Figurative Stylistics: An Analysis of Metaphor and Symbolism in Gurnah’s Afterlives

The study examines the role of the figurative language between traumatic past and the narrative embodiment in the book “Afterlives” by Abdulrazak Gurnah (2020). Located in the context of postcolonial literary criticism and oriented by the theories of trauma and memory, the work questions the use of figurative stylistics to bring to the surface the pasts that were historically suppressed by turning to the inerrable consequences. Using the qualitative, text-based analytical approach, the study relies on both the figurative stylistics and the postcolonial theory to identify the patterns of recurrent metaphors, symbolism, imagery, silence, and absence throughout the novel. Special attention is paid to the theme of wounds and scars, displacement landscapes, everyday object use, naming, and community membership, all overall used symbolically as media of memory in the narrative. To analyze the collected data the Leech and Short (2007) model was applied. The analysis shows that the stylistic decisions made by Gurnah are not a simple decoration, but they actively define the trauma of colonialism, fractured memory, and postcolonial identity. The research, by merging the close textual analysis and relevant theoretical frameworks, reveals an important gap in the existing literature in respect of the systematic stylistic analysis of Afterlives. The results indicate that figurative language is a central narrative process that indirectly transmits, negotiates, and makes meaning out of trauma. The findings of study contributes to the work of postcolonial literary criticism, figurative stylistics and trauma studies by providing a highly precise insight on how style, history and memory interact in postcolonial fiction nowadays. Key Words: Stylistics, Postcolonial, Imagery, Metaphors, Figurative