Siddharth Chauhan

  Introduction This infographic is developed as part of a Thinking Activity assigned by Dr. and Prof. Dilip Barad , whose pedagogy encourages students to move beyond surface-level readings and engage critically with texts across media, theory, and context. Taking F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) and Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation (2013) as its focal point, the present visual study explores how meaning is transformed when a modernist literary text is translated into a postmodern cinematic spectacle. Rather than evaluating the film solely in terms of fidelity to the source text, this infographic adopts an adaptation-studies perspective, drawing upon concepts such as intersemiotic translation , cultural rupture , and the distinction between knowing and unknowing audiences. By foregrounding symbols like the Green Light and the Valley of Ashes, it examines how Luhrmann’s stylistic excess both echoes and reshapes Fitzgerald’s critique of the American Dream—particularly...

 Anarchy and Art: A Deep Dive into Yeats's Response to Crisis in "The Second Coming" and "On Being Asked for a War Poem" Introduction: Poetry in a Time of Turmoil This blog is written as part of a Thinking Activity assigned by Dr. Prof. Dilip Barad for the study of William Butler Yeats’s poetry . The purpose of this reflective piece is to critically engage with selected poems by Yeats, examining their thematic concerns, symbolic imagery, and philosophical implications. Rather than offering a summary, the blog attempts to ponder over key questions raised in the classroom discussion and to interpret Yeats’s poetic vision in relation to modern historical, political, and spiritual crises. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) stands as a pivotal figure in 20th-century literature, a poet whose work grappled with the profound transformations of his era. This article explores two of his powerful short poems, "On Being Asked for a War Poem" and "The Second C...

  Introduction This blog is part of a Thinking Activity assigned by Dr. and Prof. Dilip Barad and seeks to critically engage with The Waste Land (1922) by T. S. Eliot through the lens of Upanishadic and Buddhist philosophical traditions . Rather than approaching the poem solely as a document of Western modernist despair, this reflection attempts to situate Eliot’s text within a broader intercultural and philosophical framework, foregrounding its engagement with Indian Knowledge Systems . The Waste Land presents a world marked by spiritual exhaustion, moral disintegration, and cultural fragmentation in the aftermath of the First World War. However, Eliot’s deliberate incorporation of Sanskrit terms, Eastern religious allusions, and non-Western ethical paradigms suggests that the poem also gestures towards alternative modes of understanding and renewal. The presence of Upanishadic injunctions such as Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata and the Buddhist critique of desire articulated th...

        “Har wapsi ghar nahi hoti, aur har ghar panaah nahi deta.” Course: Film Studies / Literature & Media Submitted to: Dr. & Prof. Dilip Barad Student: Siddharth Chauhan Title: Homebound (2025): A Literary Reading of Migration, Dignity, and Belonging This blog approaches Homebound (2025) as a literary text rather than a conventional film review. The analysis deliberately applies concepts central to literary studies—such as the Bildungsroman, Naturalism, Existential Tragedy, and narrative ethics—to demonstrate how cinematic texts can be critically examined using literary frameworks. The structure follows an outcome-based model emphasized in the syllabus: contextual grounding, theoretical application, close reading of scenes and performances, ethical critique, and final synthesis. The essay aligns with interdisciplinary learning objectives by integrating film studies with social theory, postcolonial discourse, and narrative analysis. Care has been...

  1) Critical Analysis of the Ending of For Whom the Bell Tolls Introduction Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) concludes with one of the most powerful and emotionally restrained endings in twentieth-century fiction. Set against the background of the Spanish Civil War, the novel narrates the final mission of Robert Jordan, an American dynamiter fighting for the Republican cause. The ending, where Robert Jordan lies wounded in a forest clearing waiting to delay the Fascist troops so that his comrades may escape, encapsulates Hemingway’s major concerns— sacrifice, duty, courage, death, love, and the dignity of endurance . Rather than providing a conventional resolution, Hemingway chooses an open, stoic, and symbolic ending that reinforces his philosophy of life and war. Context Leading to the Ending Throughout the novel, Robert Jordan is assigned the task of blowing up a bridge as part of a Republican offensive. While preparing for this mission, he forms emotion...

Reading "The Waste Land" Through a Pandemic Lens: A Synthesis of "Viral Modernism" This blog post is submitted as an academic assignment under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad and undertakes a critical re-reading of Modernism through T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land by applying a pandemic-oriented interpretive framework. Departing from the poem’s conventional classification as a response to post–First World War disillusionment, the study reconceptualizes The Waste Land as a pandemic text—one that registers the invisible yet pervasive forces of contagion, bodily precarity, social fragmentation, and collective psychic exhaustion. Through its emphasis on illness, fevered perception, spiritual barrenness, and cultural amnesia, the poem’s modernist fragmentation emerges not merely as a symbolic representation of historical collapse but as an aesthetic expression of “viral modernism,” wherein literary form itself bears the imprint of widespread biological and emotional...