The Language of Partition: A Study of the Narrative Structures of Selected Stories

Barnali Saha

doi:10.24113/ijellh.v9i7.11127

Abstract

The Partition of India in 1947 that resulted in the death and displacement of millions of people continues to inhabit the cognizance of the people of South Asia as a historical phenomenon laden with violence. Although the bequest of the Partition is palpable in episodes of religious tension, discourses on minority belonging, secularism, nation and nationalism in India, critical exploration of the phenomenon as a tension-ridden historical episode has largely been restricted. The present research paper deals with the stylistic aspects of a series of seven short fictional narratives from Bengal and Punjab. In this paper, the scholar talks about how the creative-imaginative representation of Partition has till date remained confined to the discussion of thematic aspects with the result that the elements of narration have remained insignificant in critical mediation. As such, the scholar addresses the gap in the genre of Partition studies by critically reading and stylistically scrutinizing the narrative elements of a series of selected Partition narratives to see how violence as a leitmotif in these seven selected fictional texts is documented.

Highlights

The words slide into the slots ordained by syntax, and glitter as with atmospheric dust with those impurities which we call meaning
With the deliberate task of replicating the morbid history of Partition in creative writing, the fiction-history parallelism between the two has till date remained confined to the discussion of thematic aspects, treating the elements of narration as insignificant for critical mediation
The fictional projection of the reality of Partition is a deliberate subjective effort by an author whose inspired selection of words to emphasize narrative events and discourse instill meaning to his narrative project creating the dramatic effect that is integral to good literature

Summary

Introduction

The words slide into the slots ordained by syntax, and glitter as with atmospheric dust with those impurities which we call meaning. The author here shows a scene of violence by pairing up images of dismembered body parts (breasts, genitals).The use of the adjective modifier “shriveled” in the sentence, the noun “lump” together with the phrasal verb “bunched up” attributively used to modify the images of a cut-up woman’s breast, a dismembered human heart and a castrated pen respectively add to the visual horror the image the writer/narrator perceived and effectively transmits the revulsion the narrator experienced to the implied/real read via the discourse.

Results

Conclusion