Analysing Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines Through the Lens of Cultural Trauma

Abstract

Winner of the 1989 Sahitya Akademi Award, Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines is about partition and also its aftermath. It is the story of the unnamed protagonist's coming to terms with the death of his muchloved uncle Tridib in a communal riot in Dhaka when he was a child, and trying to make sense of and understand the cause of his death years later when he is an adult. Trauma for Cathy Caruth is a belated experience. It often has a lingering, disruptive presence in memory. Dominick LaCapra offers his concepts of “acting out” and “working through” to decode trauma. Marianne Hirsch's concept of “Postmemory” describes the relationship that the “generation after” bears to the personal, collective and cultural trauma of those who come before. These experiences are transmitted so deeply and affectively that they continue to have their continuing effect into the present also. My paper makes a humble attempt to read the novel in the light of the cultural trauma that the unnamed protagonist went through because of his uncle's death.