NO WHERE PEOPLE: LOCATING LOST IDENTITY, RETRIEVING MEMORY IN SUSAN ABULHAWA’S NOVEL THE BLUE BETWEEN SKY AND WATER
Thanisha S. Muhammed
Research Scholar, Department of English, Noorul Islam Centre for Higher Education, Kumaracoil, Thuckalay, Tamilnadu, India.
Abstract
Literary theory is the body of ideas and methods one use in the practical reading of literature. Literary theory is a description of the underlying principles by which one individual attempts to understand literature. It is literary theory that formulates the relationship between author and work; literary theory develops the significance of race, class, and gender for literary study, both from the standpoint of the biography of the author and an analysis of their thematic presence within texts. Attention to the etymology of the term “theory,” from the Greek “theoria,” alerts us to the partial nature of theoretical approaches to literature. “Theoria” indicates a view or perspective of the Greek stage. The literature of war has existed since the first literary texts were written. Scholars have been quick to acknowledge that war is a dominant force in the works of the three earliest cultures: the Greeks, the Romans, and the Hebrews. The literature of war takes a wide variety of approaches in its efforts to comprehend the war experience and encompasses scholarship on a number of genres, including poetry, drama, short stories, novels, journals, hi, oral histories, memoirs, and letters. Psychological trauma, its representation in language, and the role of memory in shaping individual and cultural identities are the central concerns that define the field of trauma studies. The present study focuses on the work of Susan Abulhawa; The Blue between Sky and Water. Susan Abulhawa’s gripping and deeply moving novel tells the story of Palestine after history arrived. In 1948, the formation of the state of Israel and the subsequent wars wrenched this ancient land apart, sending some Palestinians fleeing for the illusionary safety of crowded refugee camps in Gaza and scattering many other into exile. The inhuman bloodshed following the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank by Israeli troops is indeed unimaginable yet this powerful politically engaged novel does so with a transformative literary grace. Hence the significance of the study.
Keywords
literary theory, etymology, theoria, literature, trauma, psychology