11, March 2025

Exploring the Identity Crisis and Incompleteness in Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana

VOLUME-9; ISSUE-3; MAR-2025

Author(s): 1. Kostyanv Gonsalvis, 2. Sanjay S Shenoy

Authors Affiliations:

1Assistant Professor, Department of English, St Mary’s College Shirva, Udupi, Karnataka, India.

2 Student, 2nd B.Com,  St Mary’s College Shirva, Udupi, Karnataka, India.

DOIs:10.2017/IJRCS/202503001      |     Paper ID: IJRCS2025030001


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Girish Karnad is one of the eminent postmodern English playwrights. His major plays, Tughlaq, Nagamandala, and Hayavadana, reflect contemporary Indian society, focusing on our folk culture. In the play, Hayavadana Girish Karnad maps mythology, folklore, and existential dilemmas to grapple with the themes of incompleteness and identity crisis in human lives. The play shows the conflict between the body and the soul. Girish Karnad presents the theme of incompleteness at the three levels: Divine, Human, and Animal. He also used folk theatre conventions like masks, dolls, and the role of a narrator to deal with modern existential issues. The papers also explore how the character in the play suffers from incompleteness and identity crisis.

Identity crisis, incompleteness, existentialism, folk theatre, Commonwealth literature, mythology, cultural hybridity.

Kostyanv Gonsalvis,  Sanjay S Shenoy(2025); Exploring the Identity Crisis and Incompleteness in Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana, International Journal of Research Culture Society,    ISSN(O): 2456-6683,  Volume – 9,   Issue –  3.,  Pp.1-4.        Available on – https://ijrcs.org/

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