The study of colonial and postcolonial literature inherently involves the study of identity. Identity is a multidimensional word. Identity is a concept to state about the recognition of anything both identifiable and non-identifiable issues. The question of identity is the most controversial issue in postcolonial time and literature and it can be regarded the most important because of its crisis exist in all postcolonial communities. Postcolonial literature and criticism appeared during and after many countries gained or struggling for independency. The most themes that both deal with are race, gender, ethnicity, identity and culture. Identity is never very important in a life until the identity is lost. It is this concept of loss that runs deep in colonial and postcolonial literature.
The loss of a past, a culture, a way of life is the tragedy that marks the lives of the colonized people. It is also this loss that leads to the loss of an identity for the postcolonial people in the novel. The issue of identity is not a clear and fixed concept as it may imagined, that led to the crisis and became a phenomena as Mercer argues that identity only becomes an issue when it is in crisis. One of the controversial issues of postcolonialism is the question of identity and culture. In the modern world with the increase of immigrant numbers, hybrid nations and constitution of countries with different cultural diversities, the question of identity came to the surface. The term “Identity Crisis” was coined by Erik H. Erikson who was a twentieth century German-American Developmental Psychologist and Psychoanalyst known for his Theory on Psychological Development of human beings. The term Identity Crisis describes the uncertainty and even anxiety, which adolescents may feel as they recognize that they are no longer children and become puzzled and confused about their present and future roles in life.
According to Erikson, an identity is a time of intensive analysis and exploration of different ways of looking at oneself. Erikson describes a crisis as the process of resolving conflicting regarding a person’s colliding desires for both individuality and communal belonging.
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The Identity Development Theory also called as the psychosocial theory, creates a blueprint for how personality is expressed and how a person becomes integrated with others. The theory involves the role of social interaction between the self and others as each individual undergoes the process of socialization.
In Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, the emergence of an identity crisis occurs during the teenage years in which people struggle with feelings of identity versus role confusion. In each stage of identity development, a person encounters a conflict or crisis that needs to be resolved to successfully navigate through the stage.
Identity crises are more common today than in Erikson’s day. These conflicts are certainly not confined to the teenage years. People tend to experience them at various points throughout life, particularly at points of great change such as starting a new job, the beginning of a new relationship, the end of a marriage, or the birth of a child. Exploring different aspects in the different areas of life, including the person’s role at work, within the family and in romantic relationships, can help strengthen the personal identity. H.P. Lovecraft has quoted in Through the Gates of the Silver Key, that “No death, no anguish can arouse the surpassing despair which flows from a loss of identity”.
There are various causes for identity crisis, including improper upbringing, lack of affirmation and unpleasant past experiences. Other factors that lead to identity crisis include stress, troubles and societal demands. Lack of ideologies and values, experimenting roles and being a leader may also cause identity crisis.
The improper upbringing of Pari is the most important one which causes her identity crises. The behavior and character of the children who lives with their parent and siblings differ from the children lives without their parent and siblings. In the beginning of the novel, Pari lives with her father Saboor and her brother Abdullah. But in here, there is no change in the behaviors of Pari, because Abdullah plays the role of a mother for Pari. It is proven in the following passage:
He was the one raising her. It was true. Even though he was still a child himself. Ten years old. When Pari was an infant, it was he she had awakened at night with her squeaks and mutters, he who had walked and bounced her in the dark. He had changed her soiled diapers. He had been the one to give Pari her baths.
When Nila Wahdati and Suleiman Wahdati adopt Pari as their child, there is no strong bond between Pari and the Wahdatis. There is also a kind of detachment between Nila Wahdati and Suleiman Wahdati which starts from their marriage onwards. Due to their detachment, they do not bring up their adopted child Pari in a right manner. When Pari and Nila Wahdati moves from Kabul to Paris, Pari’s Behavior get change. Separation plays a vital role in the minds of the people. It also promotes stress in the mindset of everyone. When the children suffer from stress and mental illness, surely there is a chance for loss in their character, behavior and even in their identity also.
Sometimes individuals face obstacles that may prevent the development of a strong identity. This sort of unresolved crisis leaves individuals struggling to “find themselves”.
They often seem to have no idea who or what they are, where they belong or where they want to go. In Erik H. Erikson’s Life History and the Historical Moment he describes that:
Identity Crisis is a subjective sense as well as an observable quality of personal sameness and continuity of some shared world image. As a quality of unself-conscious living, this can be gloriously obvious in a young person who has found himself as he has found his communality. In him we see a unique unification of what is irreversibly given that is, body type and temperament, giftedness and vulnerability, infantile models and acquired ideals with the open choices provided in available roles, occupational possibilities, values offered, mentors met, friendships made, and first sexual encounters.
