ALIENATION AND ASPIRATION INANITA DESAI’S VOICES IN THE CITY

International Journal of Computer Science (IJCS) Published by SK Research Group of Companies (SKRGC)

Abstract

Anita Desai’s second novel Voices the City_ (1965), is a landmark text in Indian English literature that explores the psychological and social dislocation of the post-independence middle class in Calcutta. Through the lives of three siblings — Nirode, Monisha, and Amla Desai articulates two interlocking conditions of modern urban existence: alienation and aspiration. This paper argues that the city functions not merely as a setting but as an active force that fractures identity, breeds existential loneliness, and simultaneously fuels desperate dreams of meaning, art, and escape. Using existential and postcolonial frameworks, the study examines how Desai represents alienation as spiritual, marital, artistic, and linguistic, while aspiration manifests as a yearning for transcendence, authenticity, and creative fulfillment. Ultimately, the novel presents aspiration not as a remedy for alienation but as its twin, born from the same urban despair. Desai’s lyrical prose and interior monologue reveal a city that both silences and compels its inhabitants to speak.

References

1. Desai, Anita. _Voices in the City_. London: Peter Owen, 1965. Print. 
2. Iyengar, K.R. Srinivasa. _Indian Writing in English_. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1985. Print. 
3. Mukherjee, Meenakshi. _The Twice Born Fiction_. New Delhi: Heinemann, 1971. Print. 
4. Naik, M.K. _A History of Indian English Literature_. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1982. Print. 
5. Sartre, Jean-Paul. _Being and Nothingness_. Trans. Hazel Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956. Print.

Keywords

Anita Desai, voices in the City, Alienation, Aspiration, Indian English Fiction, Urban Modernity, Calcutta, Existentialism, Postcolonial Literature.