Education
During the book education is mentioned a lot. Not just school, but also in the nightly gatherings at the Ali's. Raja and Bim both go to college, although Raja's education is much more prominent. Even Hyderabad, where he went following the Alis, is a considered a place of learning in India; it is the home of universities such as Osmania University, one of the oldest in India.[14] Raja symbolizes culture refinement and knowledge, as does poetry.
Music
The primary manifestations of music in the book are Baba's gramophone, Dr. Biswas's musical inclinations, and Mulk's singing at the end of the book. The idea of music relating to life experiences is present. Baba constantly playing his gramophone at the same volume with the same records shows the stagnation of his development. Dr. Biswas refinement in musical taste shows the personal refinement he learned in Europe. Mulk and the Guru show that while life alters our experiences, we are still the same people; as they used the same style but with different experiences shaping their performance.
This is confirmed by Mulk complaining about his sisters sending away his musicians, like the partition of India. But the musicians return at the end of the book to accompany Mulk.
Tara also mentions her daughters' music but says it develops with their growth.[15][16]
Of particular interest is what music Desai has Baba play; all the records are from the same time period and he never gets any new ones. But the most potent of these songs seems to be "Don't Fence Me In", performed by Bing Crosby. Every primary character in the book with the exception of Bim finds some way to escape. A song about being free, however, is what angers the one character who, on the surface, had no desire to do so.[17]
Separation
The novel tells not just the story of the separation of a family, but also of a nation. The partition of India is a tangible reality that is concurrent to Raja leaving, Tara marrying, the deaths of the Das parents as well as Aunt Mira, and the separation of the Das family. These familial separations are parallel to the social events leading up to Partition and to the continued social upheaval that followed the separation of Pakistan from India.
The summer of 1947 is described as tumultuous: it is the summer when Bim takes care of Raja in his illness, the Hyder Ali family abandons Delhi for Hyderabad under the threat of ethnic violence, and the father of the Das family dies. During the previous summer of 1946, the same summer that Jinnah made public demands for a Muslim homeland, the mother of the Das family had also died. The dissolution in the family that begins in 1946 parallels the growing Partition movement and the escalation of violence, such as the attacks in Calcutta in August 1946, in response to this division into two nations. In the summer of 1947, Tara marries Bakul and they leave for Ceylon (Sri Lanka), leaving Bim alone to care for the remaining family members: this coincides with the official division of India from Pakistan in August of that same year. The following summer, after the death of Gandhi earlier in January 1948 and the continued flight of refugees across Indian borders, Aunt Mira dies and Raja leaves for Hyderabad, thus isolating Bim further and leaving her to care for those who are left behind: Baba and herself. In particular, each of the three people who escaped (Tara, Raja and Aunt Mira) used a way of escape common during the Partition era: Tara fled the country for somewhere else, Raja fled to a Muslim center, and Aunt Mira left the earth entirely.[18]
Language
Each of the languages in Clear Light of Day represents different things. Urdu is the language of culture, refinement, and knowledge. Hindi is considered every day, mundane and banal.[13] Additionally the repeated examples of poetry emphasize the beauty of the one language compared to the other as more often than not they are in Urdu. Raja expounds how an Urdu poet could do that in a single couplet. Urdu symbolizes Raja and the Ali's culture and sophistication.[19][20]
Nature
Nature is omnipresent in Anita Desai's Clear Light of Day. The children are constantly in the garden to escape the stuffy interior. Gatherings happen outside, such as at Hyder Ali's house and the Misra's; Tara's guilt is physically represented by bees; Nature is present even on clothes and in the poetry that Bim and Raja recite. It is significant that the novel begins with a description of the garden ("the koels began to call before daylight"), and Anita Desai clearly places an emphasis on setting. Nature in the novel is a source of entertainment, but more significantly, it is often analogous to the relationships and actions of the characters.
