QUEST FOR IDENTITY IN LITERARY WRITINGS

Abstract

The search for one's own identity is a common
topic in postcolonial literature, and it is a story
that unfolds over the course of a person's life,
as they are dispersed and forced to adopt the
identity of a "foreign place." "Identity" is a
vague concept that has no meaning. When
people are unable to meet their basic
requirements and are unable to play a constant
role in the society in which they live, they begin
to search for a sense of identity. People are
uprooted for a variety of causes, including
partition, global wars, natural disasters, or the
need to migrate in order to find better
employment opportunities elsewhere. In the
course of human history, migration has been a
never-ending saga. We feel like we belong
"everywhere," and then we feel like we don't
belong anywhere anymore. Displaced persons
had a difficult time adjusting to their new
surroundings, recovering from the psychological
impacts, and adjusting to their new
surroundings. There was a new branch of
literature called Diasporic literature that
emerged as a result of people being forced to
relocate. In Diasporic writing, the authors
discovered a solution to their existing dilemma
by expressing their inner thoughts. Authors of
diasporic literature are concerned with the
issue of identity. Writers such as Salman
Rushdie, Bharati Mukherjee, Meena Alexander,
Rohinton Mistry and Jhumpa Lahiri have all
come out of this terrible experience.. The
primary focus of this paper is on how Lahiri's
characters deal with issues of identity, isolation,
conflict, and existence in her collection of short
stories, "Unaccustomed Earth," and how they
confront these perennial problems in order to
establish their identities in the foreign land
while contemplating their motherland left
behind