The Metaphysics and Metastructure of Appearance and Reality in Arun Joshi’s The Last Labyrinth

Abstract

Arun Joshi, comparatively a younger Indian novelist, has been following in the footsteps of philosophical novelists like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.¹ The moral problems of Rattan Rathor, the protagonist of The Apprentice, are expanded and intensified in the figure of Som Bhaskar, the “antihero” of The Last Labyrinth. Both characters confront the problems of alienation and identity with one significant difference: whereas Rattan Rathor finds an answer to his moral guilt and returns to the community, Som Bhaskar fails to find answers to his moral and cultural alienation and cannot return to society.The tragedy of Som Bhaskar is the tragedy of modern man who, being at odds with himself and his cultural environments, is confronted by moral and psychological fragmentation and by a persistent struggle between the two worlds, the two types of hunger—“Hunger of the body. Hunger of the Spirit” (11).² The dramatic conflict between the two intricate worlds of appearance and reality as portrayed in The Last Labyrinth constitutes the basis of fictional discourse and the structural principle of the narrative.