The Shadow Lines

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1988

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

The Many Definitions of Freedom

Many of the characters in The Shadow Lines want—or need—to have more freedom. The characters define freedom based on both individual and collective terms, as well as on traditional and modern values. The Narrator’s fragmented memory keeps him from having answers to his most persistent questions. The narrative itself operates on a stream-of-consciousness basis; it represents the Narrator’s attempt at breaking free from the confines of doubt and unclear memories. One of the biggest threads in the novel involves the Narrator uncovering how Tridib died. Though the official story mentions Tridib’s death as resulting from a car accident, the Narrator “feels” that there’s something more to the story. The Narrator can’t be free until he pieces the real story together. When the Narrator finally learns from May that an angry mob slit Tridib’s throat—that Tridib sacrificed himself to save May—the Narrator finds the freedom for which he spent Part 2 searching.

Ila believes that upper-class society is the cause of the world’s ills, and wishes to be free of the very system that has privileged and nurtured her. Ila finds fault with what she believes is an archaic system of values in India. For instance, she wants to dance freely with whomever she chooses but Robi forbids her to dance, saying, “girls do not behave like that here. I won’t allow it” (64). Before storming off in protest, Ila mentions how free England is (where she lives) compared to India. Despite her roots in India, Ila is willing to place her freedom with the country responsible for colonizing her own, thus placing individual freedom over collective freedom. As a counterargument to Ila’s, Tha’mma views Ila as a “whore” because Ila doesn’t follow traditional values held by the collective. Tha’mma also believes that real freedom lies in knowing one’s identity, and that identity is lost once one moves out of the country of one’s birth. Moreover, Tha’mma takes offense to Tridib cavorting with prostitutes and thus shaming the family’s name, and goes so far as trying to have him expelled from university.

Nick wishes to be free of his own ineptitude, despite being unwilling to improve himself. Nick’s idea of freedom is also self-serving—the narrative suggests that his business ventures in Kuwait are exploitative, and he also openly admits to his new wife, Ila, that he cheats on her consistently and has no desire to stop. Nick’s so-called freedoms are symbolic of traditional toxic masculinity (and patriarchy).

Much of the political strife and violence in The Shadow Lines is a result of people not having the freedom to believe what they choose and to aspire to stations outside of the social ranks into which they are born. Religious freedom quickly turns to violence after the relic of Mohammad’s hair vanishes. The religious who believed in the relic turn on the government and blame non-believers for its theft. Freedom then becomes something that those with force or numbers define, such as when Tridib, and Tha’mma’s uncle, die violently at the hands of a religious mob for being the wrong religion and in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Shadow Lines presents many versions of freedom, and shows the many obstacles to preserving any of them for long.

The Fallibility of Memory

The Narrator’s style represents the performance of memory itself. While telling a story, he often jumps from year to year, or city to city, with no warning. It is intrusive and confounding to the reader in the same way that unbidden thoughts can be intrusive and confounding to the person who is suddenly having the thoughts. One facet of a person’s identity is the days they have lived and the experiences they have had. If memory is fragmented and cannot always be trusted, then identity must also be seen as mutable and questionable. Therefore the author implements stream of consciousness as a literary device. The Narrator’s chronicle of the story sparks and refreshes his own memory, showing him that many of his experiences were not at all how he remembered them. By the end of the novel, he is temporarily questioning whether the riots he “knew” killed Tridib were real at all.

Another storyline involving fallible memory involves the Narrator’s obsession with Tridib in Part 1. The Narrator loves hearing how much Tridib knows about the world and how things work. He obsesses over the stories that Tridib tells. But when strangers warn him not to trust everything Tridib says, the Narrator largely ignores them. The same thing happens with Ila warns him not to obsess over the things Tridib says. For Ila, the best way to combat the fallibility of memory is to live in the here-and-now. The only real thing is the moment one currently experiences. Ila imparts this wisdom to the Narrator, but it takes the Narrator the entire novel to understand that memory can misrepresent the past.

Memory shifts with age, but also with temperament. Many of the characters in The Shadow Lines remember things as they wish they had been, not as they actually were. It is possible to delude oneself not only about the present, but about the past. The mastery of one’s past must acknowledge that one’s past cannot ever be reconstructed with total accuracy.

The narrative also addresses how trauma informs why some characters wish things had turned out differently. Tha’mma, for instance, bore witness to Tridib’s and Jethamoshai’s death. She spent much of Part 2 wishing she might not only reunite with Jethamoshai to reconstruct some idea of home she still held, but wishing she might bring Jethamoshai to live with the family in Calcutta. When the Narrator sees Tha’mma smash through the radio glass in anger, he realizes that the story she tries to maintain is at conflict with her emotions. This is the first time the Narrator wonders what really happened and why everyone says the deaths were from an accident. The Narrator also mentions how, because Tridib’s father worked in the government, the official story couldn’t come out, meaning the fake version of events is an orchestrated attempt to warp reality and, thusly, memory.

Boundaries and Borders

There are invisible lines in The Shadow Lines that are treated as if they were as real and firm as a wall. India’s caste system—the divisions between various social classes—is an intricate system of unassailable barriers that relegate some people to the aristocracy and others to a status that is subhuman in the eyes of their alleged betters. When Tha’mma visits Dhaka and it no longer looks the way she remembers it, she can scarcely believe it is the same place. Her confusion is magnified when she learns that Muslim refugees have been taking care of her uncle. The fact that people she has always scorned have brought about something that even she must admit is good, is nearly incomprehensible to her, because she has a mental barrier between herself and what they represent. This mental barrier also reveals how horrific events like the mob uprisings take place on a partisan level and create such violence. All sides put up these mental barriers and view the other as the “enemy,” which is the same terminology Tha’mma uses to describe those India is fighting against in Part 2.

Manmade borders also have a literal significance in The Shadow Lines. During the Partition of India, the Bengal and Punjab provinces of India were divided based on their Hindu or Muslim majorities. This new boundary was what kept Tha’mma out of Dhaka for so long. Because she had little to no access to her old home, she struggled to maintain her identification with it. One of the more frustrating things about humanity as depicted in the novel is that many of the boundaries that cause strife could be erased—but first, they would have to be acknowledged, and that acknowledgement requires people to examine their own prejudices. When not acknowledged, these partisan boundaries takes no prisoners, which is how both Tridib and Jethamoshai—who weren’t even fighting but trying to flee to Calcutta—died. Had Tridib remained in Calcutta, in that demarcated border, he would not have died at the hands of the mob.

Another facet of boundaries and borders involves sticking to—or skirting—tradition. Ila breaks traditional boundaries concerning how Indian women should behave because she learns what freedom can look like while living and studying in England. Because of her freedom, Tha’mma and Robi both see her as transgressive, with Tha’mma going so far as to call her a “whore” for living with men, and Robi chastising her for dancing with men who are strangers. Ila purposely crosses physical and mental borders by wanting to return to England—a country not her own and one that at one point in time colonized India—so that she can live freely by breaking the boundaries into which she as an Indian woman was born.