Available ONLINE www.vsrdjournals.

com

VSRD-TNTJ, Vol. 2 (10), 2011, 552-559

R RE ES SE EA AR RC CH H C CO OM MM MU UN NI IC CA AT TI IO ON N

Packaging The Story : A Study Of Anita Desais Cry, The Peacock And Fire On The Mountain
1

Amita Shresth*

ABSTRACT
The Article discusses the numerous ways that help a novelist to represent his/her story to the readers with special reference to Anita Desais Cry, the Peacock and Fire on the Mountain. The telling of stories is such a pervasive aspect of our environment that we sometimes forget that stories provide the initial and continuing means for shaping our experience. Thus, it is not surprising that a great deal of scholarly investigation has focused on both the nature of stories and their central role in human affairs. This Article describes how Anita Desai enriches the novel and lifts it above the mere narration of a story or depiction of a character and provides it the very life blood and the soul. Form and structure in the novels Anita Desai take the shape of an exquisitely designed tapestry.The article explains that the aspects of theme and technique in Anita Desais novels are not isolated elements. They are inter-related at many levels of structure and texture. In order to convey her theme the novelist judiciously uses character, situation, dialogues and other elements in relation to the plot. Narrating a story is a primitive instinct of every novelist and in this Article we will see how story is narrated in Anita Desais Cry, the Peacock and Fire on the Mountain. Keywords : Story, Plot, Narration.

1. INTRODUCTION
Stories are the repository of our collective wisdom about the world of social / cultural behaviour; they are the key mediating structures for our encounters with reality. Indeed, without stories our experiences would merely be unevaluated sensations from an undifferentiated stream of events. Across many disciplines including linguistics, literary criticism, anthropology, psychology and sociology- re-searchers have begun to see how the analysis of story structure is fundamental to our understanding of individual intention and potential. As a mental representation, story is not tied to any particular medium, and it is independent of the distinction between fiction and non-fiction. Basically, story is the fundamental instrument of thought. It is a literary capacity indispensable to human cognition generally. Story must be about a world populated by individuated
____________________________ 1

Research Scholar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, MMU Mullana, Ambala, Haryana, INDIA. *Correspondence :loura.rakesh@gmail.com

Amita Shresth / VSRD Technical & Non-Technical Journal Vol. 2 (10), 2011

existents. This world must be situated in time and undergo significant transformations and these transformations must be caused by non-habitual physical events. Some of the participants in the events must be intelligent agents who have a mental life and react emotionally to the states of the world. And some of the events must be purposeful actions by these agents. Along with action sequence of events is also important and it must form a unified causal chain and lead to closure. The occurrence of at least some of the events must be asserted as fact for the story world. To conclude we can say that the story must communicate something meaningful to the audience. In fact, story is a fictional reality in which the characters of the story are supposed to be living and in which events are supposed to take place. Every story begins with a beginning. This is a more important point than it may seem all stories move only in one direction, forward through time. If there is a knowable beginning, that's where they begin. If there is a knowable end, that's where they end. Anita Desai has emerged as a very serious, skilled and promising novelist in India today. Of all the contemporary Indian English Novelists, Anita Desai is undisputedly the most powerful novelist. Desai is well known for her use of technique. The method adopted by a writer to present life in the process of living may be described as the narrative technique. Though the novel gets its main sustenance from the story it intends to tell, its success depends on how it is narrated. The quality of readability, the most important of all the desirable qualities of a novel, may be achieved when there is compatibility between the narration and the narrative technique. Wayne Booth said, "Narration is an art not a science, but this does not mean that we are necessarily doomed to fail when we attempt to formulate principle about it. There are systematic elements in every art and criticism of fiction can never avoid the responsibility of trying to explain technical successes and failures, by reference to general principles"(Booth, 1961). Desai's experiments with non-traditional materials and technique give her a distinct position among the Indian English novelists. Desai's style or technique of delivering the thematic thrust is the vital agent. She has tried to present her themes organically with appropriate adjustment and adaptations in spheres of style and point of view. Her technique enriches the novel and lifts it above the mere narration of a story or depiction of a character and provides it the very life, blood and the soul. Narrative technique is a matter of predominant concern for Anita Desai. She expresses her views on the skill of writing: That my temperament and circumstances have combined to give me the shelter, privacy and solitude required for the writing of such novels thereby avoiding problems, a more objective writer has to deal with since he/she depends on observation rather than a private vision(Desai, 1978)

