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Omar Ahmed

Mrs. Williams

Honors ELA 10

7 January 2018

Casting the Shadow Lines

Have you ever taken the chance to sit down and ponder upon your memories, memories

of key events that shaped you into the unique individual you are today? Well, The Shadow Lines

is a book in which the narrator does exactly so, and boy is it vividly animated! The Shadow Lines

is a fictional novel written by Amitav Ghosh in which an unnamed narrator shares his scattered

memories with his readers; memories that covered many aspects of the narrator’s life. These

memories consist of events from his innocent childhood, relationships with family members and

friends, moments of despair, and moments of joy. When sharing memories, the narrator does not

only jump back and forth between time periods, but also between settings, forming an extremely

dynamic plot for the audience. These settings mainly consisted of India, especially the city of

Calcutta, and the British cities of London and Cambridge.

“My Grandmother didn’t approve of Tridib. He’s a loafer and a wastrel, I would

sometimes hear her saying to my parents; he doesn’t do any proper work, lives off his father’s

money” (4). In this quote, the narrator reveals just how much his grandmother despised his uncle

Tridib, as he wastes his time at road time stalls chattering away with strangers. This quote is a

great portrayal of one of the book’s greater themes: the clash of ideologies and values between

the older folks and the youth within a foreign family. For instance, his grandmother highly

regards every second of her precious time; meanwhile, she bashed Tridib, calling him a “loafer”
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that did not show any care for his time, even though she did acknowledge the fact the he doesn’t

always kill time. In fact, Tridib was working towards a PhD in archaeology; however, that

profession still meant nothing to the grandmother. Another instance in this novel that would slot

under the umbrella of this theme is when Ila took Robi and the narrator to a night club. While

sitting down and enjoying their glasses of wine, Ila mindlessly decided to test Robi’s patience

when he told her not to dance with any of the businessmen at the neighboring table. She pulled

the wrong trigger in doing so, and Robi infuriatedly dragged her away from the club altogether.

Robi made it clear to her it afterward that Indian girls do not act like that; however, Ila was so

affected by living in the Western society of London that she didn’t see anything morally

incorrect about her actions in the club. In this case, Robi’s morals that were inherited from the

older side of his culture conflicted with Ila’s ethics that she picked up whilst living in a Western

society. This theme is not at all uncommon in our current social situation, in which our vast

development over the past few decades have marked such revolutionary advances in the fields of

technology, education, and the different trends, whether it be in music or clothing styles, that

millennials blindly follow. People of older times would more than likely have a thing or two to

say about these advances, and how “old school” clearly had the upper hand in all these fields,

except for the technological field that is.

In terms of how the book could resonate with me on a personal level, I would say that I

could fully relate to the familial exchanges between my native country, Yemen, and my

residential country, the United States of America. Since my nuclear family isn't living in our

native country, we make visits to our native country the way Ila or Shaheb would. As immigrants

who have established their residence in a Western country, we ought to make visits to our native

country to replenish ourselves with cultural nutrients that we otherwise wouldn’t find in our
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residential country in the United States of America. Moreover, it is important to keep in touch

with your family members back in your native country, as it is a way of acknowledging and

appreciating your origins.

Just like any novel, The Shadow Lines does have weaknesses in some areas. One of the

most notable cons I would like to point out is Amitav's idiosyncratic syntax; to be more specific,

I am heavily referring to the way he punctuates his dialogue. Of the hundreds of examples, and I

mean hundreds, the following quote, "Look, look, my grandmother whispered in my ear as the

car drew up to the pavement. He's got a new one today" (34), would serve as the perfect

example. One could immediately notice that Amitav has disposed the use of quotation marks

altogether when writing his dialogue. This disposal of quotation marks left me puzzled at times,

as I had to figure out whether he was quoting a character or speaking as the narrator, and that

leads me onto my next point. I must admit that I was confused at times throughout this novel for

several reasons. Firstly, the use of a foreign language in this novel creates a penetrable barrier for

those who don't speak Indian. It is a barrier to the understanding of the novel, but it is

nonetheless penetrable as it does not completely leave the reader naïve to the events of the story.

Also, the fact that Amitav jumps from setting to setting and frequently adds more characters to

the book as the story goes on just ensures that the reader has his or her full attention while

reading the book; otherwise, they would inevitably be lost.

Finally, what better way to end this review than with the novel’s areas of strength! For

one thing, his excessive use of imagery cannot go unnoticed. Imagery is conveyed by many

authors in their novels, but Amitav uses another literary device within the literary device of

imagery to illustrate vivid images in the minds of his readers. Amitav used the literary device of

similes to convey another literary device, his imagery. This loophole of literary devices just
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makes the novel all the more interesting! The use of analogies to describe anything could vastly

help the audience relate to the description in a certain way. For instance, when Amitav was

describing how people stared at the unique Shaheb wherever he happened to walk, he said that,

"Wherever he went, heads turned towards him like spotlights following a model" (34). Reading

that, one would know that the heads of the fellow Indian dwellers were faced in the exact

direction of Shaheb the way the head of a spotlight would, and that their eyes were glued on him

the way that the light of a spotlight would highlight any highly regarded individual.

Overall, this book was an okay read in my opinion. If I were to rate it from one to ten, I

would give it a seven out of ten. It’s about time you ponder about your memories and peek into

this book!