Social Pressures In Indian Writing
...person lives, as long as they interact with other people from their society, they will be subjected to pressure. Everyone cares what other people think or say about them, and this leads them to start behaving in certain ways. This topic is also a recurring theme in every novel we've read up to now. Whether it's Adela Quested in "A Passage to India", Raju from "The Guide", Bhuvan from "Lagaan", or even Salim from "Midnight's Children", every single character in each novel/film faces instances where their decisions are affected by social constraints. In fact, even the people who wrote the novels, or directed the films, had to deal with society. Even they had to portray their characters in a certain way, or deal with situations in a certain way because of what people would say.
The main purpose of this paper is to explore how both the authors/directors and their characters have dealt with different kinds of constraints, and what this does to them.
"A passage to India" explores many different levels of society. Since the novel is based on the interactions between the British "rulers" and the Native Indians, there are those 2 broad strata of society, which are further divided into smaller groups. As one can imagine, the amount of social pressures faced in this situation would be incredible.
The biggest examples of how characters deal with society is shown primarily through Adela Quested, and Mr. Fielding. Both characters are English, but have interactions with the natives in different ways. Ms. Quested is new to the country, and wants to "see the real India", and therefore tries to explore it with the help of Dr. Aziz. In the process of visiting the Malabar Caves, however, an incident takes place which causes Ms. Quested to lay charges of attempted rape on Dr. Aziz, at which point there's a large trial. In the trial, however, Ms. Quested realizes her mistake, and...
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