The aim of this study is to examine Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea through the combination of cultural mimicry and hybridity to explain how these two dynamics shape a multi-layered identity crisis. Focusing on Homi Bhabha’s mimicry, hybridity and “Third Space” theories, this study explores how the main characters of the novel sustain their lives; Latif Mahmud and especially focusing on Saleh Omar who navigates between two different cultural worlds within a false identity to survive his exile. However, his mimicry fails creating an authentic belonging; rather, it increases the alienation and internal fragmentation. His experiences reveal that hybridity may tend to be a zone of existential dislocation, rather than a creative place of cultural negotiation. This study argues that Gurnah portrays the postcolonial subject as suspended between cultures and able to neither reconstruct the past nor integrate into the target society. As the study is structured in three chapters, it first establishes the theoretical foundations for understanding identity formation under colonial influence. It then analyses how Gurnah’s characters exemplify mimicry and hybridity that converge to produce silence and alienation. Finally, it explores how narrative and human connection act as catalysts for identity reconstruction The study finds that the interplay of mimicry and hybridity results in a double consciousness that leaves the characters initially voiceless and isolated. Through the analysis of silence, displacement and manipulation of identity, this study highlights the destructive structure of hybridity and mimicry, arguing that postcolonial identity formation is characterized more by fragmentation and alienation than by unity.
Aydemir et al. (Sat,) studied this question.