Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist depicts the protagonist’s hunt for treasure which is highly symbolic of the spiritual quest for self-realization and self-discovery. Motivated by the recurring dream of a hidden treasure and desirous of bringing meaning to his life, Santiago undertakes a journey. This paper contends that his journey towards the realization of his dream actually involves a psychological process of individuation that integrates the contrasting aspects of the human psyche and makes use of the unconscious as conscious. It is an attempt to analyze his physical travels from a psychoanalytic perspective so as to posit that seeking spirituality is more about psychological change than temporal and spatial mobility. This investigation is, in fact, based on the exploration of how Coelho’s protagonist completes this process of wholeness and it draws on the theory of individuation presented by Swiss Psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung. By using Jungian Archetypal method of analysis, it can be seen that Santiago is very much influenced by operative archetypes, the acceptance and integration of which has an impact on his spiritual development. The realization that the physical treasure lies exactly where he initiated his journey is the consequence of his self-actualization.
Physicians’ stories of their illness attempt to bridge the divide between a professional doctor and a patient’s narrative by combining both the versions. This research paper undertakes a narratological analysis of latest illness narrative written by a physician-turned-patient Paul Kalanithi in his When Breath Becomes Air. The present study also finds out the role reversal happening between a clinician, patient and writer. It further aims to analyze Paul Kalanithi’s autobiographical memoir as a literary narrative of his last stage fatal lung cancer. The paper highlights the link between literature and the medical world and in this way generates a better understanding of the present interdisciplinary relation of both the disciplines i.e. literature and medicine. This research is qualitative and descriptive while textual analysis has been used as a research method. This study ends with the findings and recommendations for further research.
English fiction, in the recent decades, has significantly manifested its deepest concern for postmodern transformation of history through subversion of the traditional historical narratives. The current research paper aims to highlight the postmodern transformation of history in the selected English novel Our Lady of Alice Bhatti written by Muhammad Hanif. The selected novel as postmodern historiographic metafiction highlights that contemporary fiction manifests and retells the traditional history through memory, parody, self-reflexivity and intertextuality. The current research study generates a better understanding of the present interdisciplinary relation of fiction with that of other disciplines especially history. The postmodern theoretical concepts of Linda Hutcheon are incorporated in this current study. This research is qualitative and exploratory, while textual analysis has been used as a research method. This research ends with the findings and recommendations for further research.
The paper analyzes Leslie Marmon Silkos’ Ceremony (1977) from Buell's theoretical perspective of eco-cosmopolitanism. In Native American worldview, nature holds a special place. The Natives not only identify themselves with nature but also have a life sharing bond of interdependence with it. European colonization displaced Native Americans from their homeland. Their natural resources have been mercilessly exploited since contact resulting in fatal diseases and poverty. The colonial exploitation of nature reached its climax during the WWII. The colonial insensitivity to the environment renders them callously indifferent to non-human life. The earth as a source of life is sacred for American Indians but it was commodified by Euro-Americans who dug up uranium mines for war which destroyed human habitat. The findings of the study reveal that European colonizers wreaked havoc in the Native Americans' life by destroying their environment and mental peace.
This study revisits Louise Erdrich's practice of 'magic realism' to explain how the realistic presentation of unreal elements in Erdrich's writings differs from the western expression of magic realism. With the interactional thick inscription of Erdrich's magic realism, this study argues that the unreal events in Tracks are not based on Erdrich's imagination but the spiritual facts of her inheritance. Her description of naturalcum-supernatural elements cohesively achieves a synthesis of the Chippewa Anishinaabe magic-realistic world and, simultaneously, derives the social and cultural hierarchy of the Native American world. She appropriates the western concept of 'magic realism' to enlighten her oral tradition in 20th-century non-native societies. This appropriation explores the individuality of Native American traditional ways of being that have been considered cultural nonsense in modern academia. This interactional thick inscription of delimited text systematically inscribes the pre-Columbian context of 20th century Chippewa Anishinaabe, the Canadian border, and defines Erdrich's quest for her native identity.
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