The Fractured Self: Psychological Liminality and Schizophrenic Consciousness in Aravind Adiga’s Novels

Abstract

Aravind Adiga's fiction presents characters entangled in a condition of psychological liminality and schizophrenic awareness, formed by postcolonial conflict, migration, and metropolitan disconnection. Although there has been considerable scholarship around Adiga's work focusing on themes of class war, corruption, and economic inequality, limited consideration has been given to the extreme mental fragmentation and identity disintegration that his protagonists experience. This paper explores how characters like Balram Halwai in The White Tiger, Manju in Selection Day, and Danny in Amnesty experience fractured identities, paranoia, and existential crises as they navigate the contradictions of modern India and global displacement. The analysis is framed through the lens of Homi Bhabha’s concept of liminality, Frantz Fanon’s postcolonial psychology, Freud’s theory of the uncanny, and Deleuze & Guattari’s schizophrenic subject under capitalism. These theories gain insight into Adiga's characters living in several, usually contending selves, reflecting India itself grappling with postcolonial modernity. Examining narrative strategies, such as unreliable narration, stream of consciousness, and disjointed narrative, this paper claims that Adiga's fiction corresponds to the inward psychological disunities of people in between tradition and modernity, belonging and foreignness, and desire and alienation.

By combining postcolonial studies with psychological critique, this research paper presents a new insight into Adiga's novels regarding how mental instability, broken selfhood, and luminal consciousness are at the center of his literary representation of the modern Indian nation and its displaced subjects.