Shame

The narrator of Shame claims that he wants to write a “modern fairy tale” (70) rather than an authentic depiction of Pakistan. To the narrator, there is something inherently artificial about the newly-created country of Pakistan that is difficult to express in literary terms. As such, the narrator makes the decision to combine the reality of the country with the unreality of a fairy tale. Shame is therefore presented as a political allegory cloaked in magical realism, in which the idea of a fairy tale affects all the characters and separates them further and further from any sense of reality. The role of the narrator is important in this respect. The narrator is not detached and objective. Instead, he is invested in his role as the storyteller. He makes frequent interjections to clarify his political beliefs, he provides assurances to his audience of what is to come, and he provides an explanation for why he believes so strongly in the importance of the unreality of Pakistan as a means of understanding the country. The world of Shame is a fairy tale world, in which the characters adhere to archetypes and literary expectations. This is, however, a decidedly modern fairy tale, for the narrative—as the narrator fully admits—struggles to bear the weight of reality. Occasionally, the literary elements of the story cannot hide the brutality of reality. Rape, religious persecution, and torture are all portrayed, even if they are subsumed into a broader fairy-tale framework. Reality and unreality compete to describe the true nature of Pakistan, creating a modern fairy tale that is a blend of literary tradition and contemporary political violence.

The most dominant aspect of the literary, fairy-tale nature of Shame is the fanciful portrayal of Sufiya. With her mental capacity, she struggles to assert herself as a fully-realized adult character. Instead, her role in the story is often allegorical. She embodies the shame of others, absorbing the shame that they should be feeling and turning it into a burning, painful sensation. Her skin literally burns with the shame of others, a fantastical expression of the internalization of shame that pervades society. Sufiya therefore functions as literary allegory, with the narrator describing her transition as the sedatives administered to her by her husband Omar turn her “from one fairy-tale into another, into sleeping-beauty instead of beauty-and-beast” (237).

Reality cannot be denied for too long, however, and she emerges from this sedation and escapes. Sufiya wanders the countryside, killing people and animals. In this moment, she disappears from the narrative and becomes a folk tale. She is a story told through gossip and whispers, whose indefinability and unreality blend together to become a pure story. At this point, Sufiya herself no longer exists; only the legend of the “Beast” remains. This story is powerful, so much so that Raza and Omar fear for their lives. They are almost more concerned about Sufiya than they are about the angry mobs and the coup against their government. Thus, Sufiya transcends her peripheral social status to become pure legend, showing the effect that a fairy tale can have upon the “real world.” The way in which she combines the unreality of the fairy tale and the brutal reality of violence illustrates why she is the perfect representation of the narrator’s desire to create a modern fairy tale. Her violence is fueled by modern emotions, expressed on a modern stage, providing an allegory for modern politics in Pakistan. Sufiya may be more literary than she is real, but this unreality is an important symbol of the novel’s desire to function as a modern fairy tale that blends reality and fantasy as the only conceivable way in which to explore the brutality and complexity of the contemporary world.