Political Violence in Doris Lessing’s The Good Terrorist (1985) and Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown (2005).
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Date
2019
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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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