2. METHODOLOGY 2.1. Difference Between Story And Other Related Terms

The process of telling is the story's narration and the person who narrates it is known as narrator. The distinction between story and narration is also important. It is an implicit acknowledgment that a story is understood as having a separate existence from its narration. As such, it can be told in different ways by different narrators. Because the narration of the story would differ, with different words, different emotional inflections, different perspectives and different details. These narrators might even contradict each other. But the usual presumption is that there is a story to be told and that the story itself, going inexorably though time, can no more correct itself than can events in real life.

Page 553 of 559

Amita Shresth / VSRD Technical & Non-Technical Journal Vol. 2 (10), 2011

The distinction between plot and story, like that between narration and story, is an implicit presumption that a story is separate from its rendering. Just as a story can be narrated in different ways, so it can be plotted in different ways. This analytically powerful distinction between story and its representation is the founding insight of the field of narratology. If story, plot and narration can be called the three principal components of the overarching category narrative, the distinction between story and how it is communicated is so fundamental that scholars of narrative often bring narration and plot together under a single heading, narrative discourse. The distinctions between story and story as discoursed have proven very helpful in understanding how narrative achieves its effects. But nothing is tidy in the study of narrative. This is largely because narrative happens in the mind, with its empirical spoken or printed, pictures on a screen, actors on a stage-transformed by cognitive processes that are still largely mysterious. For this reason, the nature necessity and adequacy of these three enduring concepts-story, plot and narrationhave never been completely assured, however fruitful controversies they have stirred up of these three key concepts, story is the sturdiest. Scholars may not agree that a story must have a beginning or an end but this is a common fact that a story is composed of action and characters and it always proceeds forward in time. Story was first analytically set off from the manner of its rendering in the wake of Saussure's distinction in linguistic between the signified and the signifier. The spade work for this adaptation was performed by Russian Formalists, who, in the 1920's introduced the distinction of fabula (story) and sjuzhet (its rendering). TzvetanTodorov gave these terms their rough equivalents in French, histoire and discourse, and Gerard Genettee greatly elaborated the distinction in his landmark narratological reading of Proust's A la recherche du tempts perdu. From there, Seymour Chatman's foundational work, the corresponding distinction of story and discourse made its way into English where it is how widely deployed.

2.2. Relation of Narrator with the Story

Two aspects of narration that always have significant consequences are the sensibility of the narrator and his or her distance from the action. Narrators can be brilliant, dumb, deranged, passionate or cold as i.e. they are as various as we are and their constitution inevitably affects how they mediate story. Gerard Genette identified two types of narrators. First types of narrators are those who are also characters in the story world and therefore remain close to the action. The other one are those who stand outside the story world. The latter tend to have greater reliability inspiring more confidence in the information and views they convey and often deploying third person narration throughout. It is not the case always. Sometimes these narrators have clearly developed personalities and refer to themselves in the first person. Plot is even more slippery term than narration, indeed so vague in ordinary usage that narratologists often avoid it altogether. In common English usage, plot is often identical with story. But in the discourse on narrative, the term has been deployed in at least three distinguishable ways. But the most frequent use is E.M. Forster's use of plot to indicate a story that is not merely one thing after another but events connected by cause.

2.3. Anita Desais Way Of Packaging The Story

Anita Desai has adopted a controlled method of manifesting character's consciousness and evaluation of the

