The Crisis of Identity and Retention of Identity in Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows
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Date
2020
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Publisher
UMT Lahore
Abstract
The Crisis of Identity and Retention of Identity in Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows
The present study seeks to explore the theme of identity crisis faced by the characters of the
contemporary fiction writer Kamila Shamsie’s novel Burnt Shadows and how they struggle hard
to retain their earlier identities either cultural or religious. Kamila Shamsie is a Pakistani British
writer who herself lives in diaspora and has the first hand experience of the problems of
immigrants and people living in diaspora. She portrays the same in her epic novel which covers
more than the half century where the characters live through historical incidents and personal
events and lose their genuine identities many times but they struggle hard to retain some of the
aspects of their identities.
This study also sheds light on the post colonial aspect of the novel related to the quest of identity.
Question of identity is one of the controversial issues of post colonial world. In the modern
world with the increase of immigrant numbers, hybrid nations and countries with different
cultural diversities the question of identity came to surface. That is the reason the researcher
takes this question to explore in depth by using textual method and applying Stuart Hall’s theory
of “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”. Hall very aptly says that identity is the least well-understood
concept that is never fixed. It is not a transparent and indisputable. All the characters in the
novel keep on changing their identities. They have fluid identities and adapt in their new cultures
and situations but keep on struggling consciously to retain their earlier identities too. Hiroko,
Sajjad, Raza and Harry James Burton are the main characters who suffer the identity crisis most
and try to retain their earlier identities too in the globalised world. KEYWORDS: Postcolonial,
Identity, Retention, History, Culture, Displacement, Migration, Terrorism