ABSURDITY, NIHILISM AND THE EXISTENTIAL CRISIS: A STUDY OF MISTRY'S NOVELS THROUGH THE LENS OF EXISTENTIALIM

Abstract

Existentialism as a philosophy became popular after World war I when the entire Europe was in the moral crisis of, to be or not to be. Europe paid the price of being too ambitious. The European countries till World War I was flourishing leaps and bounds but it's greed for owning more territory led to power tussle and the ambitions of a few cunning leaders thrust a big chunk of population of the world under the threat of death. Millions perished and the other millions related to them looked and cried for a messiah , a second coming that can save them from the human predicament that they were witnessing. But no second coming happened. This gave rise to nihilism, absurdity and existential crisis and the same was reflected in the post modern writers. The non-European writers also experienced the same crisis because the post modern novelists also raised these timeless questions and through their characters they try to resolve but without any success. The absurdity and helplessness of human beings as an entity of this whole cosmos is projected in post modern literature. The paper brings out the existential crisis is conspicuous in Rohinton Mistry's novels. The characters raise their heads against their destiny but in the end they surrender before the cosmic forces. Mistry's novels cover a wide array of issues ranging from diasporic crisis, hybridity and post-colonial crisis. The existential crisis is dominant in his novels. The predicament faced by the marginalized characters is explored in this study.