SHANI MOOTOO’S CEREUS BLOOMS AT NIGHT: A STUDY OF DYSFUNCTIONALISM AND IDENTITY CRISIS

Author Name: Ms. Ananya Sanyal

Volume: 01 &  Issue:

Country: India

DOI NO.: 08.2020-25662434 DOI Link: http://www.doi-ds.org/doilink/10.2020-71334358/

Affiliation:

1. Research Scholar, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

ABSTRACT

This paper is focused on the novel, ‘Cereus Blooms at Night’ in which Shani Mooto explores themes of utmost disgust—incest, extra-marital affair, child abuse, sexual violence among others. The author dismantles conventional image of ‘family’ and redefines the term. Her novel is an instance how the traditional family structure at times becomes an imposed concept that often fails to survive the coercion of caliginous reality—forced transnationalism being one of them. While she is distrustful of the traditional family structure, she expresses faith in a relationship of empathy and communion. This paper is committed to the study of disgust and dysfunctionalism in the novel that comprises the ‘third space’. The ‘third space’ which is a construct aimed to accommodate the diasporic ‘other’ is not always a happy concept. The diasporic individual’s lives are often interspersed with the attributes typical of a transnational life—identity crisis and rootlessness. Mootoo’s novel explores the collapse of an individual who is not at peace with his/herself due to his/her inability to construe a formidable identity for him/herself. The characters in her novel are in a constant state of confusion and lack a sense of originality. This state of perpetual confusion steadily leads all the characters towards self-destruction. While the inevitable self-destruction is complete, the author explores a sanguine aspect of the ‘third space’ which constitutes people who are relegated to the status of ‘marginalized’ due to their obscure life-stories. Being in this newly formed locale, the people find empathy and company in each other in a world of their own which is never understood by the ‘mainstream’ society.

Key words: Indo-Caribbean, diaspora novel, immigrant writing, dysfucntionalism, identity crisis