Suchergebnisse

This essay examines the image of darkness present in Kipling's short story 'On the City Wall' and links it to various underlying themes in the story. One of the themes is the courtesan culture of Lahore. Lalun is a courtesan and is as much full of beauty, mystery and enigma as the city of Lahore where she dwells, or the quaint location of her house which is paradoxically situated on the city's wall. The essay also explores the role of the semi-informed narrator in the story, who can be Kipling himself or someone who is narrating the story to the readers. This narrator-character is tricked by Lalun to help an escaped prisoner get out from the city under the very noses of the policemen who are trying the control the riots on the streets. The narrator's gullibility and his lack of complete knowledge of his actions can also stand for the entire process of writing, where the narrated event remains partially shrouded in the haze of semi-visibility. Just as Lalun's real motives remain unknown to the narrator and the readers till the end of the story, similarly the narrator's use of authorial perspective entails a semi-reliability of the subjective point of view. Finally, the essay takes up the image of darkness and traces its presence in Kipling's life and writings. The world of the night is an integral part of Kipling's vision of an Indian self, and is further accentuated in the unfathomable person of the courtesan.

This paper discusses veils and walls in Mohsin Hamid's novel Moth Smoke (2000) and shows how the woman in the novel, named Mumtaz, responds to her role as a wife and a mother. This essay has three parts: the first part compares the figure of Mumtaz with the seventeenth-century Mughal empress upon whom the character in the novel is based. The second part shows how Mumtaz tries to free herself from the walls of socially assigned roles and resists predetermined gender roles. The third part then analyses how names and titles function as veils to hide the individual behind a constricting network of nomenclature. Acquiring a male pseudonym, Mumtaz, defies the walls of a gender-specific identity.

This paper discusses veils and walls in Mohsin Hamid's novel Moth Smoke (2000) and shows how the woman in the novel, named Mumtaz, responds to her role as a wife and a mother. This essay has three parts: the first part compares the figure of Mumtaz with the seventeenth-century Mughal empress upon whom the character in the novel is based. The second part shows how Mumtaz tries to free herself from the walls of socially assigned roles and resists predetermined gender roles. The third part then analyses how names and titles function as veils to hide the individual behind a constricting network of nomenclature. Acquiring a male pseudonym, Mumtaz, defies the walls of a gender-specific identity.