Great Expectations and the Ballad of the Road: Simple Annals of the Poor

Abstract

Charles Dickens (1802-1870), the quintessential Victorian author has depicted various recurrent social evils of the 19 th century England. In Great Expectations particularly, he has shown how the poor orphan young boy Pip, deeply unhappy with his wretched domestic life, aspires for a better life and position in the society by any means. Though in a different way, Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhay (1896- 1950), one of the luminaries of Bengali literature and an eminent early 20 th century writer, has also exhibited the struggle of the orphan young adolescent Apu picturing the domestic and social realities of the Bengali rural and urban society of the 1920s and 1930s in his well-known back to back novels The Ballad of the Road (Pather Panchali) and its sequel The Unvanquished (Aparajito). Both these novelists have simultaneously portrayed the outward impoverished life of common class people, and the layered sensitibity and human emotions in them, especially in the thoroughly growing ordinary child characters like Pip, Apu and others. They have also made poverty a character itself, a condition that represents the stark realities of life of the then English and Bengali societies respectively. But at the same time, they seem to be far different from each other in dealing with poverty and their attitudes to life and reality. Therefore, this comparative study aims to critically analyse these novels and explore how differently these authors have conveyed their ideology of 'realism'.