Cultural Alienation and Identity Crises in Anita Desai's "Bye-bye Black Bird"

Abstract

The quest for identity and alienation are the central concerns of Anita Desai's works. She has tendency to look into every aspect of a person's life. In her book Bye Bye Blackbird, Anita Desai explores the lives of Indian immigrants in England before to 1964, the year in which England fundamentally altered its immigration laws. Particularly Indians flying to England are the Blackbirds. The world of three people who are limited by their identities is explored in Bye Bye Blackbird, along with how they must discover who they really are. Three characters -- Adit, Sarah, and Dev takes Centre stage in the story. Adit and Sarah have a greater attraction to India following their terrible events in England, and the narrative exposes their true crises as they struggle to create their own lives in a foreign place. Dev, who had first expressed some sort of hatred towards England, has since come to regard it as his home. This paper critically examines the loss of identity and cultural alienation with reference to the Novel “Bye- Bye Black Bird".