Left Out in the Cold: Abandonment, Secrets, and Displacement in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Oleander Girl

Abstract

This paper explores how abandonment, secrets and displacement occur to shape Karobi’s thrust of anxiety and her identity. She experiences a primal sense of abandonment that her attachments turn into anxiety and distrust. The revelation of secrets from her grandfather and grandmother shook her sense of home, which led her to travel to America to find her identity and biological father. Secrets act as both wound and catalyst. Displacement played a vital role in Karobi’s fragmented identities. Karobi, the protagonist, doesn’t choose recovery by staying at home; instead, she chooses displacement. In this novel, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni beautifully conveys the experience of a woman archetypal protagonist’s quest for Identity through her core desire, beset by challenges, to rebuild who she is, where we can feel the depth of her pain at a young age and her emergence as a proud identity. She also shows how a resilient individual turned into an independent one.