Page 554 of 559

Amita Shresth / VSRD Technical & Non-Technical Journal Vol. 2 (10), 2011

events and characters of the story. Anita Desai uses the technique of contrast between various settings, situations, characters and even between different stages of the same characters. Her fiction is not at all transparent and predictable, unlike the fiction of R.K. Narayan and Kamla Markandaya. She does not use the traditional plot structure with linear movement in terms of exposition, conflict and resolution. She does not indulge herself in self-conscious story telling. She often uses simple plot elements and her narrative art depends upon deconstructive devices for creations of meaning and atmosphere in her novels. She does not create the story outline of her novels. She, in fact, creates people within the existential framework with dreams and wills. Those people in turn create the story, action and dreams of the novels. There is an unusual attraction and factory in her narrative technique because it combines the realistic and the romantic modes. In her novels incident or situation is more important than character. In Desai's hands imagery becomes a very powerful mode to create the story line of her novels. Symbols also have a vital role to play in displaying different states generally the symbols used by Desai are a part of the circumstantial details of the narrative. Her symbols acquire significance because there is an appropriate correlation between the object and its symbolic meaning. In the story, the events are arranged in a sequence which can differ from the chronological sequence. The locations where events occur are also given distinct characteristics and are thus transformed into characters. Events have been defined in the field of narratology as the transition from one state to another state, caused or experienced by actors. The word transition stresses the fact that an event is a process, an alternation. However, trying to establish which sentences in a text represent an event is not so easy. The difficulty arises not only from the fact that too many sentences refer to elements that may be considered processes, but also from the fact that these elements may often be considered objects as well as processes, depending upon the context. In the field of narratology, the events are distinguished between two categories: functional and non-functional. Functional events open a choice between two possibilities, realize this choice, or reveal the results of such a choice. Once a choice is made, it determines the subsequent course of events in the developments of the story. Events have been defined as processes. A process is a change, a development and presupposes therefore a succession in time or a chronology. The events themselves happen during a certain period of time and they occur in a certain order. This sequencing of events is the aspect of presentation of information in a novel. It can be chronological, psychological or presentational. While the first two are self-explanatory, the third i.e., presentational sequencing requires some explanation. As Leech and Short describe it, The best order of presentation, if one wants to facilitate the reader's processing of information both in fiction writing and in general expository writing is to go from elements which presuppose the least prior knowledge to those which presuppose the most. In presentational sequencing as well as in the other aspects of sequencing the authors artistic sense often shows in the way information is withheld, rather than in the way it is revealed (Leech & Short, 1981). The next step in packaging the story is the study of location. Events happen somewhere and the place where events happen is known as location. MiekeBal has explained that when the location has not been indicated readers will simply supply one. They will imagine the scene, and in order to do so, they have to situate it somewhere, however vague the imaginary place may be. The Russian critic Lotman has explained this by pointing out the predominance of the dimension of space in human imagination. In support of his contention he lists a number of convincing examples of spatial terms we use to indicate abstract concepts, such as infinite for an immeasurably large quantity, 'distance' for a deficient relationship between people. Incidentally, even the

Page 555 of 559

Amita Shresth / VSRD Technical & Non-Technical Journal Vol. 2 (10), 2011

word 'relation' itself would seem to support Lotman's contention. It spatial thinking is indeed a general human tendency, it is not surprising that spatial elements play an important role in story packaging. It is, for instance, possible to make a note of the place of each story, and then to investigate whether a connection exists between the hind of events, the identity of the actors and the location. The sub-divisions of locations into groups is a manner of gaining insight into the relations between elements. A contrast between inside and outside is often relevant, where inside may carry the suggestion of protection, and outside of danger. Another, related, opposition is the between the centrally located square, which functions, as the meeting place where actors are confronted with one another, and the surrounding world, where each actor has to fend for her-or himself. City and country are contrasted in many romantic and realistic novels. The opposition between city and country can take on different meanings. Sometimes city is presented as the sink of iniquity as opposed to idyllic innocence presented by country. Sometimes this contrast is presented as a possibility. of magically acquiring riches in contrast to the labour of the farmers; or as the seat of power against the powerlessness of the country people.

