European Journal of English Language and Literature Studies

Vol.3, No.5, pp.24-30, October 2015

___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK (www.eajournals.org)
IMAGERY AS A CHARACTER DELINEATION TECHNIQUE FOR THE
ANALYSIS OF LOSS OF IDENTITY IN DESAI’S “CLEAR LIGHT OF DAY”
Saima Riaz
M.Phil Candidate
University of Sargodha, Women Campus, Faisalabad, Pakistan.

Anila Jamil
Lecturer in English Literature
University of Sargodha, Women Campus, Faisalabad, Pakistan.

ABSTRACT: Desai is famous for creating an intense atmosphere in her novels. Being an
Indian Feminist writer, her novels deeply reflect the social and cultural background of Indian
society. She, being a literary writer, has mastered in delineating various techniques in her
novels that distinguish her from her contemporary female writers in literary world. As an
eminent figure in the world of Literature, she has employed similes and metaphors in order to
find out loss of identity issues in postcolonial era. This paper aims to draw attention of the
readers to the hidden underpinnings in her novels.

KEYWORDS: Colonialism, Identity Crisis, Imagination, Postcolonial

INTRODUCTION
Post-colonialism is an interdisciplinary movement that endeavors to reform the panorama of
those colonized countries. While its point of exodus was to examine the lost identities and
languages else it turned out to be a rich and multilateral interdisciplinary area under which one
can investigate into many concepts and issues with new approaches and views. The traces of
colonialism can still be observed in the postcolonial period, for colonialism opened a big wound
in the psychology, culture and identity of the once colonized people. The meeting and mixing
of completely different cultures in the colonial period led to a great identity crisis and
fragmentation in the postcolonial age during which culture is seen as a battleground where
postcolonial indigenous and colonizer identities all the time to fight each other. Thus, the major
themes in the works written in the postcolonial period have been the fragmentation and identity
crisis experienced by the once colonized peoples and the important impacts of colonialism on
the indigenous.

Desai is one of the world famous and India’s best modern contemporary female novelist, short
story writer and screen writer. She has enriched Indian fictional world with her significant
literary outputs. She is, originally an Indian citizen, migrated to America. She can be
considered to be an emigrant writer of an Indian origin. She has written for both adults and
children. She has won Winifred Holy Prize from the Royal Society for Fire on the Mountain
[1997] and the Guardian Prize for children. Her novels are based on the texture of a rich and
splendid medley of images which is functional rather than decorative. Her images are literal,
metaphorical and frequently symbolic. Clear Light of Day was first published in 1980. The
novel deals with the aftermath of what happened in India during the partition in 1947, when
British India became independent and was divided into Pakistan and India. Through families

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Vol.3, No.5, pp.24-30, October 2015
___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK (www.eajournals.org)
of varying types of cultural heritage the novel shows us some of the consequences the partition
had for the nation as well as its impact on a personal level.
In Clear Light of Day Desai portrays her characters through a range of symbols and figures.
The characters of the novel have to find a way to come to terms with themselves on a personal
level, and India needs to find its own path in order to move on. The proposed work will analyze
the exploration of character, emotions and their inner desires through imagery.

METHODOLOGICAL AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

This research is qualitative and descriptive. Descriptive research always bases its research on
human personal experience. The main characteristic of this research is to assist the readers to
work more authentically and constructively.
Cudden demonstrates the term imagery in his book the Penguin Dictionary, as representation
of thoughts and objects. “The term image and imagery have many connotations and meanings.
Imagery as a general term converses the use of language to represent objects, actions, feelings
thoughts, ideas and state of mind” (p.134). Imagery is the very vast term. It is in fact the mental
images that approach the writers’ mind, senses and concepts. Golding expresses the term in his
own words as, “Images are pictures that can be in the form of simple similes, metaphors, which
allow us to better imagine and incidents or scene by drawing on our experience” (Golding,
1954, p.70).

LITERATURE REVIEW
Like criticism on other contemporary writers, there is so much written on Desai has well. She
has been appreciated for her extraordinary use of words, symbols and images. Various critiques
have explored her style so deeply and sincerely. Shamsi, a Pakistani novelist, highlights Desai’s
use of imagery in her novel ‘Clear Light of Day’. Her portrayal of imagery and symbolism
marked her as a distinguished female writer in the English Literary world. According to her,
“The koels began to call before daylight. Their voices rang out from the dark trees like an
arrangement of bells, calling and echoing each other’s’ calls, mocking and enticing each other
into ever high and shriller calls” (Shamsi, year, p.).

