Dupler has published numerous essays and has taught college English. In this essay, Dupler looks at how the concept of identity plays a central role in a novel with a postcolonial setting.

Postcolonial studies has arisen as a literary field as scholars think about the changes occurring in the cultures and individuals that have become free of British colonial rule. Postcolonial studies concerns itself with the analysis of the nationalism and politics that brought about colonial rule and then dismantled it. The field also considers differences between people that led to concepts like nationalism; how these differences are created and sustained by cultures and individuals; and how they become conflicts. In the postcolonial world, first and third world cultures often collide, and in these conditions, racial and gender differences are often magnified as well. The concept of identity is a major consideration in postcolonial studies because the...