After the separation of Abdullah and his sister Pari in their childhood, Pari realizes that she feels something missing in her soul. To know about the missing pieces of her memory she wants to know about her past years of her life. It is a kind of searching about her own identity.
When Pari was six, she moves from Kabul to Paris with her mother Nila Wahdati. When Pari reaches her adolescence, she wants to know about her family. She asks several questions towards Nila Wahdati that “Do I have cousins in Kabul, Maman? Do I have aunts and uncles? And grandparents, do I have a grand-pere and a grand-maman? How come they never visit? Can we write them a letter? Please, Can we visit?”(248).
Most of her questions revolve around her father. “What was his favorite color, Maman? Tell me, Maman, was he a good swimmer? Did he know a lot of jokes?”(248).
Pari is very eager to know about her past life and her family in Kabul and she also thinks that her mother is the glue which connects the bond of her disjointed scraps of memory. But Nila never talk much about the details of their life together in Kabul. She keeps Pari at a remove from their shared past and finally Pari stops asking questions about her earlier life and her family.
From the character of Pari it comes to know that there is a self-image appears in Pari when she tries to identify her physical appearance. Pari realizes that she has the small kind of resemblance with her parents Suleiman Wahdati and Nila Wahdati. She thinks her mother is more beautiful than her. She still looks so beautiful woman as her age of 40s. Nila Wahdati has long dark hair, full chest, startling eyes and a face that glowed with classic regret features. She wonders why she has little resemblances to her mother. She looks at herself and she identifies that her physical appearance is different from her mother Nila Wahdati.
Whenever she walks to her mother’s bedroom, she looks at the long mirror and look at her body and she mention that she is too tall, too unshaped, too utilitarian. She also thinks that she does not have her mother bewitching curves. Pari always compare her beauty to her mother. It makes her as not confident with herself.
When she comes to remember about her father Suleiman Wahdati, she realizes that there also much difference of the physical appearance between Pari and Suleiman Wahdati. She remembers her father is tall, has serious face, a high forehead, narrow chin, thin lips. Thus she realizes that she differs from her father too.
In the aspect of personality also, Pari is a kind of shy girl feels not confident at all with herself. She always underestimates herself in front of the person she loves. But in the case of Nila Wahdati there is a contrast in the character of Pari and Nila Wahdati . Nila Wahdati is not a shy woman. She shows a kind of attractive look when she faces the loved one.
In the aspect of interest, Pari shows more interest in learning Mathematic and she also said that she finds feel comfortable from that of Science. That Mathematic is exact Science and it has no ambiguity not like a life. It is contrast with the interest of Nila Wahdati. Because Nila Wahdati feels very bore when Pari and Julien talk about Mathematic. She likes to give jokes to them as a kind of satire.
Self Esteem is a personal opinion of one and is shaped by individual’s relationships with other, experiences, and accomplishments in life. Self Esteem consists of two parts. They are High self-esteem and Low self-esteem. A high self-esteem relate to many positive behaviours and positive results. Low self-esteem is related with negative behaviours.
The analysis of the character of Pari shows that she has low self-esteem because she feels that she is not beautiful. Low self-esteem causes Pari to feel as not confidence with her when compare herself to others, fear to do something and too sensitive. Pari thinks that she is not beautiful. She feels that her mother has everything that she does not have in herself. And she often compares herself to her mother. It makes her feels not confident with herself. She also thinks that her appearance is usual and not interest at all than her mother.
The relationship of Pari and Nila Wahdati is a complicated one. When Nila Wahdati avoids Pari in many of the occasions, Pari thinks herself that:
What was I, Maman? What was I supposed to be, growing in your womb— assuming it was even in your womb that I was conceived? A seed of hope? A ticket purchased to ferry you from the dark? A patch for that hole you carried in your heart? If so, then I wasn’t nearly enough. I was no balm to your pain, only another dead end, another burden, and you must have seen that early on. You must have realized it. But what could you do? You couldn’t go down to the pawnshop and sell me.(251)
She has an inner thirst to know about the roots of her family. “That there is an absence in her life of something or someone vital- has dulled. It still comes now and then, sometimes with power that catches her unawares but less frequently than it used to”(256).
According to Humanistic Psychologist Carl Rogers, the personality is composed of the real self and the ideal self. The Ideal self is an idealized version of yourself created out of what you have learned from your life experiences, the demands of society, and what you admire in your role models.
Ideal self consists of achievement, goal and dream of a person. Pari’s achievement is, she becomes the youngest professor in the department, “at thirty-six, she is the youngest professor in the department and one of only two women”(259).
