Projection of Orietnalistic Ethos in Bryers’sThe Prayer of the Bone

Abstract

The major thrust of this research is to expose the plenty of orientalistic stereotypes are commonly found in Paul Bryers’s novel, The Prayer of the Bone. This research explores the workings of these mechanisms through a model of cultural integration in which preferences and behaviors vary continuously. It identifies a broad set of conditions under which cross-cultural contacts promote cultural hybridization. The analysis suggests that policies to support social integration serve to homogenize preferences across communities. It aims at undermining a key objective of multiculturalism and also shows that communities benefit from having other communities adjust their behaviors. This research is concerned with the portrayal of native Indian people in the novel The Prayer of the Bone by Paul Bryer, who has projected his orientalistic attitude towards Japan and Japanese people in this novel. Bryer portrays the troubled relation between the red Indians and American whites. The entire regional culture and geography of Red Indian appears to be an exotic land caught in the turmoil and tension created by the conflicting interest of various western countries. The zone of Red Indians looms as the defeated, sterile, surreal and static country. Most of the Indian youths are represented as dull, impulsive, passive and unresponsive towards the state of social humiliation and social transition of their country .Their communal pride is humbled to dust. They act illogically and irrationally. They act as though their lives have lost direction and destination. So, his portrayal of the culture of Red Indians is entirely problematical.