Kire’s Mari: An Autobiographical Memory Narrative

Abstract

Autobiographical memory is a memory related to the self. It is a coherent account of the psychological history of oneself. It includes personal memory, autobiographical facts, generic personal memory and the self-schema. Easterine Kire’s Mari is a telling of the past life of the character Mari in a first-person narrative. Mari happened to live in the pre and post war period of the battle of Kohima - 1944. She was a survivor of war, too. The personal experience of Mari, coherently linked with social, cultural and political disturbances of the state of Nagaland, especially Kohima town, is narrated in the novel. The purpose of the paper is to analyse how far the book satisfies itself as an 'autobiographical memory narrative' by giving a close reading and understanding of the narration.