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twentieth century writers like Arunthathi Roy, Salman Rushdie and writers of Indian origin are
recognized globally who compete the native writers and have received the prestigious awards for
Literature. The one who had also enlisted her name in this list is Kiran Desai.
Kiran Desai is a promising Indian writer in English born in 1971 in India and most of all
Kiran Desai is the daughter of the renowned Indian English novelist, Anita Desai. Kiran was
educated in India, England and the United States. Her first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard,
was written in the year 1998 and it was remarked by Salman Rushdie as lush and intensely
imagined. The Times has also commented that Kiran Desai is the most appealing voice of the new
generation and also her book is fresh, funny and delicious which defies comparison with that of
any other novelist. The novel has won the 1998 Betty Trask Prize, serialized in The New Yorker
and included in the Vintage Book of Indian Writing. Kiran Desais second novel, The Inheritance
of Loss, won the Man Booker Prize in 2006 and was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize
for Fiction in 2007. Thus Kiran Desai is a well-recognized novelist all over the world. The paper
signifies the importance of nature and how it has undergone an ill change and hence it deals with
the ecocritical study of the novel Hullaballo in the Guava Orchard.
Introduction to Ecocriticism
Literature is the most comprehensive study of man which evokes response from experts
who create, appreciate and evaluate it. Literary criticism is the interpreting art where a critics
analyze and evaluate a work of art as it is defined by M P Sinha that literary criticism is a body of
principles that define literature and function as guidelines for the analysis and evaluation of literary
text. One of the prominent principles which was highlighted in the end of the twentieth century is
the ecocriticism which is the study of literature and environment from an interdisciplinary point of
view where all sciences come together to analyze the brainstorm possible solution for the
correction of the contemporary environmental situation.
Ecocriticism was officially heralded by the publication of two seminal works both
published in the mid-1990s. They are the Ecocriticism Reader, edited by Cheryl Glotfelty and
Harold Fromm, and Environmental Imagination by Lawrence Buell. Camino Gomides has defined
ecocriticism as the field of enquiry that analyses and promotes works of art which raise moral
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questions about human interactions with nature while also motivating audience to live within a
limit that will be binding over generations.
Ecocriticism is also known as ecopoetics, green studies and environmental literary
criticism. Ecocritics investigate the underlying ecological values and examine human perception
of wilderness and how it has changed throughout history. It highlights whether current
environmental issues are accurately represented or at least mentioned in popular culture and
modern literature.
William Rueckert was the first person to use the term ecocriticism. In 1978, Rueckert
published an essay titled Literature and Ecology; an experiment in Ecocriticism. He focused on
the application of ecology and ecological concepts to the study of literature {Reprinted on the
Ecocriticism Reader on p 107}. Meanwhile ecologically minded individuals and scholars
published progressive works of ecotheory and criticism which were concerned on moral struggle
rather than mere biological survival.
As Glotfelty noted in the Ecocriticism Reader one indication of the disunity of the early
efforts is that these critics rarely cited one anothers work: they didnt know that it existed Each
was a single voice howling in the wilderness. Nevertheless, Ecocriticism failed to emerge into a
coherent movement in the late 1970s and indeed it happened in the USA only during the 1990s. In
the mid-1980s, scholars began to work collectively to establish ecocriticism as a genre, primarily
through the work of Western Literary Association in which nature writing was revaluated. In 1990,
at the University of Niveda, Reno, Glotfelty became the first person to hold an academic position
as a professor of Literature and the Environment. It served as the intellectual home of Ecocriticism.
In the USA Ecocriticism is often associated with Association for the Study of Literature and
Environment, an organization with thousands of members in the US alone. From the late 1990s,
new branches of ASLE and affiliated organizations were started in the UK, Japan, Korea,
Australia, New Zealand, India (OSLE), Canada and Europe. In this paper the novel, Hullabaloo in
the Guava Orchard, is read in the ecocritical ground.
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that the orchard matched the imagination all his life. It filled his whole mind and he wondered if
he could get enough of it. Sampath thought:
This was the way of riches and this was a kings life, he thoughtand he ached to swallow
it whole, in one glorious mouthful that could become part of him forever. Oh, if he could
exchange his life for this luxury of stillness, to be able to stay with his face held towards
the afternoon like a sun flower and to learn all there was to know in the orchard: each small
insect crawling by: the smell of the earth thick beneath the grass; the bristling of leaves;
his way easy through the foliage; his tongue around every name. (51)
So at last Sampath believed that he was in the right place. Here Sampath love for nature is revealed
in an exotic way.
Sampaths new lovable world
Unexpectedly Sampath on the guava tree became the hermit on his tree top hermitage. He
was respected for his austerity and simple life and his words, nature and the atmosphere in the
orchard made him the Babe. But Sampaths father, Mr.Chawla, was commercializing his sons
popularity making his familys fortune. The reputation of Sampath grew until the monkeys arrived
to the orchard. When they arrived first, Sanpath turned their dirty games back to them: hooting,
howling and rolling his eyes and this made the monkeys get impressed identifying Sampath as
the nucleus if this bountiful community they had come upon(124). But things went upside down
when the monkeys developed an unquenchable interest for liquor which made them resurface their
old bazaar habits. As a result there arose a serious law and order problem in Shahkot of the
religious degree where there were two groups. One suggested that the monkeys should be removed
to save the Monkey Baba and the holy atmosphere of the place, the other group wished to save the
sacred animal. Whereas Sampath thought that all the fun, teasing and game would disappear in his
life if the monkeys were removed from the orchard. But a day was set to catch the monkeys and
send them to a far off place where it would not return and could not obtain any liquor.
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Conclusion
It is obvious that in the novel, Kiran Desai voices out the environmental issues through her
protagonist Sampath, who express his love for nature, his oneness with nature and towards the end
his empathy for the degradation of nature in the orchard. The novel also highlights the
irresponsibility of man towards nature who does not know the value of nature which has to be
preserved and treasured. It reflects that each species have an important role to play in maintaining
our ecosystem. It is a known fact that human activity is causing massive extinctions, inspire of the
increased efforts on conservation, it has not been enough. The climatic change in the Arctic region
is an evident of the rapid change in our environment which is threatening and quite dangerous to
all the species. The Ganges pollution is another instance for the irresponsibility towards our
responsibility in preserving our nature. Thus the ecocritical study of any work of art reflects the
need of the hour and implies the necessity to take essential steps to preserve the nature in order to
ensure the beings survival and betterment.
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References
1. Barry, Peter. The Beginning of theories. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.
2. Desai, Kiran. Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. London: Faber and Faber, 1999.
3. Iyengar, K.R. Srinivas. Indian writing in English. Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1972.
4. Srinivasan, K.S. The Ethos of Indian Literature: A Study of its Romantic Tradition.
Newdelhi: Chanakya Publications, 1985.
5. Verghesam, C.Paul. Essays on Indian Writing in English. New Delhi: N.V. Publications,
1975.
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