Abstract
JUNGIAN ANALYSIS OF HANIF KUREISHI’S “MY SON THE FANATIC”
Sobia Abdulrehman*, Sohail Qamar Khan
ABSTRACT
Literature, conceived as a ?1aboratory? of human life, provides examples of human experience presumably common to all readers.(Lois Tyson p.5) This article aims at analyzing Hanif Kureishi?s short story ?My Son the Fanatic? with reference to Carl Jung?s theory of shadow and persona. This is the story about a Pakistani immigrant, Parvez, who weaves the dreams of becoming prosperous in the western community by putting his son in the field of accountancy. Parvez is a well-settled taxi-driver in England. Strange things begin to happen in his life with the conversion of his son into his ancestral religion. Contrary to his father, the son begins to feel himself out of his elements there. A tussle is observed between the father and the son, father wants his son to adopt western ways and the son struggles to bring his father back to his origin, his fundamentalism. With the application of Jungian theory of shadow and persona to the said text, the researcher finds that the father and the son are actually two sides of the same personality that is Parvez. Parvez puts on the mask of a well-settled immigrant but cannot suppress his shadow related to his Muslim culture that keeps on growing and strengthening in the shape of his son, Ali. Parvez?s deeds are incompatible with his ideology. He wants to imprint his western ideas onto his son but in vain. Furthermore the research paper expounds why the immigrants have to face problems when they go outside their culture.
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