3. RESULT
Beginning with Cry, the peacock, in this novel the sequencing is more psychological and presentational than chronological. The novel has three parts to it. The first and third can be considered as the prologue and the epilogue of the novel. The first part of the novel describes an event which reveals the inherent qualities of the protagonists and yet the reader is not told anything about their identities. In other words, the death of a pet is all that the novel reveals in the beginning at a point of least supposition, and ends on a point where the reader feels that he knows all about Maya and Gautama, and hence he is not shocked by the end.Fire on the Mountainis divided into three parts, 'Nanda Kaul at Carignano', 'Raka comes to Carignano' and Ila Das leaves Carignano.' The very first sentence of the novel suggests the ironic juxtaposition on which the noel is framed, Nanda Kaul's present and past interwoven into a pattern of image scenes result in a consummate presentational and psychological sequencing. In this novel, she makes use of the flash back technique in narrating the story. The novel centres on the character of Nanda Kaul, the widow of vice- chancellor who is compelled both by choice and circumstances to live in seclusion in an old bunglow in Kasauli. The noel also makes use of fantasy and it is Nanda Kaul who lives in the world of fantasy. It is interesting to note that it is a grown up person and not the child who goes into the word of fantasy. This is how Anita Desai has described the use of fantasy and various purposes for which it is used in the novel, self-revelation is not the main thrust of fantasy in Fire on the Mountain which uses it in an entirely different way. It is not bordering on hallucination. Two kinds of fantasy would exist side by side; one which is consciously and deliberately woven by Nanda Kaul to interest her great granddaughter Raka, the other which is shared by Raka and Ram Lal and is based on his belief in the supernatural .............Raka's private world of fantasy is somewhere between the two-it is neither wholly and naturally accepted fact as the Churails are for Ram Lal, nor is it a lie woven for self-preservation-inFire on the Mountain, fantasy also exists purely at the level of imagery as a part of the self-analysis which some of the characters carry on (Jain, 1987). Every art-form is governed by its specific laws, but there are certain general principles which apply to all of them the most fundamental is the principle of harmony between form and content. Or in other words we can say

Page 556 of 559

Amita Shresth / VSRD Technical & Non-Technical Journal Vol. 2 (10), 2011

that there should be harmony between the theme and the structure of a work of art. No study of thematic pattern alone can be useful unless we pay attention to the structural components of a work of art. Almost all the major critics on the form of fiction have underlined the correlation between theme and structure. David Cecil has observed that the novel, .......should have the formal qualities common to all good words of art, unity, pattern, harmony. But it must also seem probably in the sense that other fiction need not; it must give an illusion of life as it is on has been lived in the actual world. To achieve both these objects at the same time is hard. Real life, as we know it, is not distinguished by unity, pattern and harmony. On the contrary, it is a heterogeneous, disorderly, indeterminate affair full of loose ends & false starts and irrelevant details. How is the novelist to reconcile these two claims, how keep the delicate balance between the demands of life and art? This is his central, special problem as a craftsman (Cecil, 1967). It is evident, therefore, that any novel which is faithful in recording the impressions of the novelist will be artistically unsatisfactory if it is merely a collection of incidents and episodes. We can't accept it as an artistic piece of creation if there is not a sense of equilibrium and design is imparted to the arrangement of the impressions. The city in Cry, the Peacock is best presented by the minor characters such as Mrs. Lal, the prim lady at the party, the Sikh, the cabaret dancers, Gautama's mother and sister Nila. The protagonist Maya is presented by the novelist as a victim because she remains in the constant tension between the vain glory of the city and her tendency or desire to recreate the childhood world of innocence and purity. City plays a crucial role in the marital life of Maya and Gautama because it widens the gap between the two of them. Gautama is the busy lawyer who does not want to be interrupted by such trivial matters as the death of a pet dog. Maya feels the absence of Gautama in the house for long hours and whenever he comes, he gets busy with clients. Maya feels rejected and utterly lonely in the house: "His coldness, his coldness and incessant talk of cups of tea and philosophy in order not to hear me talk, and talking reveal myself. It is that-My loneliness in this house" (Desai, 1980). Nanda Kaul, the protagonist of Fire on the Mountain earnestly longs for loneliness. She wants to escape from her busy and hectic life in the city. She comes to Caringnano where, "she wanted no one and nothing else whatever else comes or happened here would be an unwelcome intrusion and distraction"(Desai, 1977). As the Vice-Chancellor's wife and the center of a large family Nanda spends a life of duties and responsibilities. She has been ordering about too many servants, entertaining too many guests and tending so many children. After the death of her husband, Nanda vacates the Vice-Chancellor's house and comes over to Kasauli. She identifies herself with the lonely pine tree. She likes the bareness, the emptiness of the garden of Carignano. This place is presented in this novel as a contrast to the life of the city. Nanda Kaul's dislike for the city life results in her escape to Carignano. In spite of its indifference, filth, dust, noise and crowd, the city becomes an inescapable part of the artists perceptions and vision. Desai portrays the present crisis of man and the enduring human conditions in the perspective of the urban metropolis. As no mans life is an island, man has to exist in society amidst all troubles, pain and suffering. The problem before him is how to exist and not how to exit. As Desai herself asserts,

