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Shadow Lines and The Concept of Nation
Shadow Lines and The Concept of Nation
The paper will deal with the ideas of nationalism associated with the
different characters in the novel.
Tridib, the narrator’s uncle is represented as a person with a global
consciousness. Blessed with a keen sense of imagination and perception, he
gives the narrator worlds to travel, even when he remains in Calcutta. He
exerts vast influence upon the people around him, especially the narrator.
Tridib identifies himself with Tristan, a man without a country who falls in
love with a woman across the seas. This identification seems to imply that
Tridib is without a country. But, why is that so?
The grandmother’s nationalism is treated as a relic from the past. Etched into
the grandmother’s psyche from the time of being under British rule is a
nationalism that rationalises killing for freedom. She strongly believes being
fidel to national boundaries.
She believes in the physical presence of a nation, in the physical nature of
boundaries, just like the wall that divided her old house in Dhaka. According
to her, a nation creates itself upon the bricks of blood and war, rising from a
history of bloodshed to its present existence. The partition has played a cruel
trick on her, rendering her without any coordinates of the place of her origin.