An Analysis Of Kiran Desai's The Inheritance Of Loss From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

Kiran Desai is a contemporary Indian American writer.The Inheritance of Loss is her second book,written for seven years and first published in 2006 and has won a number of awards.The novel revolves around the dilemmas that those characters had been trapped in,including the clash of cultures,the relationships between local Indians and those westernized Indians,the cultural gap between the dominant and the regional cultures and conflicts between Indian and western cultures and it covers the international issues like identity crisis,cultural clash,economic inequality,and problem of immigrants.The novel exposes many of the problems that Indians encounter when facing a western culture.This thesis attempts to interpret the cultural identity issues from the perspective of ethical literary criticism and explores the ethical value as well as the artistic value of the work.On the basis of ethical literary criticism,this thesis seeks to interpret the ethical environments,ethical identity crisis,ethical conflicts and final ethical choices the characters got involved in five chapters.In the first chapter,the thesis gives a brief introduction to Kiran Desai and The Inheritance of Loss.There are also a general review of the research on The Inheritance of Loss both at home and abroad and the development of ethical literary criticism as well.In the second chapter,it comes out to investigate three ethical environment that Biju,the judge,Gyan and Sai have been set in,including: post-colonialism,the social ethical environment of the whole story;hybridity of different cultures as its cultural ethical environment and the alienated family relationships as its family ethical environment.In the third chapter,this thesis first endeavors to interpret and explore the changes of identities and identity crisis that the four characters respectively encountered in background of the post-colonialism,multicultural and hybrid world;second it analyzes the ethical conflicts the character got entangledin.In the fourth chapter,this paper attempts to expound the awakening and returning of the four characters' ethical consciousness after encountering the conflicts between two cultures and their final ethical choices: Biju returned to India,the judge chose to stick to the western customs and the relationship between Gyan abd Sai ended.The thesis finally in the fifth chapter concludes that the novel shows Desai's ethical concern and sympathy for the destinies of Indians who confront western cultures.In The Inheritance of Loss,by depicting ethical phenomena in immigrating life,Desai delivers her ethical values,which is the real charm of the novel as well as its social significance.