Rao is a writer and teacher of literature and “one of Indian’s leading gay-rights activists. He
works as a professor and head of English Department at the University of Pune. He is of the
view, “Each novel of Mrs. Desai is a masterpiece of technical skill. In Clear Light of Day Desai
portrays her characters through various uses of symbols and images, and the language is often
very poetic. Her protagonists ‘associate their emotions and feelings with the buds of flower,
petals, birds, animals and insects around them” (Reference).
Sharma expresses his words for her in a very positive manner. For him, her writings present a
new world of new experiences and times. “Desai is a writer who does not believe in weaving
the plots of her novel merely on a figment of imagination. As one delves in the world of Desai,
one feels that though a work of fiction, her creations are grounded in lived experiences that
humans often come across”.

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___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK (www.eajournals.org)
Larry is an American Journalist who was a South American bureau chief for The New York
Times. He now writes about cultural topics. He stated that In Clear Light of Day there is very
little “plot”, and useful references in terms of genre would be to Virginia Woolf, William
Faulkner or Marcel Proust, as Desai explores the effects of history on individual characters, the
interaction between past and present, and the workings of memory.
The crumbling, all but abandoned manor house as symbol of a social order in distress: the
English may have invented that notion, but their former colonial subjects in India have also
proved adept at employing it as a literary device. In the three novellas that make up “The Artist
of Disappearance,” Anita Desai uses it twice, in differing circumstances and locations, but to
the same convincing and plaintive effect. (Rohter, 2012)

Analysis
Desai’s female characters are different in their nature and approach towards life. They have
clashes in their relationships because of ups and downs in their families. Some of the female
characters in Desai’s novel Clear light of Day keep themselves busy in their own life and some
are deprived of the true colours of life. If especially, talk about female characters, they get the
attention of the readers because they belong to middle class society and are innocent in their
nature.
In Clear Light of Day, Desai has wonderfully portrayed the lives of woman and how they have
struggled for their independent existence. She has used various images in this novel to portray
the inner self of every character like the character of Tara, the elder sister of Bim, who belongs
to Das family. They are sisters but actually opposite to one another. The narrator highlights
Bim and Tara’s past experiences and co-ordinate it with their present. In the novel, women
characters like Tara moves from one area of cruelty to another, and some characters like Bim
have to make adjustment to their own value. “Tara in her elegant pale blue nylon nightgown
and elegant slippers and Bim in a curious shapeless hand-made garment, Tara could see she
had fashioned out of an old cotton sari by sewing it up at both sides”(Desai, 1980, p.10).
Desai presents the polarities of personalities through images of sound and silence. The despair
and isolation of Bim is projected through the image of mosquito. Tara and Bakul and behind
them the Misras, and somewhere in the distance, Raja and Benazir, only to torment her and
mosquito- like sip her blood------ now when they were fall, they rose in swarms, humming
away, turning their backs upon her.(Desai,1980,p.33-50). Like Snail, Bakul's life moves slowly
and without any gradual change in her circumstances. Desai explores the depth of Tara’s
character through the use of insect imagery. Snail moves like a tortoise. It works slowly and
hardly shows any vigilance in activities. Snail takes a lot of time in reaching to its destination,
in the same way Tara takes a long time in reaching to her desire life.

The image of sun that instead of providing inspiration and zeal for existence to Tara, shuts her
out from the generals of life and isolates her. She drops the window and remains isolated from
its ghostly sight.
Bim the eldest daughter, in the family – is the main female protagonist in the novel. The
evaluation of Bim with other women character in the novel, like Tara or Aunt Mira, represents
a subversion of the traditional model of women. She is portrayed as assertive, firm and insistent
on ruling others rather than to be ruled.

