THEME ANALYSIS IN ANITA DESAI “PIGEONS AT DAYBREAK “ PAPER

Final Test Assignment of Survey Modern British
By:
Dedi Suhendar
204102322

A. Background of Problem
Literary work is the imaginative writing in the sense of fiction writing that is literally true (Eagleton, 1997:1) argues in this critic. Nevertheless, subsequently Eagleton states if literature is creative or imaginative writing, does this imply that history, philosophy and natural science are uncreative and unimaginative. This question remarkably turning him out to the statement as Roman Jacobson did.
Henceforth, literature has a limitation to be scrutinized and analyzed. Since the abstractable meaning, which are held by literature, its specified by it self and differ from ordinary language itself as a peculiar way of communication. Literature has it genre consist of there mainstream poetry, fiction, and drama as Robert DiYanni said , (2004:XXXVIII) “Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry and drama examines literature as a significant reflection of life and an imaginative extension of its possibilities; it emphasizes the reading of literature as an active enterprise involving thought and invoking feeling”. The writer then will focus on the fiction actually theme of story devices concerning the paper purposes.
We read stories largely for the emotional and intellectual pleasure they bring us, the pleasure of being surprised or disturbed by an unexpected turn of events or of being satisfied as our expectation are met. Well-told stories involve us emotionally in the live of their character. They provide us with pleasure of recognition in the world they portray and in the behavior of the character who inhabit them. According to J.B. Gordon and Karen Kueher, (1999:VI) “Stories can simultaneously convey experiences both individual and universal. Universal experiences are those that would be familiar to people from any period of time and in any country. They include being part of family, growing up, finding one’s place in the world, falling in love, overcoming obstacles, and/or accepting success or failure”.
The word theme denotes the central idea of serious fictional works such as novels, plays, poem, or short stories. Theme is an author’s insight or general observation about human nature or human condition that is conveyed through character, plot, and imagery.
Support on the previous statement, the writer decides to analyze the elements of the story theme, then this paper entitled Theme Analysis in Anita Desai “Pigeons at Daybreak “.
B. Formulation of Problem
Base on the background above, appear some of problem that can be formulated through research questions as follow:
1. What the biography of Anita Desai
2. How the summary of Pigeons at Daybreak story?
3. What The Theme in Anita Desai “Pigeons at Daybreak”?
C. Analysis
1. Biography of Anita Desai
Born to a German mother and an Indian father on June 24, 1937, Anita Desai spent much of her life in New Delhi. Growing up she spoke German at home and Hindi to friends and neighbors. She first learned English when she went to school. It was the language in which she first learned to read and write, and so it became her literary language. When asked why English remains her literary language, she said, "I think it had a tremendous effect that the first thing you saw written and the first thing you ever read was English. It seemed to me the language of books. I just went on writing it because I always wanted to belong to this world of books".
Desai received a BA in English Literature and graduated with honors from the University of Delhi. She started publishing her work shortly after her marriage to Ashrin Desai on December 13, 1958. Desai is part of a new literary tradition of Indian writing in English which dates back only to the '30s or '40s. She explains that this is because "at one time all literature was recited rather than read and that remains the tradition in India. It is still rather a strange act to buy a book and read it, an unusual thing to do" (CLC). Her new style of writing is also different from that of many Indian writers, as it is much less conservative than Indian literature has been in the past. For these reasons, she says, she is not widely read in India, mainly in Indian universities if at all. Throughout her novels, children's books, and short stories, Desai focuses on personal struggles and problems of contemporary life that her Indian characters must cope with. She maintains that her primary goal is to discover "the truth that is nine-tenths of the iceberg that lies submerged beneath the one-tenth visible portion we call Reality". She portrays the cultural and social changes that India has undergone as she focuses on the incredible power of family and society and the relationships between family members, paying close attention to the trials of women suppressed by Indian society.
