Postcolonial elements in Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines: Postcolonial impact on identity culture and society

Examination Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject Didactics - English - Literature Works language: English abstract: The present paper is an attempt to examine the postcolonial impact on identity culture and society. Amitav Ghosh does not restrict himself from describing the perilous days undergone during the partition of Bengal. He has interwoven and scrutinized the impacts of colonialism on the culture and society of two main neighboring cities namely Calcutta and Dhaka. This novel throws light on the suppression faced by the people in the hands of the oppressors. The agony they felt has been realistically portrayed in the novel. Throughout the novel the writer explicitly traces the postcolonial principles to show his interest in depicting the aftermath of colonization especially in an era after the emancipation. This paper therefore aims to explore the overall structure of the novel through postcolonial approach and provides examples from the novel regarding the application of some postcolonial elements such as identity crisis and otherness.