31, July 2025

Hangul-Man: Therianthropic Imagery in Malik Sajad’s Graphic Novel, Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir

VOLUME-11; ISSUE-7; JULY-2025

Author(s): Namitha Ann Thomas

Authors Affiliations:

Ph.D. Scholar, Department of English, Ethiraj College for Women, Chennai, India.

DOIs:10.2015/IJIRMF/202507045     |     Paper ID: IJIRMF202507045


Abstract
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This paper seeks to analyze the role and purpose of animal imagery in Malik Sajad’s graphic novel, Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir. The novel depicts the everyday uncertainties of life in an occupied territory such as Kashmir through its somber panels, and stark black-and-white images that predominantly feature acts of violence and grief. Like Spiegelman’s Maus, Sajad too uses the man-animal hybrid to represent the vulnerable position of the Kashmiri identity within the novel. Moreover, an examination of representative texts within the graphic medium confirms that theorizing the animal has become essential to sequential narratives of identity and otherness (Chaney). By reading the animal in the novel in the light of theoretical concepts such as “becoming-animal” (Deluze and Guittari) and “Animetaphor” (Baker), the paper explores the symbolic, subversive and emotional impact of this visual rhetoric.
Identity, Sequential Narratives, Hybridity, Animal Imagery, Subversive

Namitha Ann Thomas (2025); Hangul-Man: Therianthropic Imagery in Malik Sajad’s Graphic Novel Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir, International Journal for Innovative Research in Multidisciplinary Field, ISSN(O): 2455-0620, Vol-11, Issue-7, Pp. 297-301.         Available on –   https://www.ijirmf.com/

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