Modernity and Tradition in Short Stories of U.R. Ananthamurthy

DOI

https://www.doi.org/10.59256/ijrtmr.20260605029

Published In

Volume 6, Issue 5 (2026)

Published Online

September-October 2026

Pages

265-269

Article Type

Review Article

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U.R. Ananthamurthy stands as a towering figure in Kannada short story literature, along with Masti Venkatesha Iyengar. As his family background is ‘brahmin’, His stories majorly point to the life of Brahminical society, post-independence. His stories, Prakrithi, Ghatashraddha, Clip Joint, expose the conflicts between modern aspirations and inherited cultural values. They also expose conflicts between rural traditional life and modern urban life. The ‘Navya’ style of stories are Modern era story explaining the life of people post-independence and conflicts due to modernization and urbanization in the surrounding world. Characters in the stories ‘kitti’, ‘keshava’, ‘narayana’, suffer from internal contradictions. They are victims of changing society. The stories concentrate on conflicts in the families, particularly to holding out for old cultural values, and modern evolutions. Many cultural values showcased here are gender inequal, lack of freedom, dissatisfaction, and spiritual emptiness. This paper, concentrates on themes like ‘Tradition vs. Modernity’, ‘Inner Psychological Conflict’, ‘Moral and Emotional Fragility’, ‘Gender and Patriarchy’, ‘Alienation in Modern Life’, and ‘Cultural Dissonance’ in the short stories written by U.R. Anantha Murthy.