trace of any struggle at all. All he wants is to escape this maelstrom, and does not hesitate to announce to Saeeda, without remorse or qualms, that Amjad is well on his way to death and that life has its own special, vital demands that can be met in their union. Therefore, in spite of being relatively less significant, the characters of Saeeda and Majeed become symbols of life's renewal and vitality. Certainly it cannot be considered an artistic flaw on Manto*s part that he chose to give them less importance. In Emile Bronte's incomparably brilliant novel Uuthering Heights, too, the characters (i.e., young Catherine and Earnshaw) who are a source of life's renewal appear altogether ordinary and commonplace when compared to the towering, passionate, and powerful personalities of Heathcliff and Catherine. However, these two plain and utterly ordinary characters display that healthy equilibrium which is all too necessary for life. And although "In this Maelstrom" presents Amjad's tragedy, at the end of which death emerges dominant and triumphant, it also offers, through Saeeda and Majeed's inevitable union, a subtler allusion to the affirmation of life. Here, then, it can be reasonably assumed, Manto's creative vision has become expansive enough to transform the individual, the particular into the general, the universal.* (Pp. 274-279) *Translated by Muhammad Umar Memon. 48