Representation of Cultural Trauma in Saadat Hasan Manto’s Selected Stories

Abstract

This research paper examines Saadat Hasan Manto’s selected stories from the collection Kingdom’s End, with a special attention to its representation of partitions. For this, the paper uses cultural trauma as methods to delve into the narrative of the stories. Manto's story collection, Kingdom's End reflects the traumatic conditions of people due to afoot violence. With regard to this fact, this study assumes that separation can lead to intolerable or uncontrollable problems without knowing its further results. Psychology is disturbed by war, and the arousal of hostility in the human mind leads them to consciously carry out barbaric, inhuman and sinful behavior. Due to long lasting effects of violence, they are unable to deal with such problems. So, to bring the issue of cultural trauma into forefront, this paper highlights the fearsome situations in the stories and then analyses them thoroughly. The stories are: “The Assignment”, “The Women in the Red Raincoat”, “The Last Salute”, ‘The Dog of Titwal”, and “Two-nation Theory”. Similarly the later part of the paper explores the socio-political circumstances and the author’s standpoint to depict the real fettle of society. My entry point is territorial partition, this took me to cultural trauma and it’s far reaching consequences. Thus, my central research anxiety is to examine how territorial dislocation creates animosity and cultural trauma affects more than ever. Key Words: Cultural trauma, humanitarianism, revolt, tradition, territorial dislocation