Class Struggle And Discrimination In Doris Lessing’s This Was The Old Chief’s Country

Abstract

The British writer, Doris Lessing is a Nobel Laureate (2007), who holds prominent place in the field of English literature. She was born in 1919 in Persia (Iran) to a British family. Her family further moved to southern Rhodesia to have their fortune in maize farming. Her father served in World War I and was crippled during the war. The family has the very harsh memories of the war. Her childhood was of more pain and less pleasure. Grown in a country where racial discrimination is in its heights made her write about the harsh realities of her own society. Pursued social and political activities so as to bring social change. She wrote more than fifty works including novels, short stories, plays, autobiographies and operas. Some of her novels have been made into films. She has seen the harsh realities of her times, and through writings, she revolted against these menaces in the society. She was actively involved in politics what we can say communist party and fought & fought for the racial discrimination in Africa. She was the follower of Marxist philosophy whose slogan was to make a free and classless society. They demanded for discrimination free society and this philosophy or Ideology is quite clear in the writings of her important works. This research paper criticaly analyses the short story from the African stories volume.

The writer’s main motive behind writing these stories is to bring a social change in the society. No one is special and being others as inferior on the basis of race and colour is a heinous perception of humans.