Negotiations of Violence and Self-Identity: The Author’s Biography Mirrors the Narrator’s Self-Images in The House of Hunger

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between Dambudzo Marechera’s biography and the construction of identity in The House of Hunger, arguing that the narrator’s self‑imaging reflects the author’s lived experiences. Using an adapted psychoanalytic model informed by Brendon Nicholls, the study explores how Marechera’s nonconformist disposition shapes the text’s narrative strategies and fragmented structure. Psychoanalytic criticism, complemented by postcolonial theory, is applied to analyse how both the author and the narrator negotiate self-identity within the violent political and cultural landscape of Rhodesia. The article demonstrates that the interplay between biography and fiction produces a doubling effect in which life and text become mutually constitutive. Through symbolism, condensation, and shifting narrative voices, the narrative encodes psychological material rooted in personal and historical trauma. Ultimately, the narrator’s fluid identity mirrors the author Marechera’s own negotiations of political, cultural, and existential dislocation, revealing selfhood as a dynamic process shaped by violence, resistance, and continual redefinition.