Reading Tahmima Anam ’ s Postcolonial Fiction- A Golden Age in the Light of Fredrick Jameson ’ s Concept of ‘ National Allegory ’

Tahmima Anam ’ s postcolonial fiction- A Golden Age is such a novel that can be called a narrative of the liberation war of Bangladesh. Despite having good art of characterization and universal theme with global appeal, it is plausible to dissect the thought and action of the characters as well as different events of this fiction with the argument of Fredrick Jameson that all the Third-World texts are actually ‘ National Allegory ’ . He asserted that even if a text of Third-World seems to contain private feelings and emotions, the underlying meaning is different since the author ’ s main purpose is to demonstrate the collective state of a nation where individual part matters less. That A Golden Age is a ‘ National Allegory ’ is the prime concern of this article in which it will be shown how Anam, a daughter of a freedom fighter, has portrayed her characters mainly to articulate the saga of 1971 in Bangladesh (the then East Pakistan).

native land. The author of this novel has inscribed this proud history of Bengal which gained independence through nine months' liberation war. This article attempts to investigate the narrative of A Golden Age and its substantial elements to be termed as Fredrick Jameson's 'national allegory'.

Jameson' Concept of 'National Allegory' & 'Third-World Literature'
Before evaluating Jameson's definition of 'national allegory', it would be pertinent to focus on what this phrase actually signifies in A Dictionary of Critical Theory. According to Oxford Reference, 'national allegory' isa type of narrative whose essential subject is the nation state. Because the life of a nation, large or small, exceeds the capacity of what any novel can actually accommodate, narrative fiction of this type uses allegory as a means of expressing a dimension of existence greater than that of the lives of its individual characters. National allegory tends to be focused on the lives of ordinary people, however, rather than heads of state or aristocracy, using their mundane daily struggles as a means of illustrating the state of the nation ("national allegory").
In a word, it can be said that national allegory actually implies a fiction to be allegorical where the state of mind of the individual is fully directed and understood by the state of the nation. That is, in national allegory, the daily struggle of the characters is used as a tool to demonstrate the struggle of the whole nation. Fredrick Jameson, in his article titled 'Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism', revised 'national allegory' and labeled all the thirdworld texts as 'national allegory'. It sparked intense controversy among the critical thinkers as it dismissed the literatures of the third-world countries, that is, Africa, South America and South Asia as having no global appeal. In this article, the Jameson proclaimed, "Third-World texts, even those which are seemingly private and invested with a properly libidinal dynamic -necessarily project a political dimension in the form of national allegory: the story of the private individual destiny is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the public third-world culture and society" (p. 69).
Jameson's argument is that there is no individual feeling or emotion emphasized in any Third-World text. All the characters essentially represent the sociopolitical, cultural and national state of affairs. It is contradictory on his part that being a Marxist thinker, Jameson  The obsession of parting from her children does not let Rehana be in peace. So she takes any kind of attempt to bring them back and establish her position of an affectionate and sacrificing mother in their minds. She no more wants to lose their sight and is always restless to keep them near herself.
Anam's portrayal of Rehana's anguish after the order of taking away the children from her being declared by the judge adequately describes the torments suffered by her and her subsequent undertakings in order to prove that she can be a good mother and bring her children up though not luxuriously but properly.
After the verdict,….she had fallen to her knees. She had not been able to convince anyone that even though she was poor, and friendless in this town…she could still be a mother to her children. Here the anguish and hope of the protagonist has been reflected which actually represents the collective state of the nation where everyone is pleading for a fair government like Mujib in order to serve the national interest. It certainly validates Jameson's categorizing the Third-World literature as 'national allegory'.
Through the setting of A Golden Age being chiefly in Bangladesh, the scenario of Bengal during the period of colonization by the West Pakistani rulers is emphasized. How people struggled for their existence with the West Pakistani oppressors and how they managed to have a peaceful country by different movements and revolution were the prime concern of the author. She actually narrated the saga of the freedom fighters especially the intellectual group of people in this fiction.
