Quest For Identity in Amitav Ghosh’s Novel The Glass Palace

Abstract

Indian writing in English reveals the dialectics of imperialism in its journey from the periphery to the center and echoes a deep core of neo-colonialism based on power politics. Amitav Ghosh, one of the most widely known Indian writers, is a serious novelist and anthropologist writing from a postcolonial consciousness. He belongs to the nation that was once conquered and ruled by Imperial Britain. As a writer, Amitav Ghosh has been immensely influenced by the political and social element of the country. The theoretical argument about identity concerns its nature, process of formation, and its existential questions. Whereas essentialists believe in singularity of individual’s identity; the postmodernists prevent from having any such identity. Identity construction has been thus discussed time and again, but one must acknowledge that an individual’s identity is to a large extent formed by his or her social location which includes his or her race, class, gender etc. Amitav Ghosh’s novels present characters engaged in search for their identity and of reason, and truth. In this sense, they are veritable discourses on human quest.