Dislocation and the Making of the Self: An Analysis of Rajkumar in Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace from a Postcolonial Perspective

Abstract

Dislocation is a perennial issue in some of Amitav Ghosh’s novels. In postcolonial literature, the theme of dislocation appears as the result of the imbalanced interaction between the classes- the colonisers and the colonised. Moreover, dislocation is an inevitable experience for those who are affected by native elitism. The colonised people are dislocated geographically and psychologically. In addition, they experience geographical dislocation both internally and externally. Rajkumar is dislocated in Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace ds the eventual outcome of his peripheral identify. He is affected socially, culturally, religiously, economically, psychologically, and above all, ideologically because of his dislocation and thus, his dislocation is multifarious. Though he is able to change his identity substantially through gain in his dislocated life, he is bound to experience uncertainty in the long run. The process of loss and gain puts him in a strange psychological state. My attempt in this essay is to analyze firstly, how Rajkumar, the protagonist in The Glass Palace, is dislocated, and secondly, what he loses and achieves in the process of dislocation and finally, what type of self he eventually forms.