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John Updike, one of America’s avant-garde novelists, is one of those who have fictionalized the post-9/11 atmosphere and consequences in his 22nd novel, Terrorist. By means of employing a Muslim American teenager as the main character, the Muslim other in Terrorist has been characterized within the post-9/11 geopolitical context of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. This paper sets out to address Terrorist’s exemplifications of geography of these Muslim countries and situate them within post-9/11 geopolitical and colonial contexts. Colonial shadows are the inferences and insinuations where colonial acts and conditions are justified, vindicated and normalized either through the narrative’s representation of Muslims or via demonstrating pertaining geographies. By illustrating the narrative’s colonial shadows, this paper aims at fathoming and expounding the overt and covert colonial implications and associations between the narrative and colonized topographies. In Terrorist, Palestinians are represented in connection with violence and terrorism in comparison with the non-violent Israelis in order to vindicate the Israeli colonial standing in Palestine. Also, American colonial wars on Iraq and Afghanistan are shown as benign and justified self-defense acts.
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In-Text Citation: (Alosman, Raihanah, & Hashim, 2019)
To Cite this Article: Alosman, M. I. M., Raihanah, M. M., & Hashim, R. S. (2019). Colonial Shadows in John Updike’s Terrorist. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 9(1), 1–17.
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