Her goal is to visit her homeland in Afghanistan. She wants to remember her childhood so she wants to visit her homeland. When Pari plans to go to Afghanistan, after her marriage with Eric, Suddenly she discovers that she is pregnant. After the birth of Isabelle, she has postponed the trip to Afghanistan. The truth is Pari no longer feels piercing urge to search for answers and roots. When Professor Chatelard wants to ask Pari about what she thinks will happen to Afghanistan when the Soviets leave, “Will your people find peace, Madame Professur? , she says Practically speaking, I’m Afghan only in name”(259).
Her dream is search for her personal identity. When she realizes that she is different from her mother and her father from their physical appearance, she wants to know her biological family and of her personal identity.
There are some reasons for her search for search of her personal identity, because her self-image is different from her parents, when she grows up she feels like something missing on her heart, and the absence of something or someone. Whenever she asks about her childhood and her past to her mother, Nila Wahdati does not give her the best and suitable answer.
All her life of Pari is like a puzzle. When Markos Varvaris tells the truth to Pari she comes to know that her mother Nila Wahdati told her lies about her childhood. Finally she finds the answers of some questions that she never knows.
In Indian society women has no self-identity. Even they core their Christian name and they are introduced to the society as someone’s daughter or someone’s wife or someone’s mother. They are known by the relations not by their own identity which can reflect only the self not its surroundings. The patriarchal weapon cut the self from female section and they are supposed to be depended upon male to get an identity. The woman cannot recognize themselves as independent self. They are regarded as burden but the ‘other’. This feeling creates a quest to get self-identity.
The identity of a girl depends only upon her marital status. The Indian society is famous for its cultural values. But Shashi Deshpande presents the age old values of Indian society which chains the woman section by the bar of marriage which snatches the self-identity of women.
In Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terror, Sarita expresses her heart core desire to get identity which she finds a lack in her many folded life. Sarita reflects her crisis of own existence and its importance which reminds her that everything is meaningless. In this novel Sarita reflects through her life the utter quest for self-identity which reveals to Sarita the life as bondage mainly meaningless. Sarita finds many questions in her way of life struggle but the answers are unknown to her.
The woman’s individual identity is nowhere accepted in a patriarchal society. The children are also known by the identity of their paternal relations. The women self everywhere face the identity crisis. Sarita says with disgust that “Why can’t you accept my children as themselves? Why do you have to link them to the past, to others I have nothing to do with?”(Ch 3. part 1. p., 34).
Shashi Deshpande says in her novel The Dark Holds No Terror that “Listen girls, she would say, whatever you do, you won’t be happy, not really, until you get married and have children” (Ch3. part 3.P.,137). The so called belief of the society presents the women as objects and they themselves take this as granted and behave as the society wants them to behave. Thus they lack their individuality which creates a deep quest for self-identity in their hearts.
In Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence, the character of Jaya is unable to find out whether she lives for herself or for her family. She is taken for granted by everyone in the family. That is why she feels like searching for her identity. She also loses her identity when her name is changed from Suhasini to Jaya after marriage.
The question “who am I?”(24) haunts her so obsessively that she fails to find herself. Naturally she loses her “true self”. The crisis in her life is not caused by a domestic wrangle but by the sudden death of their one-year old child baby girl, Anu.
In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the return of Sethe’s repressed past leads to a complete loss of identity as her fragmented sense of self begins to shatter altogether; however, when she successfully exercises her past, she finds that without it she cannot have a complete sense of identity. The ghost is said to feel rebukes, or scolded and discarded, for reasons that Denver, cannot discern. It is apparent to us that the ghost’s feelings represent disappointment at Sethe’s discarding of the memory that made up her identity.
In Beloved, motherhood is shows as an effective identity as it makes women love their children so strongly they will go through anything to help them. Once Sethe’s sons were old enough, they ran away so they could start their own lives safely, and find their own identities. The repression in the past caused them to lose their true self of identity.
“A man ain’t nothing but a man. But a son? Well, now, that’s somebody”(2.8-9). This line shows how a person’s identity can be defined by their age and their family. A son is a boy who is growing up and becoming a person who is characterized by the people around him and the way he is brought up. It is saying that it is too impersonal to define a single identity but a son is more specific and individual.
“Beloved you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face; you are me”(Ch.19.,255). This line shows that a person’s identity comes from who they are in relation to others. Family and relationships make people who they are. It shows how strong love can be between family and how precious family members are to one another.
In this novel, And the Mountains Echoed, the character Pari has a quest for her identity. Searching for own identity is one of the important issues that newly freed nations from colonial authority obsessed with. The crises in one way or another also related to the fact that societies and individuals once were colonized, now they are confused to find their real identity like Pari.
