Redeeming Identity Through Melting and Transformation in Divakaruni’s Oleander Girl

ABSTRACT

Oleander Girl is about a girl orphaned at birth.  Seventeen – year – Old  Karobi Roy has enjoyed a sheltered childhood with her adoring grandparents.  But she is troubled by the silence that surrounds her parents’ death and clings fiercely to her only inheritance from them:  The love notes she found in her mother’s book of poetry.  Karobi dreams of finding a love as powerful as her parents’  love one day, and it seems her wish has come true when she meets Rajat, the only son of a high profile family .  But shortly after their engagement a heart attack kills her grandfather revealing serious financial problems and a devastating secret about Karobi’s past.  Shattered by the discovery and by her grandparents, she goes on a courageous search across America to find her true identity.  Her dramatic, often startling journey ultimately, thrusts her into the most difficult decision of her life.   Karobi’s departure to America makes her strong and evolves her personality as a self-confident girl. Karobi moves from submission to self assertion in order to acquire an identity in the society.  After undergoing suffering, trauma and frustration in her life, she realises that she has to do away with her submissive and passive attitude towards life in order to emerge as confident, self-reliant and courageous woman. The paper focuses on the process of transformation of the protagonist Karobi of Divakaruni’s novel Oleander Girl through melting and, the redeeming of her identity.

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