GAPS AND SILENCES AS IDEOLOGICAL STRATEGY: A MARXIST CRITIQUE OF THE BLIND MAN’S GARDEN BY NADEEM ASLAM.

Abstract

This paper explores the purpose of gaps and silences in The Blind Man’s Garden (2013) by Nadeem Aslam and how these constitute ideological tactics that encode socio-economic and political tensions. Although numerous scholars have extensively examined the portrayal of war and human suffering in Aslam, they have not looked at the contribution made by what is unsaid to the ideological criticism in the narrative. Specifically, the study supports the following question: How do narrative gaps and silences in the novel serve to cover and uncover the underlying class ideologies and socio-economic tensions in a Marxist analysis? This paper is based on an application of a Marxist theoretical framework and employs the textual analysis technique introduced by Catherine Belsey to analyze how omission, absence, and internalized experiences are utilised as a willful narrative strategy. The major passages are discussed in a way that they argue silences hide the material origin of war, reveal individual sufferings, and emphasize the embodied effects of being oppressed in the system. The study will indicate that the narrative gaps created by Aslam are not simple aesthetic elements but rather instruments of ideology, which, regardless of the fact that they manipulate the perception of the reader unknowingly, reveal socio-economic inequalities. Through attention to the unspoken, the study is part of a better comprehension of the ability of literature to encode power relations and systemic oppression, producing new results on how narrative form, ideology, and social critique interact in modern postcolonial fiction.