Journal Issues

Abstract

In English literature, solitude is often not merely physical separation but also a psychological and emotional state that allows characters to reflect, grow, or confront inner conflicts. Migration, whether voluntary or forced, can be a deeply unsettling experience. Diasporic authors adeptly portray the psychological and emotional struggles their characters face when adjusting to a new environment. Even when individuals gain recognition, acceptance, and admiration in their adopted societies, they often remain physically and emotionally detached from both their homeland and the wider world. Transformation is a recurring theme in much of diasporic literature; in Sunetra Gupta’s novels, characters achieve a sense of fulfillment by staying connected to their native land. Positive experiences from past interactions evoke lasting joy and contentment in them. This paper examines the challenges and experiences depicted in Gupta’s Memories of Rain and A Sin of Colour. An analysis of her works reveals how Western societies are gradually acknowledging migratory Indians and how these diasporic individuals navigate and redefine themselves within this evolving context.

Keywords: Diaspora, Self-Discovery, Alienation, Isolation, loneliness.

Abstract

Literature is a written work of art that goes beyond the realm of nations and gets united by themes, motifs and so on. This paper is a study of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Jonathan Swift is an Irish novelist who depicts the types of human qualities a human encounters in a foreign land in The Gulliver’s Travel. The same goes with Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe where the concept of enduring struggles is dealt with. The concept of alienation is also discussed in detail. Alienation is the state of being alienated. Though the novels mainly deal with traveling and exploring, both protagonists are traveling alone for their sake. Somehow they are alienated. Alienation happens not only when someone willingly chooses to be isolated from society but also when several situations push them to be isolated without any go. But here the protagonists willingly chose to be isolated in their travel. This study aims to explore the thematic similarities and differences, narrative styles, and underlying philosophical perspectives of the two novels. This research paper presents the characteristics, and perspectives, and clearly portrays the findings from both novels.

Keywords: Survival, Exploration, Travel, Alienation, Children’s Literature.

Abstract

Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance (1995) is not merely a novel about 1970s India; it is a profound act of witnessing. set during the authoritarian clampdown of the Emergency (1975–1977), the story brings together four lives that society has pushed to the edges: Dina Dalal, a fiercely independent Parsi widow; Maneck Kohlah, a young student from the hills; and Ishvar and Omprakash Darji, two Dalit tailors whose very existence defies centuries of caste-based dehumanization. Rather than offering a detached sociological survey, Mistry immerses us in their daily struggles, the hunger they suppress, the dignity they cling to, the small joys they steal from a world determined to deny them. In doing so, he transforms abstract concepts like “socioeconomic inequality” and “caste oppression” into innate human experiences marked by sweat, silence, and resilience. At its core, A Fine Balance issues an ethical call for visibility not as spectacle, but as recognition of full humanity. Mistry’s narrative technique embodies this imperative: he lingers on details others might overlook the texture of worn clothing, the rhythm of labour, the weight of unspoken grief thereby insisting that these lives matter not because they symbolize suffering, but because they are lived with complexity, humour, and moral agency. In the tradition of subaltern studies, which seeks to recover the voices silenced by official history, Mistry crafts a literary space where the marginalized speak, not through grand declarations, but through the quiet persistence of their being. The novel thus becomes both a historical document and moral reckoning, urging readers to see not just the structures that marginalize, but the irreplaceable individuals who endures within. 

Keywords: A Fine Balance, marginalization, social invisibility, caste, subaltern narratives, Emergency India, inequality