Focalizer’s Prejudice towards Nepalese-Indian People in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss: A Study of Counter Focalization

Abstract

In The Inheritance of Loss the very principle of the narrative introduces multiple characters as focalizers and also keeps a distance between limited heterodigetic narrator. As the multiple focalizer in the novel, the story is presented through the focalizer's perception or ideology and Nepalese-Indian people are focalized as they have been evaluated or understood by the focalizer. The focalization based or Jemubhai Patel, Sai, Biju, Lola and Noni's narration presents the focalized person likewise Gyan and Budhoo. The focalized characters are brought into light by the author but everything in the narrative are filtered through multiple focalizer's perception from whose perspective the Nepalese-Indian character and events of the story are focalized, witnessed or perceived. The narrator narrates his/her thoughts through the consciousness of the multiple focalizer without his/her interventation. Desai’s narrative technique is a type where the mind of the narrator is taken as a stage. She seeks to render more coherent and reasonable series of dramatic situations that are intended not as realistic images of society but as devices for exploring and analyzing the minds of her character. Each narrative stance fits into the other as different blocks that lay greater emphasis on compactness and unity of effect in a work of art than in characterization.