A Journey through Homes: Relooking the Looking-Glasses of Geographical Partition

Abstract

The paper addresses Conrad’s The Shadow-Line and Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines to bring out the conflict between the Orient and the Occident in the former (with the movement of the naval officer from doubt towards fulfilment) and that of the classical mapping of East and the West in the latter (with the movement away from the ‘cultural/classical’ fulfilment towards unsatiated doubt). The paper criticizes and counters the absence of any discussion about the common human experiences/events and/or subaltern histories in Midnight’s Children by focusing on nationalistic criticism present in The Shadow Lines. Thus, the paper holds implications and displays a journey through historical events that dismantled and suffocated ‘sensibilities’. Furthermore, the paper intends to prove that any journey/trip once taken complicates/problematizes one’s identity by making the swift flow between the old and new, past and present gradually impossible. Life, therefore becomes an unending trip forward and backward either by choice or by a lack of choice.