Abstract:
Literature is the expression of human experiences. Literary forms such as poetry, novel, short story and
essays reflect community afflictions. The role of Sri Lankans in the short stories is considerable.
S.Ganesalingan is one of them. S. Ganesalinagn, a progressive literary writer contributed immensely
for more than 60 years to the development of Sri Lankan Tamil Literature through various genres such
as short story, novel, essay, criticism, children's’ literature and journals. He has authored literature on
various social platforms such as national literature and etc. He was born in 1928 in a village called
Urumbiray and he made his entry into the literary world in 1950 with the short story ‘Forgiveness’
published on Thinakaran magazine. He has described the grammar of a short story.as “Short story is a
story that describes a goal. Same as other forms of art not only its structure, but also the first and
foremost is the sense of community that raises in the story”. S.Ganesalingan who has been entrenched
in Marxist policy, portrayes the religious philosophical views of the progressives and proletariat
through the characters and events he created in his fictions. He has written short stories on various
themes including feminism, politics, and Capitalism, poverty and husband-wife relationships. Four
short stories from Ganesalingan’s short story series have been selected for the research because they
focus on the massive problems faced by society, not just in the past but in the present and these
problems have the potential to affect the future too. The short stories are ‘A Small Weapon’, ‘Salted’,
Modern Slave Labour’ and ‘Broker Rule’.The study is aimed at finding out how S. Ganesalingan’s
short stories reflect community afflictions. In order to address the research problem:“Do
S.Ganesalingan’s short stories express community afflictions?” this research has been conducted based
on the hypothesis that “S.Ganesalingan’s short stories have explored community afflictions”. This
research has been carried out with the help of Secondary Data. It is noteworthy that it is a sociological
study.
