Exploring The Aftermaths Of Materialism On Modern Society: The Psyche Of Modern Humans In Selected Poems Of Jayanta Mahapatra And Shanta Acharya

Abstract

Society and literature are very complimentary to each other like the two sides of a coin and poetry being the elite form of literature always portray society accurately though it is symbolical in nature. Literature as a mirror reflects the values, norms and conflicts of a society and writers often include the real-life experiences and social issues in their writings. Jayanta Mahapatra is the first poet to receive Sahitya Akademi award in the Indian English poetry. Through images, symbols and metaphors his poems explore the varied activities of human beings. The selected poems of Mahapatra are analysed to understand the absurdity of lives of modern world people and how it reflects the mental landscape of them. Shanta Acharya is one of the most innovative, creative and progressive poets of contemporary India. Her poetry sees through the physical world and uncovers some ambiguous nature of society. There is humour, sarcasm, spirituality, questions, philosophy, imagery, arguments which enforce the ideas of multiple vision of poetry. Acharya classifies the sources of contemporary world that portrays the meaninglessness of relationship, emotions and other human factors. Both the poets address the pessimistic attitude growing in contemporary modern society, environmental issues such as climate change, pollution, drought and social isolation. The paper aims at presenting Jayanta Mahapatra and Shanta Acharya, the poets of international repute, deals with the materialistic world in the modern society and its consequences on the human psyche. This paper explores their works the complexities of human psychology, pervasive sense of absurdity and existential angst in contemporary life through the lens of Mahapatra and Acharya by depicting the incomprehensive nature of modern existence.