Elements of Existentialism in the Works of Arun Joshi

Abstract

Arun Joshi is an existential novelist that occupies a distinct and distinctive place in the world of post-Independence Indian English writings. Unlike his contemporary Indian English writers, he neither writes for entertainment nor for any political or social issues. He experiments with the issue of human predicament through his protagonists, particularly the motives responsible for their freedom of choice and the effect of these choices on their psyche. In his fictional world, he probes deep into the psyche of his protagonists and highlights their interactions with the Sartrean view of life. Through his protagonists, he portrays the inner recesses and existential trauma of modern men and deals with their efforts to search a meaning of life in this materialistic world. The problem of alienation and isolation from self and society is a major issue in his fictional world which parallels him with the Western existential novelists. His first novel The Foreigner is excellently parallel with Camus‟ The Outsider. He received the most prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award for his fourth existential novel The Last Labyrinth in 1982. The fictional world of Arun Joshi mainly consists of five novels as: The Foreigner (1968), The Strange Case of Billy Biswas (1971), The Apprentice (1974), The Last Labyrinth (1981), and The City and the River (1990). His fictional world surprisingly represents the Western existential philosophy in general and Sartrean existentialism in particular.