JOURNAL ARTICLE

"Splashing with Both Hands": Horror and Resilience in Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines.

  • Published In: Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, 2025, v. 56, n. 2. P. 89 1 of 3

  • Database: Academic Search Ultimate 2 of 3

  • Authored By: Bhattacharya, Shoumik 3 of 3

Abstract

Readings of Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines (1988) often interpret it as simply about an Anglophilic Indian middle class. This essay focuses on how poverty and communal violence provide the context for most bourgeois narratives from South Asia. The only image of a slum in the novel appears when the child-narrator is on a veranda he is not supposed to be on. The slum is built in one of the effluent-filled marshes on the outskirts of Calcutta. Seeing a woman use her hands to push back toxic sludge to use the water underneath is unusual but not shocking for the narrator. I argue that the disruptive image of the precarious shantytown demonstrates how a self-defeating preoccupation with looking away from the quotidian horrors of life in India forms the very basis of Indian middle-class life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Additional Information

  • Source:Ariel: A Review of International English Literature. 2025/04, Vol. 56, Issue 2, p89
  • Document Type:Article
  • Subject Area:Literature and Writing
  • Publication Date:2025
  • ISSN:0004-1327
  • DOI:10.1353/ari.2025.a966968
  • Accession Number:187283722
  • Copyright Statement:Copyright of Ariel: A Review of International English Literature is the property of Johns Hopkins University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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