Amitav Ghosh’s The Circle of Reason: A Clash between Superstition and Scientific Reason

Abstract

Life in the modern world is made of myriad impressions and we find various types of people having their own way of reasoning on certain things. Some people strictly follow the scientific temper while others are still preoccupied with the traditional beliefs imbibed with the characteristics of ignorance and superstitions. The latter type of people are so deeply engrossed in their superstitious beliefs that they have totally lost all the scientific reasoning power and start having a blind faith on any traditional practice. This type of contradictory beliefs often brings about clashes amongst the people.And this very fact is clearly presented in Amitav Ghosh’s debut novel, The Circle of Reason,whichmarks “a break from the traditional themes of the Indian English novel and structure of the well-made novel” (Rao 31). In fact, it can be taken as the beginning of the entire generation of new writers who came up in the 1980s, often termed as “Ghosh Generation of writers”(Advani 17) or “Stephanians”(Trivedi4) who have left an enduring impression in the novels of the eighties giving a new turn and meaning tothe Indian English fiction.