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___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK (www.eajournals.org)
With the death of her parents and her brother Raja’s tuberculosis, and the widowed aunt Mira-
masi’s continuing retreat into alcoholism, Bim formally take over the charge of the Das
household. Instead of the closely bonded family, each individual suffers his or her own
misfortunes; the family threatens to fall apart, and Bim has to perform the role of the unifier or
integrator. Thus, the narrative of an individual family resounds with the larger pressure and
counter-pressures of Indian nation at large. However, Bim’s dream having united family is
shattered during the partition war in 1947, and the meta-narrative of the nation is linked to the
mini-narrative of the family in another way the war that results in the separation of two nation
states runs parallel to the separation of Bim from Raja.
Bim’s sisterly love towards Raja and her act of taking up the duties of looking after her family
member imply that family and the house they live in mean a lot to her. Her acts of self-
determination and looking after the family exert contrary pressures and make her an ambiguous
character because of the patterns of duality. This dualistic pattern also suggests that no matter
how independent a woman wants to be in Indian society, she can ever leave aside or separate
herself completely from the traditional duties expected of her. In her adulthood, after Raja and
Tara have left her, she remains in the house with only Baba, her half-witted, brother to
accompany her.
She suffers more suppression than oppression. This is the result of the distance her brother and
sister keep from her as it constitutes the paradox which disturbs her the most. As they have left
and abandoned her alone in the old house, she can have no one to talk to or to share her
sufferings of being isolated. With the arrival of Tara in the very first section of the novel, she
finally has a chance to release her anger by being mean and sarcastic to Tara. On one occasion
Bim teases Tara for not wanting to return to the life they used to have in the past and says,

This comment reflects Bim’s thought of not having any change or meaningful existence. Bim
is notable to escape physically from the old house, she can still past the existential test by
attaining some spiritual enlightenment. As time goes on, she knows the family bond has been
destroyed and the family members are all apart, yet the memories are still embedded in the old
house.
Bim opts for singlehood, established an identity for herself as a teacher; manages her household
activities as well as looks after her retarded brother Baba, the seclusion into home and hearts,
the caressing of husband, the nurturing of children are all beyond Bim’s imagination. The
above analysis of the central character of the narrative , i.e., Bim ( in relation to the other major
characters of the novel)certainly highlights the inter-play of duality of illusion and reality and
the same finds its trace on the perspective of the major characters of the novel. The major
characters of the narrative may be tagged as the representing the conflicting voices which
counter-point and cross counter-point each other resulting in the creation of the dualistic pattern
of existence which poses a great challenge with respect to achieving a negotiated a sense of
being in the universe. Voice is presented in the novel as an inescapably intertextual device that
foregrounds the composition of subjectivity. The dynamics of lack and desire certainly force
the characters to search for the gratification of their desires although the quoted search result
in another search although the main protagonist of the novel is able to negotiate this dualistic
matrix at the end of the novel. The spatial journey ends at the point which may be referred as
the ‘initial ‘point- the point of the primary self. The quest of life and peace, for selfhood is a
fundamental human need; the search is the goal of life. This kind of realization can be seen in
the evolution of Bim towards the end of narrative wherein all the dualistic opposition collapses

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Vol.3, No.5, pp.24-30, October 2015
___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK (www.eajournals.org)
and an existential synthesis takes place. The classical raga of the old master produces the
moment of illumination of Bim after which the ‘transcendence’ happens as the feels,
Her own house and its particular history linked and contained her as well as her whole family
with all their separate histories and experiences-not binding them with in some dead and airless
cell but giving them the soil in which to send down their roots, and food to make them grow
and spread, reach out to new experiences and new lives, but always drawing from the same
soil. That soil contained all time, past and future, in it (Desai, 1980, p.182).
This is how Bim is able to see the ‘clear light of day’ wherein the contradiction is harmonized
out of which a rejuvenated self emerges celebrating existence. We may believe that Bim who
had sacrificed her ambition to be “dutiful’’ is a tragic figure in that she does not comprehend
her own children, are all beyond Bim’s imagination. This lack of comprehension of her
potential and the sacrifices she has made; may also be seen as an inability to reach at ‘Clear
light of day’. Bim’s relationship with the male character ‘Raja ‘also holds an important factor.
Though Raja is her only male companion in her childhood and adolescence, she still shows her
individuality by not conforming to all her brother’s way of thinking. Raja is a man of senses
and emotion and in this manner a carrier of confrontation signifying the dualistic pattering of
the narrative .one instance is when Raja brings her romantic fiction but she feels that she wants
‘something different facts, history, chronology’. Though she is accused by Raja of not having
any imagination, the counter-point is very subtle conveying strong dualistic weaving. She
challenges Raja’s assumption that romantic fiction is the appropriate reading matter for women,
or is what young women like to read. Once again , Bim is able to show herself –determination
by choosing what she likes, and defies her brother’s conventional male perspective on her
though at first she accepts, but such acceptance later turns to rejection when Raja abandons
her and leaves the house.
Bim is eventually thrown out from the Raja’s domain of recognition. Her encounter with Bakul
and Dr. Biswas shows her individualism.
Her reason for the return to her domestic home is to seek a sense of continuity. However, the
way she expresses this desire sounds forced, as if what she says represents what Bakul wants
rather than her own thoughts. This shows that after marriage she has determination and is like
an object molded by her husband. Her spatial movement, like all her travels, is note
individualistic but accompanied by her husband, even her from her domestic home is only the
result of her marriage. Hence we cannot say that she has attained liberation at all from such
physical movement away from her domestic home to her marital home in America. Her
experiences are suppressed and no one ever pays attention to her. She confesses that her
marriage to Bakul is a means to escape from all the frustrations she experienced and saw in the
old house as a child. After getting married, it seems that she can physically escapes from this
existential decay and sees the ‘clear light of day’, but still we can see that mentally she cannot
free herself from all the past memories like seeing her father injecting her mother and thinking
he is murdering her, or feeling guilty about leaving Bim when her sister is in need of help.
Besides, the escape from her childhood house to her marital home abroad only represent her
movement from one type of oppression to another. In her childhood house, she is ignored by
her siblings; in her husband’s domain, he treated her like an object to mould her at his will.
There is really no true escape for her.
As an adult, coming back to India has matured her mentally and she seems able to see things
objectively. She is able to study Bim more carefully and knows that her sister is not contented