The first function of Nature in the novel is as a source of entertainment and learning for the Das children. The first instance of this is when Tara, at the very beginning of the story, thinking she has seen a pearl, finds a snail instead and plays with it, as she did when they were children, performing "the rites of childhood over the creature". A few pages later, Tara muses over the "rustic pleasures" that she used to derive from the garden, longing to run to the guava trees and find a whole one to bite into. The garden is their source of refreshment in the heat of summer, and the nature filled surroundings provide Tara with reprieve from the business of her city life. The garden is "overgrown", "neglected" and "uncontrolled", not perfect and square, so she feels like she can relax and forget about her engagement book. It also shows the contrast between Tara and Bim.
Nature's second function in the novel is to mirror or complement the actions or feelings of the characters in the book. Many paragraphs end with a reference to Nature, such as "the dog suddenly pounced upon the flea" or "a koel lifted itself out of the heavy torpor of the afternoon and called tentatively, as if enquiring into the existence of the evening". This offers a parallel between what has just happened in the story and the natural world. The dog pounces on the flea immediately after Bakul tells Bim that he will marry Tara, and could represent Bim's isolation beginning to trap her. The koel calls tentatively after Bim has come to an understanding of herself and her relationship with her family and is finally at peace. It could be seen as her uplifting rebirth. Another parallel we can find is the heat of the summer and the political heat of 1947. The most important analogy between Nature and the human world is the garden. At the beginning of the novel, the roses are said to have grown smaller and sicker; they are "dusted with disease". At the end of the novel, there is a dust storm which mirrors the discussion Bim and Tara are having about Raja, and which leaves the garden "shrouded in dust" and everything looking "ancient and bent". The garden, so beautiful and enjoyable in their childhood, has become old and grey as the years have progressed and the Das children have grown apart. Nature in the novel is also beautiful and dangerous at the same time. For example, mosquitoes are mentioned at the beginning as "singing and stinging", and when the gardener waters the garden, "bringing out the green scent of watered earth and refreshed plants", mynahs quarrel and parrots come, a "lurid, shrieking green", ripping flowers to bits. This carries a warning and can be compared with human relationships, especially the relationship between Tara, Bim and Raja.
Finally, Nature is used as a point of comparison with the characters themselves. There is a long metaphor in which Aunt Mira and the children are compared to plants and trees, Aunt Mira being the "tree that grew at the centre of their lives": "Soon they grew tall, soon they grew strong. They wrapped themselves around her, smothering her in leaves and flowers. She laughed at the profusion, the beauty of this little grove that was the whole forest to her, the whole world. (…) she would just be the old log, the dried mass of roots on which they grew. She was the tree, she was the soil, she was the earth." This metaphor is continued when Baba is compared to a "plant grown underground", emphasizing the difference between him and his siblings. It also contrasts with the image that we are given of the Das parents. The roses in the garden were supposedly planted by the father, but neither he nor the gardener knew how to take care of them, so although beautiful at first, they withered. The fact that Tara doesn't know for sure that her father planted them compares with his constant absence in his children's lives. Like the roses, the Das children were not properly cared for which has led them to bicker and row, ultimately failing to understand each other. The cow, warm and soft, can also be seen as the Das parents trying to offer comfort and nourishment to their children, but the cow, like the Das parents and Aunt Mira, dies, leaving the children alone, Raja and Tara longing to escape and Bim bitter. Additionally, both Aunt Mira and Tara are compared to birds, at different moments in the book. Aunt Mira, weak with alcoholism, "almost ceased to be human, became bird instead, and old bird with its feathers plucked, its bones jutting out from under the blue tinged skin, too antique, too crushed to move." Tara, when Bim cuts off her hair, looks "like a baby pigeon fallen out of its nest, blue-skinned and bristly, crouching behind the water tank and crying". The idea of a bird too weak to fly is an accurate representation of Aunt Mira, widowed and rejected, and Tara, who is an introvert with no grand ambitions. It seems to point to what Tara might have become without Bakul, and adds to the contrast between the two sisters.
Other motifs and symbolism
- Birds
- Flowers (Roses)
- Duality (Light and Dark)
- Stagnation
- Women in India
- The passage of Time
