TJELLS | The Journal for English Language and Literary Studies

A Postcolonial Feminist Analysis of The Zoya Factor by Anuja Chauhan

2025-01-17T10:03:54+00:00

Anuja Chauhan’s “The Zoya Factor" presents a unique lens through which to examine the complexities of postcolonial India, mainly through a feminist framework. This paper will delve into the novel's portrayal of gender roles, national identity, and the lingering impact of colonial legacies on contemporary Indian society. By exploring Zoya's experiences as a successful advertising executive and a seemingly accidental lucky charm for the Indian cricket team, the analysis will unpack how Chauhan subverts traditional notions of femininity and masculinity within a postcolonial context. Furthermore, the paper will examine the concept of hybridity in Zoya's identity, tracing how her mixed-race heritage and navigation of Westernized professional spaces challenge monolithic understandings of Indian identity. Ultimately, this paper will contribute to a broader understanding of how postcolonial feminist perspectives can illuminate the nuanced dynamics of societal power structures and individual experiences within contemporary India.

Heartstrings and Hardships: Relationships in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner

2025-01-17T10:07:12+00:00

The Kite Runner was the first novel to be published in English by an Afghan American writer, Khaled Hosseini, in 2003. Alice Munro, a Canadian short story writer, inspired him. Hosseini penned this novel after seeing a news headline about the Taliban banning kite flying. The novel won the South African Booker Prize in 2004. Hosseini continued to captivate audiences with his subsequent novels, including A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Mountains Echoed. This paper explores the complex interplay of relationships in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, focusing on how love, loyalty, betrayal, and redemption shape the characters' lives and highlight broader socio-political themes. By analysing these relationships, the study sheds light on Hosseini’s commentary on the resilience of the human spirit amidst adversity, providing insight into the emotional and moral landscapes that define The Kite Runner’s narrative.

Memory in Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

2025-01-17T10:16:53+00:00

In the novel "Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys, Memory is a theme which is touched upon rather subtly yet contributes mainly to the progression of the idea pursued throughout the novel to a great extent. Memory is volatile; however, in the novel, the documentation of Antoinette Cosway's childhood, of their husband's and other characters, even in the smallest of the conceptualized depictions, points to how and why the particular way shapes their lives and thoughts, thus providing enough evidence for a reader to envision the impact caused by memory and pauses the volatile nature of it through the narrative.

Deciphering Culpability: Self, Family and Society in Arthur Miller's All My Sons

2025-01-17T10:20:34+00:00

Man's love for 'self' is inherent in him. In his journey from life to death, he wishes only to extend his 'self', and his actions are motivated by his private longing to get the only thing in life – 'identity' - without which he sees his life as futile and meaningless. This lust for 'name' or identity is reflected through what one does and how he behaves or conducts himself in his milieu. As this acknowledgement cannot be got in isolation, a man living in society wants to be different from others, not a part of the masses, but something important and unique, having an independent existence and identity. To seek recognition from the outer world, man labours hard publically and, at times, unethically in private, indulging in acts of perversion which leave him a split personality. This love for identity splits the self into two—dignified public image and perverted private self, and this s-lit existence makes man venture into paths of evil, betrayal, guilt, confession and compass, ion in human life. This poignant search for identity has been pervasive in the literature of all ages worldwide.

Re-Reading Markus Zusak's The Book Thief as A Historical Fiction on Nazi Regime

2025-01-17T10:23:38+00:00

This paper is an attempt to demonstrate the extent of historical accuracy in the depiction of fictional events during the Nazi regime in the novel The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. The research aims to interrogate the historicity of this historical fiction. Despite the text’s categorization as historical fiction, critics have questioned the credibility of its historicity - they argue that its depiction of events in the Nazi regime is excessively idealistic for historical fiction hence, can only be read as historical fantasy, for its incorporation of fantastic elements into a “realistic” narrative (Shanoes 236).

The Enlivening Kolleru Lake and its Belated Awakening in Akkineni Kutumbarao’s Softly Dies a Lake

2025-01-17T10:29:03+00:00

Nature is the ultimate water source, and water is the life for species' survival. When natural resources thrive beyond the vastness of necessity, humans take it for granted. Kolleru Lake was also not an exception. It was once a magnificent lake where the livelihood of an entire village depended on it. Kolleru Lake was not only a place where people grazed their cattle and caught fish from the lake. It held nature in its whole form. Kolleru Lake interblended the villagers for shared purposes. Softly Dies a Lake, written by Akkineni Kutumbarao, is the English translation of his Telugu novel, Kolleti Jaadalu. In the novel, a sexagenarian, Srinivasa Rao, revisits the village where he was born and grew up. As he re-envisions the days lived in resilience with Kolleru Lake, self-realisation is awakened. The lively nature of integrity is evanesced from the village as the lake dies. The lake was a larger entity in itself. The paper attempts to gather the lively aspects of villagers during the resplendent Kolleru Lake as envisioned by Srinivasa Rao. The idyllic nature of Kolleru Lake succumbs to inevitable artificial annihilation.

Colonialism and Collective Trauma: The Development and Deterioration of Macondo

2025-01-17T10:34:56+00:00

Best known for his magical realist literature, Gabriel García Márquez is a masterful storyteller who uses his work to explore the traumatic aftermath of colonialism and the unjust realities of living in a postcolonial world as a Latin American. Márquez's works Leaf Storm and One Hundred Years of Solitude embody Latin American culture as they reshape myths and history into a fantastical story of the rise and fall of the town of Macondo. However, to capture the experiences of his culture authentically, Márquez must deal with the damage inflicted on Latin America by colonialism. He accomplishes this by portraying the deterioration of Macondo as Western influences rapidly advanced the town's industrialisation. The presence of industrialisation in these texts can be understood as a symbol or an embodiment of the effects of colonialism and neo-colonialism, as Macondo's technological advancements wreck the communal identity of the townspeople. This damage to the community of Macondo is seen most evidently in these texts through the characters' rejection of cultural values such as community as they choose instead to live lives of solitude.