Realism in J.G. Ballard’s Novel:The Kindness of Women

James Graham Ballard (b. 1930) is one of the most innovative and respected contemporary science fiction authors. He explores in his work the interior landscape of isolated humans in a postmodern world transformed by science and technology. The inner space he chronicles lies between the external world of reality and the internal world of the psyche. His characters interact with an Earth made surreal by environmental degradation, media intrusion, and perversity, and they typically appear in the midst of a quest and strive for an individually defined transcendence. The Kindness of Women, sequel to Empire of the Sun, reflects personal realism and social realism. It brings his autobiography up to the 1970s. It discusses Jim’s departure from China, where he had been born and had been inherited, to visit England, other parts of Europe and the U.S.A. Here, Ballard is honest, self- deprecating and wildly vivid in laying out the tracks of his adult life. George Carte describes Ballard’s life in his essay Sourdough as “the story is a great look through a child’s eyes at the W.W. II experience in Eastern China for British citizen captured by the Japanese. It goes from pre-war opulence to devastating prison camp existence to liberation” (Carte 2008:1).The adult life of Ballard’s (Jim’s) is fused in to the development of the plot and it determines the character of the novel. The language of the novel is realistic and so it is appropriate to the incidents which Ballard has described.