Akshita Chotia
Research Scholar, Department of English and Modern European Languages, Banasthali University, Rajasthan. Email: akshitasharma0023@gmail.com
Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.34
Abstract
The contemporary philosophical, intellectual and literary plentitudes aver the fact that travel literature deals with the discourse of identity. Travel records our temporal and spatial progress. It throws light on how one is defined and identified. Many critical texts on travel writing have explored the transcendental world of the journey of the human self. Further, there have been some critical theorists from India as well who have also examined the uncanny nature of journey and therefore the journey in the outside world is represented as a metaphor of the journey of the internal world. In addition, there have been some Indian women writers who have explored the complex terrain of journey that a woman undertakes and through the process they explore themselves. The present paper intends to explore the journey from an existential crisis to the growth of the woman self in the book The Shooting Star: A Girl, Her Backpack and the World (2018) by Shivya Nath. The vivid descriptions, moving encounters and the uplifting adventures of an Indian woman which are depicted in the book, map not only the world but also the human spirit. The study intends to apply the basic arguments of female bildungsroman and theory of self for understanding the process of growth and development as far as the life of the protagonist is concerned.
Keywords: identity crisis, exploration of the woman self, female bildungsroman, travel literature
