The Projection of Subaltern Identities and Cultural Adaptation among the Characters in Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace

Abstract

Amitav Ghosh is one of the best postmodern writers. He is immensely influenced by the political and cultural milieu of post independent India. Being a social anthropologist and having the opportunity of visiting alien lands, he comments on the present scenario the world is passing through in his novels. Cultural fragmentation, colonial and neo-colonial power structures, cultural degeneration, the materialistic offshoots of modern civilization, dying of human relationships, blending of facts and fantasy, search for love, security and diaspora are major preoccupations in his writings. Blurring of genres, one of the postmodern traits, can be witnessed in his writings. He alters the form of the novel by blending many genres. Ghosh’s own academic antecedents – history, sociology, anthropology – illuminate his fictional work while none of his novels is autobiographical. Diasporic Identity always arouses his curiosity and he analyses this “space” with reference to its histories. Patterns begin to emerge as he travels between different cultures and different lands. So, here this paper aims to focuses the subaltern complexity of adaptation and reparation among the characters of the chosen writer, Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace. This research paper is also discussed and finding the solutions.