Page 557 of 559

Amita Shresth / VSRD Technical & Non-Technical Journal Vol. 2 (10), 2011

Personally I do not think anybodys exile from society can solve any problem. I think basically the problem is how to exist in society and yet maintain ones individuality rather than suffering from a lack of society and a lack of belonging, that is why exile has never been my theme (Jain, 1979).

4. CONCLUSION
The novels of Desai reveal her unique world view but at the same time they also reveal the existing tendencies in modern fiction. Her novels are technical innovations and combine features of both novel and lyrical poetry. They shift our attention from mere characters and events to the formal or basic design of the novel. Anita Desai prefers the word pattern to plot when she says: "I prefer the word 'pattern' to 'plot' as it sounds-more natural and even better, if I dare use it, is Hopkins, word inscape while plot sounds arbitrary heavy handed and artificial, all that I wish to avoid" (Rama, 1990). The city has been the focus of all modern literature and much of the sensibility that has gone into the creation of great literary works. T.S. Eliot's Waste Land and James Joyce's Ulysses have been shaped by an acute awareness of the decadence of human values in the mechanical life of the modern metropolis. The great Indian novelists such as R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and Bhabani Bhattacharya look at Indian life from the perspective of its traditions and valves that are rooted essentially in villages and village folk. But Anita Desai, like her contemporaries Kamla Markandaya, Arun Joshi, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala and NayantaraSahgal, look at life with its essential rootlessness fostered by the growth of the metropolis. Desai's novels embody a realistic view of the city but at the same time she presents it as a metaphor of existence. The city becomes a symbol that reflects the existential dilemma of the tormented souls who are in constant quest of selfhood. The characters constantly feel the pressure of the urban milieu which provides a sense of vacuum and choose. At the same time this urban milieu intensifies the sense of despair and alienation in the individual. The greatness of a novel as an artistic creation can be judged by determining the extent to which its theme and the resultant structure are inevitable and interdependent. Thus this principle of vital unity between form and content may be taken ask the basis to measure the artistic worth of any work of art. The degree of their organic integration determines the degree of its artistic success. The point is made clear by the writers of the book Understanding Fiction in their observations, He (the novelist) knows that, when he sets out to write a story, he is really engaged in a process of exploration and experiment: he is exploring the nature of his characters and the meaning of their acts, and, too he is exploring his own feelings about them. He knows that any shift in the organisation of his story, or any variation in style, will alter, however slightly, the total response (Brooks & Warren, 1981).

5. REFERENCES
[1] Booth, Wayne C. (1961). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: Chicago University Press, p.164. [2] Brooks, Cleanth Jr. and Warren, Robert Penn. (1981). Style in Fiction. London: Longman, p.570. [3] Desai, Anita. (1978). Replies to the Questionnaire, Kakatiya Journal in English Studies. Vol.3, No.1, pp.1-6. [4] Cry, the Peacock. Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, p.24. [5] Fire on the Mountain. Delhi: Allied Publishers, p.3.

Page 558 of 559

Amita Shresth / VSRD Technical & Non-Technical Journal Vol. 2 (10), 2011

[6] David Cecil. (1967). Quoted in Approaches to the Novels. London: Oliver and Boyd, p.5. [7] Jain, Jasbir. (1987). Stairs to the Attic: The Novels of Anita Desai. Jaipur: Printwell, pp.47-51. [8] Anita Desai Interviewed, Rajasthan University Studies in English.XII, pp.61-69. [9] Leech, G.N., & Short, Michael H. (1981). Style in Fiction. London: Longman, pp.178-180. [10] Ram, Atma. (1990). An Interview with Anita Desai, WLWE, Vol.30, No.1.

Page 559 of 559