Dislocation: Teju Cole's Novel Open Term Paper

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Little is said about the relationship Julius has with his grandmother until mid-way through the book. The details of Julius' life are only sketchily filled out and are mainly illustrated through the stream-of-consciousness thoughts which transpire while he wanders. Often Julius' thoughts about critical theory and existentialism are recorded in more detail than the events of his past life.

Perhaps this is because the central theme of the book seems to be the 'unknowable' nature of others and our emotional dislocation from even friends and families. "Each person must, on some level, take himself as the calibration point for normalcy, must assume that the room of his own mind is not, cannot be, entirely opaque to him" says Julius (Cole 243). This suggests that the people Julius meets are not necessarily significant in and of themselves, or even accurately depicted. Rather, Julius chooses to include them because of what they symbolize about his own perspective of himself and his own emotional needs at the time of the encounter.

One of the longest extended dialogues is Julius' meeting with a former graduate student in Brussels named Farouq, whose dissertation was unjustly rejected, leaving him devastated and bereft of any profession.

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The fact that Julius is also a graduate student suggests a parallel existence with Farouq. But despite the amount of time they spend together, the two men do not become friends, and like most of the people Julius brushes against, he does not seem to retain any emotional connection to Farouq, but merely feels satisfied musing about him in a cool and distanced fashion.

Julius meets many people, but no true relationships develop. Just as Julius is a physical wanderer, he is also internally restless, and does not seem to have a profound desire to enter into meaningful friendships. He is content to observe. This becomes a metaphor for modern life and the modern condition beyond Julius: we meet many people, we have many fragmented aspects of ourselves, but we lack a coherent whole and connection to something stable.

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