Healing Through Kinship: Male Friendship and Identity in Easterine Kire's Bitter Wormwood

Abstract

This paper analyses the quality and strength of friendship between Mose, the protagonist, and Neituo in Easterine Kire’s Bitter Wormwood. She is considered the first Naga poet to publish in English and the first Naga novelist to write in English. In her novel Bitter Wormwood, the characters change drastically, offering a glimpse of what Nagaland was like then and of how their relationship transformed during the Naga freedom struggle. In this book, we see the friendship between Mose and Neituo as they exchange tones in wartime, share small acts of kindness, and understand the landscapes they find themselves in. This work represents their companionship with Mose and Neituo, as they used to share experiences during the war. The heroes also show skill in facing tragedy gracefully rather than becoming bitter. Throughout the story, their friendship and experiences of historical events in Nagaland are depicted. Bitter Wormwood places more emphasis on social realism rather than heroic archetypes and foreshadows the ordinary existence of people in the Nagaland pious community. Patience, as in the case of Mose and Neituo, is a nexus between individual healing and social fortitude, thus a conduit to healing. A close textual analysis reveals the emotional system that represents a stable affective scale and describes male friendship in the context of a violent historical environment.