Echoes of Chaos in Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom

Abstract

Chaos narratives depict the absence of a narrative order in the text and an adherence to all the features of an ‘anti-narrative’. The study brings to focus the ways through which the author imparts the chaos in the narrative, both by using words and non-verbal methods. The paper explores the world of a family, marred by the trauma and chaos of an illness, in the novel, Em and the Big Hoom (2012) written by Jerry Pinto with cross references to the concept of chaos narratives described by Arthur W Frank in his work, The Wounded Storyteller (1995). Frank’s description of the chaos narrative ascertains its feature of non-communicability of the constant conflict raging inside the patient’s head.  Em and the Big Hoom re-counts the happenings in a family, taking a sudden turn, after the mother (Em) gets diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. The incidence of silences along with the elisions of communication is a pathway to the expression and recognition of chaos, both interior and exterior. The narrative articulates the chaos of life through the gaps in communication. The narrator becomes the observer of the story from a ‘distance’ that helps him gain a reflective grasp over the ‘lived chaos’ of his life. As illustrated by Frank, the trauma and chaos in the narrative unfurl through the daily events of the household when mediation through speech is barely possible. The story weaves around the four lives, stringing the plot by silences and voices of madness, as it attempts to put together a tale of love, trauma, illness and chaos. The paper studies the concept of chaos and its aid in analyzing an illness narrative as narratives depicting a clear picture of illness-induced trauma and its interventions in the daily life of people.