popular for her writing about several social problems. Her novel Surfacing, published in 1972, portrays the domination of western civilization as a patriarchal ideology over nature and woman in parallel. The novel is about the degeneration of the core ideas of rationalism and progress into brute domination, colonization and the rift between nature and culture. Atwood scathingly criticizes the rampant consumerism and capitalism of the modern age embodied in the threat posed by American culture, or American mentality, to Canada and its landscape which runs parallel to the masculine rationality that wills to ‘submerge’ as the central metaphor of ‘surfacing’ as its feminine mindset. This paper discusses the conflict between the landscape and mindscape in several related dualisms represented in the novel and thus glorifies the theme of ecofeminism throughout its notion.
Margaret Atwood, Surfacing, Women and Nature, Landscape, Mindscape
Copyright (c) 2025 Riku Panigrahi, Hitkaran Singh Ranawat https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Fragmentation and Black Consciousness in Amiri Baraka’s The System of Dante’s Hell
Amiri Baraka’s The System of Dante’s Hell is a 1965 avant-garde novel that has become one of the most discussed and challenging works of African American literature. The novel depicts the protagonist’s multi-faceted descent into a racialized place of existential hell, which may be seen as similar to the fragmentation of his own self and the harrowing journey towards a new Black consciousness. Through the theoretical lens of the Black Arts Movement and existentialism, the article examines how Baraka is radicalizing Dante Alighieri’s familiar form in order to produce an American hell influenced by systemic racism, cultural alienation, and a deeply rooted and internalized sense of oppression. The novel's non-linear structure, its tangled and random narration, and graphic realism mirror the psychological dilemma of its protagonist, his sexuality, and identity in a hostile white-dominated society. After examining the complex themes, concerning disillusionment over assimilation, the tensions surrounding Black masculinity, and the pain that arises from confronting deeply internalized self-hatred, the paper argues that The System of Dante’s Hell is not merely a representation of suffering, but a necessary excavation of the soul through a brutal encounter with the “system,” which ultimately liberates the protagonist and re-establish their sense of self within the larger societal fabric.
Amiri Baraka, The System of Dante’s Hell, Black Arts Movement, Existentialism, African American Literature, Identity, Racism, Fragmentation, Black Consciousness.
Copyright (c) 2025 Rakhpreet Kaur Walia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Spiritual & Literary Perspectives in the Poetry of Kabir Das and Swami Vivekanand: A Critical Exploration
Kabir Das and Swami Vivekananda were two mammoth Indian mystic saints and poets. Their fundamental works cannot be quantified. The paper involves critical and comparative analysis of spiritual and literary aspects of poems by Kabir Das and Swami Vivekananda-two champions whose poems cut across tradition and time, across orthodoxy. The 15th-century mystic poet Kabir expressed a radical spiritual intuition nourished by Nirguna Bhakti, denouncing ritualism and caste stratification in vernacular poetry full of metaphor, paradox and experience-based observation. The philosopher-poet of the 19th century and Vedantic leader of the resurgence, Swami Vivekananda, saturated his poetry with self-realization, with national rebirth, with universalism, and with the blending of ancient Sanskritic rhythm with modern realization. The paper will include a comparison of how these two poets employ the literary elements of symbolism, meter, aphorism and rhetorical passion in their presentation of ultimate religious realities. The form, also, in the paper, in the invocation of the interior repose, of the experience of the transcendent, of renunciation of dogma, of how they are presented in the situation, in the language of a lyric, is opposed. The surface meaning of the lines of both the model, as the poets, Kabir and Vivekananda, see poetry not as the revelation of the lyric, not as the statement of the spiritual revolution, but as the commentary on the society. Finally, this parallel serves also to make their poetic traditions applicable in the more current thinking on belief, self-consciousness and freedom of the latter-day-modernism-connecting mysticism of the Middle Ages to the humanism of the modern era.
Kabir Das, Swami Vivekananda, Spiritual Poetry, Nirguna Bhakti, Vedanta Mysticism, Literary Devices, Social Critique, Indian Philosophy, Comparative Literature, Poetic Expression Bhakti Movement, National Awakening Metaphor and Symbolism, Inner Transformation.