Displacement and Inner Conflict in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Memory of Departure and by the Sea

Abstract

Abdulrazak Gurnah (1948- ), a Tanzanian-born British penman and emeritus professor, is one of the harbingers of tr1acing the fates of the refugees. He enormously depicts the conventional scenario of the refugees and the asylum-seekers in his novels Memory of Departure and By the Sea. Gurnah pens the feelings of displacement and inner conflict in the psyche of the individuals who try to cross the edge of an ajar door toward liberty. It is evident that Gurnah’s characters aspire for decolonization but cannot transgress the boundaries of colonial temperament due to the predicaments of displacement and inner conflict. The characters are traumatized in such a way that they consider themselves refugees and asylum-seekers in an independent country. Thus, this paper argues that due to the irresolute mind, Gurnah’s characters struggle to resolve the matter of acceptance or the rejection of colonial attitudes, which creates a sense of displacement and, ultimately, leads the characters towards oscillation and inner conflict.