Over Bourgeoisie to Sahukars: An East vs West Comparison of La Comedie Humaine and Paraja

This article explores a comparison between Honore de Balzac’s La Comedie Humaine (The Human Comedy) and Gopinath Mohanty’s Paraja. These two genius writers represent two different soils and cultures. Where one is regarded as one of the founders of social realism in the novel other is considered as one of the pioneers of Modern Odia Literature. This article examines their selected works in the light of the social realism theme. It also examines their writing techniques, lives, skills, and contributions and advancements to literature. This article gives a detailed description of their characters, motifs, settings, point of view, and plot in the novel. Realism in literature began in old France; Honore de Balzac perfected this trend with his beyond-comprehensive wit and clarity. With the publication of La Comédie Humaine, he paints the reality of France through these hundred connected novels. Apart from Balzac, other French writers soon spread this trend throughout Europe. Writers such as Mark Twain and George Eliot wrote novels that depicted Europe in realistic settings. Tawin’s Huckleberry Finn soon became a sentimental story that reached every house in Europe. It took more than a century to reach the countryside of Odisha, where Fakirmohan Senapati perfected it and used it as his primary weapon to expose societal dogmas. Pioneered by Fakir Mohan Senapati, the realism in Odia literature emphasises the depiction of socio-political reality, class, and cultural struggle. Gopinath Mohanty stood second to Fakirmohan, where he skilfully used his pen to create rural Odisha. This review tries to find out the key techniques in these works, like motivation behind character, greed, money-madness, injustice, failure of poetic justice, fate, dehumanisation, etc. Through a detailed revision of these two works of literature, this review also tries to identify the key difference between French and Odia realism.