Desai is praised for her broad understanding on intellectual issues, and for her ability to portray her country so vividly with the way the eastern and western cultures have blended there. She has received numerous awards, including the 1978 National Academy of Letters Award for Fire on the Mountain, the first of her novels to be brought to the United States. The story is of a remote, isolated woman and her equally withdrawn great-granddaughter as they are forced together in hills surrounded by violence and fire. In 1983 she was awarded the Guardian Prize for Children's Fiction for The Village by the Sea, an adventurous fairy tale about a young boy living in a small fishing village in India. She was awarded the Literary Lion Award in 1993, and has also been named Helen Cam Visiting fellow, Ashby fellow, and honorary fellow of the University of Cambridge. In addition to her writing, Desai has raised four children: Rahul, Tani, Arjun, and Kiran. She has been a member of the Advisory Board for English, and of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She has also worked as an educator at colleges including Mt. Holyoke, Smith, and Girton College at Cambridge University.
2. Summary of “Pigeons at Daybreak” by Anita Desai
In the short story of pigeons at daybreak I read a story about character, who is Mr. Basu has been suffering for a number of years with a multitude of physical and emotional problems that often plague the asthma, depression, and failing eyesight. His wife, Otima, is the loving, understanding, but totally exhausted caregiver. As the story proceeds, Otima reads aloud from the newspaper that there will be a planned power outage that night. Basu responds with an asthmatic attack, fearing the hot night to come with no electric fan to move the air. Otima decides they will sleep outside, up on the terrace.
Basu is no more comfortable on the roof and the night is spent in agony. At one point, he remembers bringing his grandson up to see the collectors pigeons on the neighbor's rooftops . This memory fills him with emotion. Remembering the sense of wonder that the boy had is a wonderful feeling but Basu is also saddened by the passage of time. Still unable to sleep, his discomfort too much, Basu says his grandson's name over and over to himself, like a prayer or mantra. At daybreak, Otima goes downstairs to get Basu some iced water and discovers the electricity is back on. She runs back up to the terrace to help him down so he can sleep in his own bed for a while. He refuses saying it is cooler up there now and tells her to leave him alone
The story ends with him laying "flat and still, gazing up, his mouth hanging open" and the pigeons hurtling upwards against the "dome of the sky, opalescent, sunlit, like small pearls". They turn into crystals, then prisms of light, then disappear into "the soft, deep blue of the morning."
3. The Theme in Anita Desai “Pigeons at Daybreak”
The theme was a psychology suffering’s husband kept by his wife most loyalty even in the world. Pigeon at daybreak is a story of the valetudinarian psychology of Mr. Basu he has been suffering from the ailment of asthma for so long. His wife, Otima Basu. Is highly devoted and sincere. Otima has to attend to all real and imagined problem of her husband in addition to all her tiring daily domestic chores. A very committed and obedient lady as Otima is, she never harbors any grudge or any complain against her husband. On receiving the information that there would be an electric breakdown the whole night. She tends him well and when her husband’s breathing problem increase, she carries him to the roof-top, where Mr. Basu is scared of his quarrelsome neighbor. Throughout the night, Otima massages Basus’s body and there is some cool breeze also. This brings Basu’s some respite. Pigeons fly at the daybreak. And the flight of the pigeons also bring a temporary respite for Mr. Basu “then, with a swirl and further of feather, a folk of pigeon hurled upward and speared out against the dome of the sky-opalescent, sunlit, like small pearls (…), then they disappeared into the soft. Deep blue of the morning (P.228).
In fact, Otima knows the psychology of her husband well, even the slightest occasion enhances her husband’s problems to the extent that Otima find it extremely difficult to deal with these weak moment of her husband. “She knew how rapidly he would advance from imagined breathlessness into the first frightening stage of a full-blown attack of asthma” (P.223)
D. Conclusion
Precisely, this short story is a psychological story dealing with the imagined problem of an asthmatic patient like Mr. Buse. This story also tells how a patients wife like Otima tends her husband well. Pigeons figure in the story as emblems of peace and liberation. At the time of daybreak, the pigeons like other bird flutter in the air feeling free liberated and happy. Mr. Basu usually sleeps at the daybreak getting a temporary respite from the night’s suffocating air and physical groaning. Dwelling upon a very commonplace life situation, Anita has raised a very serious question of an honorable existence being buffeted by such a predicament as that of Othima.
E. Reference

Anita Desai. 1978. Game at Twilight and Other Stories. Penguins. London.

Diyanni, Robert. 2004. Literature; Approaches to Fiction, poetry, and Drama. McGraw-Hill Company, New York.

Eagleton, Terry. 1983. Literary Theory, an Introduction. Basil Blackwell Publisher Limited. England.

Frye Northop, 1973. Anatomy of Criticism, Princeton University Press. America

J.B. Gordon, Karen Kuehner.1999. FICTION The Element of The Short Story. McGraw-Hill Company. USA.

Griffithsm, Sian. ed. 1996. Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Forty Women Whose Ideas Shape the Modern World. Manchester: Manchester University Press,