Lost Journey Through Kiran·Desai's The Inheritance Of Loss

This article will attempt to explore the Indian woman writer Kiran Desai's Man Booker Prize award-winning work The Inheritance of Loss through detailed reading and theoretical analysis of the text.Based on this,we will further analyze the Indians' “Loss” during their“broken journey” among which they are confronted with impacts from both post-colonialism and globalization.Through the description of the two generations of the protagonists' experience of twists and turns,Jemubhai Popatlal Patel and his cook's son Biju,one had been studying in London,England and the other is now illegally working in New York,America,and with the narrative space's jumping between three continents including Asia,Europe and America,the whole story showed two generations of Indians' “broken journeys” and “Loss” when seeking for a "New World" far away from their home.And during these rough journeys,they have experienced various compromise and helplessness which could both date back to their colonial history and also be inherited to the era of globalization,multiculturalism.This novel is based on some related historical history and the narrative space of the text naturally switches between the third world and the developed countries.Desai's own experience of traveling in foreign countries is also seen in the whole story.Through detailed reading of the text,we can feel several protagonists' “Loss” twitted in reality and their spiritual world as well--Sai has been caught in a hopeless affection which caused her too much confusion and could not find a way out;Gyan joined the national liberation movement and still feels lost;the judge Jemubhai Popatlal Patel prefers to live in his fantasy world of the past memories and refuses to accept the reality,the poor and humble cook supports himself with the hope that his son Biju will realize their “American Dream” and make his life better while his son is living in the foreign land and desperately pursing a hopeless success;their neighbors Laura and her sister find it difficult to maintain a quiet life here--"Loss" is the most obvious symbol of their real life.In the characterization of the characters,Desai put together the old and the young,people who stay in theirown country and who are traveling abroad,one's personal life and the social environment.These ordinary people live together in their "Loss" which has illustrated how profound and extensive impact the British colonial rule had made on the Indians' social life.From the British colonial period to the post-colonial and globalization period,the Indians who lived between the post-colonial reality and global multiculturalism,has experienced their harsh survival,pursuit and giving up,and even their human nature which has been ruthlessly distorted and devoured.For this diffusing "Loss" phenomenon,we can see and feel it if we follow the protagonists' "lost" journeys in the book.