Nietzsche’s Attitude to Religion Essay

I carefully read Ms S Ramola Naidu’s Ph. D. dissertation entitled â€Å"Culture, History, Politics: The Representation of Women in the American War Novels of Ernest Hemingway, e. e. cummings, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. † submitted at Osmania University, Hyderabad. Divided into four chapters, the dissertation is neatly chalked out with a very informative introduction and a befitting conclusion. All the four novels undertaken for the study dwell upon the image of the American women against the background of the World Wars. Chapter I, â€Å"Fragmentation of Society: The Enormous Room,† shows that women are not the weaker sex but are the pillars that support family and society. Chapter II entitled â€Å"Triumph of Love: A Farewell to Arms† deals with the evil effects of the First World War on society in general and on women in particular. Chapter III, â€Å"Parental Indifference: Mother Night,† focuses on the catastrophe of the Second World War disapproving â€Å"the ultra-modern American woman who sacrifices the basic demands of her family† (page 9, Abstract). The last chapter, â€Å"Bureaucratic Callousness: Catch 22† depicts the chaotic military organizations and the ugliness and brutality of human exploitation. Ms Naidu’s topic has a great relevance to the present political context in the entire world standing on the threshold of another atomic war. It has become our responsibility to avoid war upto the possible limit for the peace, prosperity, and happiness of human beings. Through her study Ms Naidu tries to evince that the holocaust of World Wars has engendered a lot of human miseries problems, the loss of human dignity and ntegrity, eventually reducing man to the status of a tragic figure. She is also sure that women problems cannot be solved through any slogan or being a liberate women or feminist. A woman can achieve her dignity cherishing a firm faith in the sanctity of true love, basic emotions and feelings, sacrifice and moral and social values. Ms Naidu is quite successful in delineating the writers’ vision about a bright future that is not far fetched provided every individual develops a positive attitude towards life. It is good piece of research embodying clarity, critical acumen, and hard industry of the candidate. The thesis is characterized by a refined and chiselled language, though a few syntactical, grammatical, and punctuation errors are also visible here and there. It is a purely thematic study. The candidate has adopted an analytical method; and the representation of women in the American novels of the mentioned writers has been highlighted through the analysis of plots, characters, dialogues, and settings. She is capable enough to display her critical insight, logical coherence, and the skill of the assimilation of material in the corpus of the thesis. It is well-written and fulfils all the requirements of a good dissertation. In view of the above, I am pleased to recommend that Ms Ramaola Naidu deserves the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English of Osmania University, Hyderabd.