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Analysis Of Hunger By Jayanta Mahapatra

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During the ancient period women enjoyed high status and played a significant role in society and a feminine term “Shakti” literally means “power and strength”. Literary evidence suggests that kings and towns were destroyed because the rulers troubled a single woman. Ilango Adigal’s Sillapathigaram teaches us Madurai, the capital of the Pandyas was burnt because Pandyan Nedunchezhiyan mistakenly did harm to Kannaki. But the status and role of woman discriminated in the later periods and they were considered to be the weaker sex, food giver and sex object. Her status and dignity as a woman is not accepted in society as well as at home. Our history reveals many instances how she is meted out injustice, deprived of her basic needs and even fundamental rights. From the position of a deity she is degraded into a prostitute who sells her body for money due to miserable living condition, poverty and starvation. Such survival sex can be vividly seen in Jayanta Mahapatra’s poem “Hunger”. The poem presents a sentimental touching story of a fifteen year old girl who becomes a whore to keep starvation at bay with the consent of her father- a poor fisher man. Here her father himself acts as a pimp because hunger reigns over the father- daughter relationship. The poem is an unapologetic commentary on our society, i.e., how a girl of fifteen, who should be given a safe environment to live, is used for satiates the hunger of so-called moralistic and upright civilized society. The poem also

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