VOICE, FOCALIZATION, AND SOCIOPOLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS: A LINGUISTIC NARRATOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF NOON MEEM RASHID’S HASSAN KOZA GAR

Abstract

This paper offers a linguistic-narratological examination of Noon Meem Rashid’s modernist poem Hassan Koza Gar, emphasizing the ways in which narrative voice, focalization, temporal sequencing, and modes of speech and thought create psychological depth in conjunction with socio-political significance. Employing Michael Toolan’s framework of linguistic narratology, the study examines the poem as a cohesive narrative discourse rather than merely a symbolic or lyrical composition. The paper illustrates, through meticulous line-by-line analysis and systematic tabulation, how Rashid's linguistic selections control access to consciousness, influence reader alignment, and encode ideological stances regarding Labor, Class marginalization, and Creative Alienation. The analysis demonstrates that prolonged first-person internal focalization, along with transitions into external observation and reported speech, facilitates the convergence of individual experience with material social reality. The poem's criticism of long-term deprivation is made even stronger by the way it moves back and forth between memory and the present. The research demonstrates the relevance of linguistic narratology to poetic narratives in modernist socio-political frameworks.