Assignment: Paper E-C- 202,

Topic: Elements of Time and Space in the novel 'The Shadow Lines'

Students Name: Pooja N. Trivedi,

Roll No – 20,

M. A. Part – I, Semester –II,

Batch Year – 2010-2011,

Submitted To – Mr. Devarshi Mehta

                                Department of English,

                                Bhavnagar University,

                                Bhavnagar.

‘The shadow lines’ by Amitav Ghosh paints a landscape of symbolism and realism that spans both time and space. As the writer says natonality is an ideal that changes with time and the 21^st century cannot be strait jacketed in the time frame of the 19^th century. In that context of borderlessness in today’s world and today’s India, the writer asserts that ‘the time has come to define nationality beyond the constraints of either the census taker or the mapmaker.’

The concepts of distance and time are uniquely portrayed in Bothe the physical borders that divide countries and the imaginary borders that divide human beings from the image conscious character of the grandmother to the riots that explode in the streets. Exhosh takes the reader on a fascinating journey of exploration dissecting the characters of the story while simultaneously dissecting the human race. ‘ The shadow Lines’ is a stunning book an using seed wise and international in scope. One of the chief features of ‘The shadow Lines’ is that it is not written sequentially the novel moves back and forth with little regard to the chronology of time and distance.

Therefore distance in ‘The Shadow Lines’ is challenge to be overcome by the use of imagination and desire until space melts. Time and space coalesce in a seamless continuity. Both Tridib and the narrator are engaged in the  creation of the world as it comes alive to them or to their powerful imagination.

The title of the novel is perhaps the most philosophical statement Ghosh makes assenting that

‘The Shadow Lines’ or the lines that not only define our human shape but our inner struggles to choose between darkness and light, are an intricate part of all human existence Shadow, like time are both tangible and intangible at any given moment or realm of perspective. They are a fleeting, generically depicted, generally distorted representation of ourselves, they can only be viewed in the proper light Ghosh uses Shadow lines as a way of telling us that the wazy we view ourselves is not always the way that others view us , and until we can gain a deeper understanding in the Shadows of our own enlighten.

The theme of ‘The Shadow Lines’ is that the time and distance are shadows. The novel makes a smooth transition from present to the past and from past to the future without causing any friction. The novel lights the reality of the fiction people create around their lives. Tridib says that every one live in the story for stories are all there to live in it is just the reliving of the events the narrator had imagined sitting in Calcutta. These events, however, do not bring about  any  dislocation because in time and space actual and imagined  have a harmonious co-existence.

Narrator believes in the reality of space, that the distance separates but is sadly mistaken. He felt that the two piece of land would slip away from each other like the tectonic plates of Gondwanaland but is amazed to find that there had never been a moment in the four thousand –year- old history of that map when the places they knew as Dhaka and Calcutta were more closely bound to each other than they had drawn their lines.

“ I couldn’t persuade her that a place doesn’t really exist that is has to be invented in one’s imagination; that her practical hustling London was no less invented than mine neither more or nor less true, only very far apart. It was not her fault that she couldn’t understand, for as tridib  often said of her the invention she lived in moved with her, so that although she had lived in many places , she had never travelled at all.”

Ghosh manages to speak excessively of shadows,darkness and light, weaving them subtly into the context of what he is trying to convey. He uses the terms both realistically and metaphorically to show that the shadow we cast, the one other people can see, is not always an accurate reflection of who we really  are. Nick was not the hero he seemed to be and when may reveal this to the boy, they are in the process of moving from light to dark, both in physical environment and knowledge of the truth.

In a way, a shadow is like a “ fair weather friend “ in that it appears to us only when the sun is directly overhead. While every human being casts a unique shadow, a common theme can be seen in them all, namely that they are detached from us. This is another realm in which ghosh metaphorically uses the elements of shadow lines to tell his story.

Throughout literature’s long history, shadows have been used as metaphors for secrets. Things hidden in the shadows, things hidden in the shadows, things which we cannot see though we can vaguely make out their outlines there are the traditional metaphors which  Ghosh cannot avoid. Ghosh demonstrates that when secrets come out from behind the shadows and are exposed to the stark, revealing brilliance of daylight , they do not immediately evaporate. Secret tend to linger long after they have been exposed because athe fact that they were hidden in the first place casts strong shadows of doubt upon the person keeping the secret, the revelation of these secrets can have severe consequences , such as being kicked out of school or being labeled a lier. Though the grandmother’s “ letter from the grave” is eventually dismissed it’s were existence taught the boy some valuable lessons.

Glimpses of three generation of prices, thamma’s  nationalist ceal, snippets of second world war….   All these shreds are blended amicably without giving feeling of bumpy ride. And this has been possible only because time and distance have been so closely interwoven and discharged at thime in the novel that they seem to be in seamless continuity.

While be is astonished by his grandmother’s ability to see past the shadows  and into the light he is equally annoyed by it . it seems to him that a person ought to be able to keep some secrets hidden like his “visits to the wemen” but at the same time he respects his grand mother’s insight.

There is a very fine coaling of time and space in the ‘shadow lines’. Distance and time are shdows in the novel and therefore illusory, however it does not give dislocation or  cause a split in the plot time and distance have been blended ceremoniously and it does not cause faction.  

While tge tutke ‘the shadow line’ can be read a thousand different ways, and the significance of shadows throughout the novel can be interpreted with vast distinctions, one thing remains clear. The shadows that all human bengs reflect are as unique to the individual as each written word is to a talented other like amitav ghosh.