Going Away And Coming Home Analysis

Ghosh’s fictional and non-fictional narratives are transnational in sweep, move restlessly (relentlessly) across countries, continents and oceans. His characters return to Calcutta (his birth place). It is aptly divided into two parts: Going Away and Coming Home. Ghosh elucidates appropriately what ‘home’ means to a refugee who is distanced from his home forcibly and who faces the existential crisis. The narrator’s grandmother Tha’mma is in dilemma whether she goes away from home or comes home in Dhaka. Major part of the novel is based on the accounts of memories, one memory automatically calls the other related ones, connecting all of them through subtle interconnections – the outward structure of the two parts is identical. The Shadow Lines portrays one Indian family and one English family with different nationalities, culture and religions. The line between the

This novel is the work of an renowned author, whose dexterity is obvious on every page. The duration of the novel is four decades and the story begins in 1939 when the narrator was not born and historically significant due to the outbreak of World War II. Disturbances during the partition of Bengal and riots of Bengal are also significant events that form the backdrop of the novel which rebuild the effect of historical events in the past. These incidents of history are cited as newspaper clipping. Though the novel depicts the incidents of the past, it cannot be classified as historical novel. On the same view, Pallavi Gupta opines:

The only resources, the relies of the past, which narrator – historian possesses to graft his history are memories, photographs and Tridib’s stories which are difficult to discuss because they are factually correct yet set in a medium of fiction.