Cultural Isolation as Depicted in Anita Desai's Bye-Bye Blackbird

Abstract

Anita Desai’s Bye-Bye Blackbird,published in 1971, is a story mainly concerned with cross cultural human relationships. Dev and Aditand Sarah the British wife of Aditare the three major characters representing two sections of life. Adit, has ankinship to the western ways of life, especially, England, while Dev living in England, shows his revulsion towards the ways of European life and particularly of England. Sarah, Adit’sEnglish wife, even though Western and first world by birth, is portrayed by Desai as being weak, meek and docile.Adit, loves and longs to live in England but Dev loves India, while Sarah is caught in-between her natural self and her willing adoption of the foreign ways of life. The title of the novel refers to Adit’s final farewell to Asian immigrants in England when he leaves England to India for good. Since their background is rooted in the class society, which still exists in India and Hinduism in particular, there is an intense struggle; cultural conflict, isolation, immigration, exile etc. are common in twentieth century literature. Anita Desai has vividly depicted the predicament of expats and their life in a foreign country.