American Research Journal of English and Literature

EA Gamini Fonseka, BA, MA, PhD, FRSA

This is a psychological analysis of Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story “Interpreter of Maladies”. Jhumpa Lahiri, although born and bred in the West, writes her short stories with an Asian, especially Indian, touch. Her “Interpreter of Maladies” relates an experience a US-born Asian young woman assimilated to Western culture has with a mature English-speaking Asian man engaged in tourism. They both fail to perceive the chronic issues of family life as particular to each other. Mina and Mr Kapasi are both in the same plight as frustrated spouses in their respective arranged marriages. But they cannot be explicit to each other because of cultural barriers. So, their maladies remain unperceived by each other under the influence of their cultural orientations. Mina considers Mr Kapasi a prospective counsellor, but Mr Kapasi considers her a prospective mistress. Ultimately, their considerations prove baseless, when they are both supposed to work out a solution together for an ailing problem.

Abhyudita Gautam Singha

This Paper is an attempt to decode the tribal custom prevalent in Himachal Pradesh called Darosh which means forcible marriage where the boy kidnaps the girl of his choice without her consent and establishes a physical relationship with her during that night after which the relationship is formally accepted and recognised as a marriage. This has been depicted in the story called Darosh authored by SR Harnot. The story revolves around the sister of the victim of this ritual who also resists all attempts on her kidnapping. The story gives a glimpse into the custom, delving into the complexities and the hidden circuits of mutual cooperation among the families of the groom and bride and exposes the hypocrisy of society in accepting such marriages that directly encroach on the girl’s right to choose a life partner. It also depicts the strong resistance that the patriarchal system faces from the modern educated women of today.

Dr. James Nsoh Adogpa

Ghanaianisms play a critical role in managing linguistic taboos. These are marks of Ghanaian cultural and linguistic identities. The Ghanaian creative writer, as well as the journalist, who has to stylistically contextualize his/her work, ought to adjust, distort and enlarge the scope of the English and change its shape to suit the linguistic space and time. This space and time fulfills what Zvemoya (2011) says “Our ancestors recognised this and, as a way of control and to encourage creativity designated the times and places for obscene.” From the perspective of an emic researcher, data were gathered from creative works of Ghanaian creative writers and from the media (broadcast and print). It was found out that the culture of Ghana is unique, so Ghanaians use Ghanaianisms to play a critical role in managing linguistic taboos and to mark identity. Another finding was that the use of Ghanaianisms is as a result of the passion Ghanaians have attached to the reality of life instances when it comes to how Ghanaians see English as their own. It is suggested that Ghanaianisms are recognized and codified so as to ease the use of English in the Ghanaian context

Ed. P.V. Laxmiprasad

Acheoah John Emike1, Balogun Bamitale Janet2

This paper examines the use of non-verbal communication. To perform face acts (FAs). Non-verbal communication includes laughter, gestures, body movements, etc. The literature of face acts is replete with the use of language in the performance of face threatening acts (FTAs) and face saving acts (FSAs). Presently, we do not know of any study that examines the use of verbal communication in the performance of face acts, even though language philosophers unanimously agree that illocutionary acts can be performed via non-performative formula (extralinguistic means). This study hinges on two theoretical frameworks: the Face Management View and the Pragma-crafting Theory. One of the findings of the study is that non-verbal communication conveys face acts that are determined by different variables including the relationship between the participants and psychological underpinnings.

Dr. Richa Tewari

Since the closing decades of the eighteenth century, ‘Nature’ has been one of the most recurrent themes of English and American Poetry. The chief exponent of this subject, William Wordsworth, explored its utmost philosophical limits and in doing so, set a trap of convention for the succeeding generations of poets. From him down to the Victorian poets in England and through them to Bryant and Emerson in America, every poet, faithfully and at times exasperatingly echoed some of the notable aspects of his attitude towards nature. From Wordsworth up to Hardy, each poet spiritualized or personified Nature. To them, nature spoke a significant language and stirred within them, profound philosophical reflections. In this group, can also be placed writers like Poe, Melville and Henry James. But the American poet Robert Frost’s (1874 - 1963) approach to nature was a fusion of all these. Sometimes he simply observed and recorded beauties of nature, at times he found spiritual echoes in it, and still at some other times he found nature to be a mirror of human soul. But he never saw nature away from nature. Frost’s treatment of nature better can be assessed by comparing his stance with that of another nature poet. In this paper Robert Frost’s realistic approach to ‘Nature’ has been compared with another American nature poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886).She was “the most perfect flower of New England Transcendentalism”, an anticipator of metaphysical poetry, a smeller of modernity, and an upholder of romanticism. A religious poet with keen sensibilities and a Puritan’s thorough knowledge of the Bible, she could not help being intensely aware of Nature’s glory.

P.V. Laxmiprasad

Ahmed Ben Amara

Within Virginia Woolf’s body of short fiction, “The Mark on the Wall” stands out as a unique but also intriguing story. The story’s early neglect and subsequent recognition mirror the difficulties that readers and commentators have had with its unusual form and content. This essay proposes to explain the changes that have recently occurred in critical appreciations of “The Mark on the Wall” by linking these to a major feature of the story, namely the ways in which it anticipates not only developments in Woolf’s career as a writer of fiction, but also post-modern theories of knowledge and truth. Woolf’s story, it will be argued, marked the beginning of Woolf’s career as a writer of short fiction, shaped the direction that her longer novels would later take, and confirmed the intersections between her personal experience, in this case the experience of illness, and her artistic endeavor. This essay will rely on a close reading of “The Mark on the Wall” to explore these and other facets of the story that make of it, indeed, a work of multiple thresholds for its author.

Wenjie Han

As a well-known writer of American postmodernism, Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 have received extensive attention and multi-dimensions interpretations from the critics. This paper will focus the various paranoid behaviors that Oedipa displayed in the quest of the mysterious mail system Trystero through the trace of the origin of “paranoia”. It will explore the alienation of individuals and even American society hidden beneath Oedipa’s quest from the perspective of alienation proposed by Fromm.

EA Gamini Fonseka, BA, MA, PhD, FRSA

The paper presents a critical reading of Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story ‘A Temporary Matter’. The analysis is conducted in line with the trajectory Lahiri has developed for the short story. Accordingly, it continues under fifteen sub-topics respectively: 1) Introduction; 2) Images of a Frozen Personal Relationship; 3) Frustration Precipitated by a Stillbirth; 4) Avoidance as a Defence Mechanism; 5) Defensive Isolation in Individual Behaviours; 6) Nostalgia about Domestic Harmony; 7) Alliance Forced by Darkness; 8) A Totally New Start; 9) Breaking the Ice; 10) The Luxury of Darkness; 11) Catharsis Invited by Daily Confession; 12) Disappointment without Power Cut; 13) End to the Pleasure; 14) A Mystery Revealed; and 15) Darkness Ushering Illumination. Each section foregrounds a significant development in the behaviours of the two protagonists concerned who are frustrated by the stillbirth of their baby on whose conception there was no consensus between the two and are not confident to face each other because of their initial differences about bearing and rearing babies. There is an effort to assess the efficacy of Lahiri’s creative use of imagery and symbolism to portray the developments and conditions within the narrative space in a critical light so that the reader will be able to perceive how an Indian couple psychologically withstand a stillbirth in the family in an American alien cultural environment. The paper reflects on the paradox in the power cut that helps repair the shattered personal relationship between the two as a unique device in narrating the situation in question.