The Shadow Lines By Amitav Ghosh

“India has never been a symbol of unity of Hindu-Muslim civilization. It is not possible for the British Government to create homogeneity between Hindu and Muslim culture and civilization as the two systems are distinctively opposed to each other. There is no way other than the partition of India”

Michael Clark suggests the author James Baldwin uses a theme of lightness and darkness to support the metaphors of childhood. Baldwin connects the culture of Harlem in the 1950s to lightness and darkness not only with childhood, but all stages of a person’s life. I believe Baldwin uses the motif to connect what one has learned as a child and transform those teachings and apply them within your adult life. During this time period, Harlem was flourishing with aspiring artists, writers and musicians. People in Harlem were free to create, explore and expand their ways of thinking. However, this freedom was followed by delinquency, crime and drug use.

Richard Wright’s short story entitled, “The Man Who Killed A Shadow” showed the reality and truth of a black man’s life and how quickly it can be jeopardized when race and sex are mixed together. When I began reading the story I felt heartbroken for the main character because he just seemed like a good human being. Saul basically grew up with no role models to guide him in his life and his parents and grandmother died when he was a young boy. Saul quickly had to adapt to these changes and began working to support himself. When Saul began working at a young age he did not understand why “the shadows” or white people saw him as inferior. This was something that he noticed that black people just seemed to accept and he began to accept it as well even though he had no idea why. Saul had to continue to work for the white shadows became increasingly unhappy with the way his life was going. The narrator states, “At the age of fifteen Saul knew that the life he was living was to be his lot, that there no way to rid himself of his plaguing sense of unreality, no way to relax and forget” (187). It was extremely depressing to me that Saul knew at the age of fifteen that this was the reality of the rest of his life. He knew he would never be happy and that he would have to work for the white shadows in order to feed himself.

The Long Shadow is a book written by three research sociologists; Karl Alexander, Doris R. Entwisle, and Linda Olson. Karl Alexander is John Dewey Professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at the John Hopkins University. The late Doris R. Entwisle was a research professor of Sociology at the John Hopkins University. Linda Olson is an associate research scientist with the Baltimore Education Research Consortium (BERC) and the Center for Social Organization of Schools at the John Hopkins University. This book was originally published on April 14, 2014 and in this book, these professors followed the lives of 790 children growing up in various neighborhoods throughout Baltimore, Maryland. I would consider this book a case study because it took over twenty-five years of research, interviews and surveys to finally get it done and then later on published. The three main subjects researched in this book are a family’s background, disadvantaged urban youth, and the transition to adulthood. And in this paper, I will present my central findings of this book.

In a social setting where the presence of God is absent, love simply cannot exist. It is a common-truth that human beings require love; in a society where love cannot and does not exist, the void where that “love” would have existed becomes filled with deluded misconceptions of what love truly is. In Marie-Claire Blais’ Mad Shadows, Blais clearly illustrates what happens genuine love cannot exist and is replaced by misinterpretations, with the use of well developed character relationships. In many of the relationships (romantic and otherwise) displayed

Hamid shows Changes perception of individuality. People like Changes suffered a lot in America and got interest to know native identity. Native culture and identity is awesome for every individual. Changes worries that even after all the sacrifices and services of Pakistanis has never treated Pakistan as ally or friend. There is probability that Americans might have encouraged Indians to envy with Pakistanis. Hamid painfully conveys that Americans never treat non- European Counties as their friends and they treat like tissue papers.

Genre: The Way of Shadows is a fiction book. I do not typically read these kind of books, but i did like reading this book.

The ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan has been the subject of speculation and study by political scientists and historians for a number of years. The ethnic conflict seems to have been sparked at the very beginning in 1947, when the British used Muslim and Hindu mercenaries against each other before the area finally split into today’s countries of India and Pakistan (Spiegel et al. 2015, 185). The timeline since then has been full of conflicts, both major and minor. Brutal tactics used by security forces and a high rate of unemployment have added to the issue (BBC News 2016).

In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B Du Bois’ speaks of a ‘veil’ that has hindered his race from living their lives to the fullest potential. This veil has made it seemingly impossible to integrate into the white, mainstream society. Similarly, in “A Passage to India”, E.M Forster describes the story of Dr. Aziz, a native Indian, and his interactions with the imperial British society in his hometown of Chandrapore, India. Dr. Aziz attempts to become friendly with the British, but ends up bringing them on an excursion to the Marabar caves which quickly illuminates the inability of such a bonding experience. In both the Reconstruction Era of America, and in Imperial India, there is a veil that comes it two parts: a physical veil of color and and

The Shadow Lines is a novel written by Amitav Ghosh. In this novel he talks about the main purpose and meaning of political freedom in modern world and the influence of Nationalism. The Shadow Lines are the borders drawn across the nations dividing its people and places which sometimes lead to violence. Nationalism is an ideology, it is a sentiment that people have regarding their nation, and it is part of a cultures and a movement that focuses on nation. It is formed of a collection of movements that were part of the Nationalism itself.

In this essay I hope to look at the issues of conflict in South Asia focusing on India and in particular the continuing Hindu-Muslim tensions, and look at possible reasons for the continuing conflict which appears to have escalated since the withdrawal of British Rule from India. Multiple events had shaped the Indian subcontinent with

The immigrant experience affects families in a unique manner wherein ethnicity, and therefore, identity becomes something continuously negotiated. Jhumpa Lahiri’s contemporary novel, “The Namesake,” beautifully illustrates the complexities of generational culture clashes and the process of self-individualization over the course of this experience. Lahiri challenges the often-one-dimensional approach to ethnic identity by allowing readers an intimate and omnipresent look into the internal struggles of the Gangulis, a first-and-second-generation Bengali family, following their relocation to America. The novel incorporates a heavy presence of reading, and the abundant representation of books and documents throughout it are vital to its

The Partition of India in August, 1947 was a significant event in history that accounted for the separation of one of the world’s oldest civilization into two, independent nations – Pakistan and India. Like many other wars in history, The Partition of India was instigated by religious, political and social conflict. This resulted in violence, discrimination and the largest human displacement in contemporary history. While the Partition was well-studied, much of our understanding was focused on the political side of history, not the human side of it. This was why oral history played an important role in manifesting the complexity of a historical event. Our focus here is Maya Rani’s testimony from Butalia’s book, The Other Side of Silence:

Before the Partition of India, in 1947, India was considered a country with a reasonably peaceful history. However, during and after the Partition, sexual violence, both towards men and women, escalated, resulting in the rape and abduction of over 80,000 women. Cracking India, by Bapsi Sidhwa, tells a story that highlights these violent acts by both Muslims and Hindus, through the eyes of a disabled young Parsi girl named Lenny, who witnesses first hand the violence of Partition when she mistakenly participates in the abduction of her ayah, Shanta. Throughout Cracking India, Lenny observes as the religions involved in Partition become increasingly violent towards both men and women, within their own religions and against others.

E.M. Forster’s classic novel “A Passage to India” tells the story of a young doctor, Dr. Aziz, and his interactions with the British citizens who are residing in India during the time of the British Raj. Throughout the novel, the reader gets many different viewpoints on the people and the culture of India during this point in history. The reader sees through the eyes of the Indian people primarily through the character of Dr. Aziz, and the perceptions of the British through the characters of Mr. Fielding, Adela Quested, and Mrs. Moore. Through the different characters, and their differing viewpoints, the reader can see that Forster was creating a work that expressed a criticism that he held of the behavior of the British towards their Indian subjects.