Mahashwetadevi- SHYAONTI TALWAR Existential Underpiinings in Mahashweta Devi's Mother of 1084(1) (original) (raw)

This paper discusses the predominant presence of existential elements in Devi’s play Mother of 1084, like ontological insecurity, awareness of the being, anxiety of erasure through death, incertitude of life, futility of existence, freedom of choice and authentic versus inauthentic existence and the use of certain literary devices to foreground these existential themes. The play is set in the 1970s and underscores the state-sponsored police atrocities through the predicament of a mother who has lost her son. The play is about an upper-middle class, urban, educated, working woman Sujata Chatterjee who son Brati is brutally killed by the state in its efforts to quell the Naxalite movement which believed in adopting extremist approaches to eradicate class divides deeply entrenched in feudal Bengal.