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___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK (www.eajournals.org)
with her life. She realized that what she used to think of Bim as a child is no longer true. Bim
is no longer competent and capable of managing the house. She even blames her for having no
taste of her own, no likings that made her wish to sweep the old house is of all its rubbish and
place in it things of her own choice’. This interior monologue shows that Tara is disappointed
to see the old house remaining motionless while she appears to have changed so much herself.
Her physical movement seems to arouse in her a new perspective of seeing things. However,
she has not realized that her perspective of seeing the old house and judging Bim is just
superficial. The old house has certainly changed with the death of Mira-Masi and the arrival of
Raja and Tara.
Through her stay in the house in Delhi, we know about her relationship with her husband. Most
of the time, we can see her husband is not able to understand her. He wants Tara to live a life
according to his own will and wants to instill the qualities she lacks, like decision making and
firmness. Therefore in her husband’s domain, she feels constrained tired and powerless. The
house has also aroused in her the strength to refuse her husband’s demand. Though she feels
anguished and impatient at the sight of old habits and things still kept in the house, the place
reminds her of the pleasure that she is no longer able to have under her husband’s control.

Tara really has no heroes and she lacks the idealistic mind of set shared by Raj and Bim which
derives them to catch the heroic models. Much more down to earth unimpressed by lofty goals,
as a child she wants simply to grow up to be a mother. As aunt Mira assumes Tara, “There,
there, you ‘ll see you grow up to be exactly what you want to be , and I very much doubt if
Bim and Raja will be what they say they will be”. The passage continues, “The consoled Tara
entirely and turned out to be true as well” (Desai, 1980,p.112).

CONCLUSION
After completing this paper, I concluded that Desai has a great capability to show imagery in
her novel Clear Light of day. She uses symbolism in a very fine way and she personifies each
character very beautifully. Desai has very beautifully shown the three stages of life, childhood,
adulthood, and old age. Her imagery is always in character which suits the lone plight of her
characters. Her novels are based on the texture of a rich and splendid medley of images which
is functional rather than decorative. Her images are literal, metaphorical and frequently
symbolic.

REFERENCES
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Desai, (2001) , Clear Light of Day, Vintage Books, London.
Desai, Anita, (1999) Fire on the Mountain, Vintage Books, London.
Desai, Anita,(1991) Peacock Garden.
Desai, Anita,(2000) Diamond Dust .
Desai, A. . “The Indian Writer’s Problems”, Language Forum, Vol-7, Nos.1-4,.p 226.
Frost, Robert ,Selected poems

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___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK (www.eajournals.org)
Golding, William,(1970) Lord Of Flies.
Kim (2011). "Authors get bold as gay literature picks up in India". The Times of India.
Rohter, L (2004). "Brazilian Leader's Tippling Becomes National Concern". New York Times.
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Usha (1988), Down The Dark Corridors, the Novels of Anita Desai. New Delhi:Prestige.

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