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Abstract
George Saunders, The American writer, who has a collection of short stories, believes fiction could become a tool to motivate readers to be bold and act with purpose in these troubled times. He is anything but a newcomer. Saunders published his first short story with The New Yorker back in 1992, and his new stories have regularly debuted in the magazines Fiction section ever since. Over the years, he has gained the reputation of being a writers writer, with authors like Tobias Wolff saying about Saunders: Hes been one of the luminous spots of our literature for the past 20 years. Saunderss fiction often focuses on the absurdity of consumerism, corporate culture, and the role of mass media. While many reviewers mention his writings satirical tone, his work also raises moral and philosophical questions. The tragicomic element in his writing has earned Saunders comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut, whose work has inspired him. He has woven his stories so beautifully as the readers can easily connect themselves with the protagonist. As in the story Puppy, Marie is a mother who likes bringing home various animals. Her husband, Robert, just accepts the new guests. Her son, Josh, has a behavioural problem but he is distracted with a new video game. Callie is also a mother with a son, Bo, who is uncontrollable. She is selling a puppy so her husband, Jimmy, wont have to kill it. His writing is quirky, full of made-up food products like Stars-n-flags and Small Cows and the use of invented Proper Nouns. Saunders excels at creating strange metaphors and comparisons, and the tight economy of language he uses in his stories only makes each sentence hit harder. The stories are often very funny, so that even if we remain uncertain how to interpret the narratives mutated reality, we can still enjoy their oddities, especially as conveyed through Saunderss deadpan, understated style, which can assimilate the most stilted, bureaucratic jargon with the most colloquial, slang-ridden expressions, often in the same paragraph or even the same sentence. Reinforced by Saunderss ability to mimic the inanities of American speech in dialogue, this adept orchestration of voices and language practices is frequently a source of pleasure in itself.Keywords : Absurdity, Tragicomic element, Bureaucratic jargon, Mutated reality
Copyright
Copyright © 2023 Anshuma Jain . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.
