An Investigation of Stylistic Strategies in Mohsin Hamid’s A Beheading

Abstract

The present study aims to investigate stylistic strategies in Mohsin Hamid’s short story A Beheading. The present research is mixed method approach in nature. It incorporates Leech and Short’s Style in Fiction while focusing on different levels of stylistic analysis. The findings reveal that Mohsin has very artistically and deliberately employed stylistic devices at phonological level in the form of alliteration, consonance, assonance, onomatopoeia, contractions and rhyme to blur the line between prose and poetry. Moreover, the artistic use of sounds creates a rhythmic realm and harmony in the short story. At morphological level, the story contains compounding, coinage and jargon. At graphological level, there is a deviant use of capitalization. At Lexico-semantic level the writer has employed different stylistic devices such as simile, anti-thesis, analogy, synecdoche etc.  to convey deep meanings. And syntactic level parallelism and deviation play a significant role in making Hamid’s style unique and interesting. The findings further suggest that Mohsin Hamid has a very unique, elegant, creative and captivating style.  This short story is a well-crafted piece in very few words. The short story is written in verse style. These stylistic devices play a significant role in conveying the overarching theme of violence, hopelessness and helplessness in the short story.