Journal on English as a Foreign Language (JEFL)
Vol 7, No 2 (2017): Issued in September 2017

The Strange Case of Billy Biswas: Two conflicting realities

Bikki Anupama (Associate Professor, English, Dept. S&H Kallam Haranadha Reddy Institute of Technology, Guntur. Andhra Pradesh. India.)
Mantri Venkata Raghu Ram (Professor & Head, English Dept. S&H, VVIT, Nambur, Guntur. AP, India.)



Article Info

Publish Date
30 Sep 2017

Abstract

Arun Joshi presents socio-cultural conflicts between two different societies. One society is material driven and backed by the modern state apparatus like police, courts, etc. while the other is subsistence driven and is at the bottom in the hierarchy of the modern state. Indian tribal societies have been exploited right from the colonial period into the post-independence times. These two societies differ as follows: the tribal society lives on subsistence looks at Nature as a space for socio-economic, political, cultural and community, while the urban materialistic world perceives Nature as a resource to be exploited. This primordial difference has manifested as a socio-cultural conflict between these two societies. This may be due to the mutually exclusive and incorrigible nature of their social constructs which trigger perceptual obfuscation of symbiotic living.  What appears to be an objective reality for one appears as subjective to the other and vice versa. This paper studies the strangeness of Billy Biswas, the protagonist of the novel in the socio-cultural milieu of conflicting realities.

Copyrights © 2017






Journal Info

Abbrev

http://e-journal.iain-palangkaraya.ac.id/index.php

Publisher

Subject

Languange, Linguistic, Communication & Media

Description

Journal on English as a Foreign Language (JEFL) is an open access academic, scholarly peer-reviewed journal and follows a double blind review policy. The Journal is scheduled for publication biannually, in March and September, with the first issue to appear in March 2011. This Journal has been ...