Estrangement and alienation of characters in John Banville's Kepler

Modernism and Postmodernism are considered interrelated literary movements; they neither oppose nor follow each other. John Banville's work, Kepler, can be defined as an example of postmodernism with its Historiographic Metafictional style. Banville feels the urge to capture the sensation of alienation that a scientist in the Middle Ages might have had toward his time, his surroundings, even his own family, and himself. Although the life of a medieval scientist is described as the subject, it is one of the topics of our day that the person becomes distant from himself and his environment, being alone and becoming alienated as a result. The author sheds light on today's society through the characters he brings to life by blending a modern problem with the past. By offering background information on Alienation, and estrangement Chapter One gives an insight into the concept of literature. The suffering of the characters under the roles assigned to them and the incompatibility in their relations with each other are mentioned in Chapter Two. The relationships between the characters, whether modern or not, have shaped human behavior, and with the effect of the conflicts in their inner world, the characters have become lonely, excluded, and lost their inner peace while searching for reality. This study aims to analyse Banville's Kepler to create a connection with the problem of alienation and estrangement of characters throughout the novel. Another issue that will be discussed in this thesis is whether the alienation felt by human beings in the society they live in, be it modern or not, exceeds the limits of time. This study puts forward that Banville's work reflects those individual thoughts that shape personality and alienation is a natural reaction to the environment and social conditions.