Family and Community: Anita Desai’s clear light of Day in Context

Abstract

The paper purports to analyse the family and community in Indian society through the reading of the novel Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai. The narrative is complex as it has multidimensional perspectives but in this paper an individual’s relation to his/her immediate surroundings is going to be scrutinized. Every person is deeply affected by the influence of society, kinship, relatives and community in which the person lives as family is an abode of warmth and encouragement. The influence does not remain for a short period of time but prolongs in the future lives of the upcoming generation. In such surroundings, the birth of conflicts arises out of the diverse choices of each member in the family which ultimately leads to the separation and divergent behaviour of each individual. This novel is in fact the manifestation of such conflicts and their resolution. The novels of Anita Desai deal with the complexities of modern Indian society  and delve deep into the psyche of characters where she finds and traces conflict between self and society and to strike balance, characters end in withdrawal, suicide, confinement or nervous breakdown. In the present novel, characters establish a sense of balance and destroy ambiguities. Moreover, it can be remarkably read as:  a) siblings relationship within a family, b) role of community in shaping one’s behaviour, c) the Indian essence of family in the text.