Exploration Of The Author’s Intention Of The Inheritance Of Loss

Kiran Desai is an American woman writer who was born on Sept.3rd,1971. Shewas born and raised in New Delhi, India until the age of fifteen years’ old. In NewDelhi, Kiran Desai learned in a convent school for fourteen years. Twelve monthslater, she received some western education in England, and finally she enrolledherself in several educational institutions in the United States. Her second novel TheInheritance of Loss won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics CircleFiction Prize in the same year of two thousand and six. Her mother Anita Desai isalso a fabulous woman short story writer who has been short-listed for the ManBooker Prize for as much as three times. Kiran Desai holds that her mom hasendowed herself a lot of precious heritance. When Kiran Desai was a little girl, hermother always talked about writing, characters, design of a novel. Thus shededicated her second novel the Inheritance of Loss to her beloved mom at the firstpage of the book. Kiran Desai’s the Inheritance of Loss is an extremely excellentnovel, which has been awarded the2006Booker Prize. It obtains the praise from theNew York Times, the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers and magazines. Whatis more, during the same year it obtained the U.S. National Book Critics Circle Prize.At present, there’re a growing number of critics, reviewers and researchersconducting researches from the perspective of examining the novel’s themes, such ascultural hybridity， poverty, and contradictions. However, analysis which isconducted from the perspective of Lacan’s post-psychoanalysis is rare, therefore theuse of psychoanalytic criticism will help readers to know the mental plight intowhich characters in the novel had fallen. The Inheritance of Loss is a novel whichcircles around characters’ travel experiences. Kiran Desai employs ramblingnarrative to describe the experiences of the characters in the novel, so readers need aclose reading of the text. Between cracks of figures’ imagination and the real world,the cook, Noni or other characters experienced varying degrees of awakening, i.e. anew understanding of self. In this paper Post-psychoanalysis theoretical analysis ismainly used to find out and to expound spiritual struggle of characters in the travel or in the confrontation of travel, and finally tries to explain the naming of Kiran’sintention. This article is divided into five parts: in the first chapter, a brief descriptionof the Inheritance of Loss and the author as well as research state at home andabroad will be provided. The second chapter describes the Lacan’spost-psychoanalytic theory. The third chapter analyzes the fictional characters. Thejudge was castrated in the symbolic world, and healed his own wounds by himself inOyo Chu. However, he vented his uneasiness and miseries on his close relatives.Such as， his parents, sisters, and himself. What’s more, his wife Nimi was the mostinnocent people among all the victims. Noni and her sister Lola lived a bountiful andwealthy life, they lived in their villa happily by symbols and imaginations. Till theywere raid by the insurrectionists did they came to epiphany that they were peoplewith no definite identification. Biju was influenced by his father the cook thateverything in the first world was much better than that of his homeland. The cookshared his American dream with the son Biju, and sent Biju to work in New York.But truth disappointed him, from the viewpoint of Biju, we can see problems ofpoverty, uncleanness and exploitation co-exist with the American dream. As anillegal immigrant, Biju lived a miserable “fugitive” life. In order to survive inAmerica, to identify himself with the symbol, Biju gave up his religious belief, andbecame a cook who did with holy cows. In chapter four, I conclude that due to thetolerance and love, people can recognize himself when one is confronted with theirown mental plight, and then get a certain degree of relief. Only by the help of reallove, tolerance and mutual understanding can we release pent-up desire, thus wehuman beings can infinitely move close to the truth and have a promising andharmonious future. And the novel also reflects Kiran Desai’s philosophical thinkingabout the formation of self, i.e. self is a process of continuous construction.