Political Violence in Doris Lessing’s The Good Terrorist (1985) and Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown (2005).

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Date

2019

Journal Title

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Volume Title

Publisher

Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi Ouzou

Abstract

This work is a comparative study of two novels: Doris Lessing’s The Good Terrorist (1985) and Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown (2005). Our research has dealt with the theme of political violence that is illustrated in the selected works. The main purpose of this study is to point out that the two authors share some similarities in the theme of political violence, but they differ at the level of the setting and history. Relying on the theory of Relative Deprivation; we attempt to establish some affinities between the two works. For instance, both novel’s central characters experience social deprivation. After the analyses of the two texts, we have concluded that poverty, identity, and psychological problems are the main sources that draw the characters of both novels to political violence. In addition, we have found that political violence have been used by individuals and groups’ experiencing deprivation to reach their desire of justice, status, revenge, and wealth. They endured the act of violence to make a radical change to get rid of all the oppressions and atrocities. Lessing and Rushdie dealt with an event that had influenced them in their lives. Lessing writes about the IRA bombing of the Harrods department store in London and Rushdie writes about the 9/11 attacks in America. They have demonstrated the shift of individual figures socially deprived and dissatisfied, it is the facts that lead them to adhere into political and terrorist groups in order to reach their goals and live in an equitable environment. The two novels are lucid portraits of the modern societies that suffer from oppression and corruption

Description

30cm ; 64p.

Keywords

The Good Terrorist, Shalimar the Clown, Relative Deprivation, political violence, social poverty, oppression, terror, justice.

Citation

Comparative Literature