Language Component and Shift in Narratives in Upamanyu Chatterjee’s The Last Burden

Abstract

Upamanyu Chatterjee is a powerful emergent voice in Indian postcolonial literature. He has written a handful of short stories and novels. His second novel, The Last Burden, appeared in 1993 which depicts familial relationships in an Indian middle class family at the end of the twentieth century. In the novel, he traces the lives of different people constituting a joint family, superbly portraying their emotions, needs, desires and frustrations. The novel portrays the financial, social and emotional issues that make people favour a nuclear family in contrast to a joint family. The novelist employs somewhat strong language but definitely makes the readers aware of the actual frictions that exist within the joint family structure. It elegantly portrays the decisions and sacrifices made by different people in a family and the frictions and the frustrations thereby. It also portrays the struggle of the newer generation in order to move into a nuclear family structure from a strictly hierarchical joint family structure where even the elders have an even more elderly person who dictates the terms, having two fold structure of patriarchy of the Indian society, of the State and family. The novel tells about Jamun, a work less young man and his old father, Shyamanand and, his dying mother, Urmila. The novel opens at the death bed of Urmila and takes us through the story of this middle-class family. The emotions and seriousness bind the readers to the story and keep him engrossed till he is through it. The paper would like to explore about the narrative technique and style of the novel The Last Burden.