When the United Front won in the election of 1970, the Pakistani rulers procrastinated in order to outcast the Bengali leaders and term them as invalid so that they themselves could be in power for long. Step by step Sohail's mother Rehana, the protagonist, could deem the reasoning behind protest. Let us have a look on her following thought which gradually comes to her mind reflecting the author's own mind on the brutal history behind the mass upsurge. In order to save the country from the brutality of the Pakistani military, everyone beginning from the farmers, cobblers, fishermen, etc. to the intellectuals joined the war in different ways. Everyone contributed to the war according to their ability. The young people tried heart and soul to convince their parents in order to protect the nation and make it free from the grasp of the heinous armies. Sohail's pleading to his mother in order to get permission to join the war makes the whole scenario vivid to the eyes of the reader when he says, 'I can't sit back and do nothing, Ma. Everyone is fighting. Even people who were not sure, people who wanted to stay with Pakistan' (p. 79). He also said, 'Everyone has joined. Everyone. All the young men, fighting side by side. No one cares who anyone is. They've all joined, the peasant and the soldier, together, just as we've been dreaming. But things are bad, you know'(p. 100).
Rehana, being the mother of two children, always thought of the food supplies as she had to feed them. She waited for the barbarous days to be over and listened to the radio so that she could get some good news. But the picture was completely different as it contained killing and making the mothers' wombs empty. Her days were passing in the following ways.
She spent the days in stunned efficiency, counting and recounting the supplies, listening to the radio and discovering the violence that had been wrought upon the country. The deaths. The arrests. The children with no parents. The mothers with empty laps. The ones who simply vanished, leaving behind a comb or a pair of shoes (p. 85).
The author has truly said, 'They had been at war since March. What was strange had become unstrange' (A Golden Age 98). The reader can get a glimpse on how much savage the Pakistani heinous armies became through following words of Rehana in which she herself also seems to suffer from neurosis, a psychological disease due to encountering such a wretched condition of Sabeer. 'They beat him, broke his ribs. 'And they tore out his fingernails' (p. 215).
The following narration will also make the scenario of the then Bengal crystal clear to the reader and answer to the question why the Bengali people sacrificed their lives in order to get a free nation and have an identity of their own. In the way to gain the national identity, the women had to sacrifice a lot along with the men of our country. The young girls who were raped by the Pakistani soldiers were taken to the clinic in order to have an abortion so that the evil germ of the enemies could no longer be sprung and brought up on this land. Dreaming of a free nation, Maya made flag and 'whooped, draped the flag around her shoulders and ran to find a bamboo pole so they could secure it to the rooftop' (p. 48) as the flag symbolized the identity of a free nation.
There are a few minor characters in both the fictions-A Golden Age and The Good Muslim like Silvi, Joy, Pia, Mrs Chowdhury, Faiz, Parveen, Sabeer, etc. Their individual search for identity is significant to explore the author's intention to present the state of this nation during the Liberation War.
During the liberation war in the fiction, suddenly Silvi turns into religious dictates. She starts to search for her identity in the dictates and prohibitions of Islam and maintains Purdah. When everyone of Bengal wants freedom for the country, it is Silvi who wholeheartedly wants both the wings of Pakistan be united so that the Muslim Ummah can stay together. Her comment is shocking to the other characters as well as to the reader when she says, 'I happen to think this war-all this fighting-is a pointless waste of human life'(p. 248). According to Silvi, the Pakistani army was restoring order and making things safe by killing the Bengali people and so she could utter 'To separate the wings is a sin against your religion… Sometimes you have to make sacrifices' (248p.). This character is the embodiment of the religious sentiment of the then Bengal.
A Hindu female character named Mrs Sengupta presents the paradoxical state of her mind during the Liberation War which truly represents the vulnerable condition of the Hindu community at that time. She is a very modern and high educated lady having a taste for literature. At the outset of the war, when she steps to go back to her village for the concern of security, hearing the question of Rehana whether she is going to India, she feels hurt. Her confident answer is that this is her country too and her identity is linked with this very region. So there is no question of leaving this country. Quite contradictorily, in the refugee camp of India, we see Rehana taking shelter in search of her identity and that identity is the identity of honor. She becomes dumb and cannot talk any more while Reahana meets her at the camp. Through her writing, we can learn that the Pakistani military attacked their house and killed her husband and young son while she ran away in order to save both her life and honour. Her writing shows the vivid picture of that event: 'I left him and ran into the pond. I didn't think about him, I just ran. They shot him' (p. 232). This scenario of helplessness is very commonly seen when any reader goes through the history of war.

CONCLUSION:
After reading this narrative, it seems that Tahmima Anam, being a patriotic author, has incorporated the tale of this country where thought and action of the characters are the true representation of that of the Bengali people which definitely certifies this text as a 'national allegory.' Despite being poor in wealth and arms how all the Bengalis fought and resisted the Pakistani armies during the Liberation War in order to achieve a national identity has marvelously been narrated by the author. The struggles, the pains, the hopes and the aspirations of the characters suggest A Golden Age to be Fredrick Jameson's 'national allegory' as the underlying sense of nationalism behind all the events has wonderfully been revealed here.