“To me, I no man yet!”: Indo-Trinidadian Manhood in Samuel Selvon’s A Brighter Sun and V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas (original) (raw)
Related papers
Self-Assertion in Caribbean Literature: An Examination of Samuel Selvon's A Brighter Sun
Self-assertion is not the only theme in Samuel Selvon’s The Brighter Sun. It is just one of the different themes of Caribbean literary works. In understanding the theme of Caribbean literary works, one has to study the history of Caribbean region to be able to appreciate why the literary artist of that region write the way they do, and therefore discover their preoccupation. Their zeal to write was fired by the socio-political, economic and social realities of the zone. Apart from the aborigines that the colonialist met on their “discovering” of what they called the “New World”, through slavery and slave trade, we have indigenes from Africa and Asia who were added to the Caribbean region. The European colonialists saw these people who were blacks and coloured as being less than humans. They were enslaved, maltreated and subjected to varied forms of inhuman treatment. But with time, these people grew into self-consciousness and self realization that they should not accept such ill-treatment from the colonialists. This necessitated the effort by writers to inspire the Caribbean with different literary works, through the exploration of different themes that would spur the people to action. This paper tries to explore extensively the attempt by Samuel Selvon to portray the theme of self-assertion as it affects the citizens of the Caribbean as exemplified by Tiger. We will not look at how the author portrays other themes and sub-themes in the text. Time and space would allow us to look at how other Caribbean writers portray the theme of self-assertion in their different literary works.
Cultural Crisis in V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas
2017
V. S. Naipaul is considered to be one of the most prominent expatriate novelists having first hand colonial experience. The present novel deals with cultural crisis in postcolonial societies with an explicit account of the common complexities inborn among the marginalized societies. Naipaul’s works are commonly regarded as an implicit biography of his departure from the narrow background of the Caribbean island to the open cosmopolitan culture of the world at large. He carries three conflicting, at a time, interacting components in his personality of being a Trinidadian colonial, an English metropolitan, and a person of Indian ancestry. Naipaul delineates the Indian immigrants’ dilemma, his problems and plights in a fast changing world. In his works one can find the agony of an exile; the pangs of a man in search of meaning and identity: a daredevil who has tried to explore myths and see through fantasies. Out of his dilemma is born a rich body of writings which has enriched diaspor...
MASCULINITY AS PRISON IN SAMUEL SELVON’S "A BRIGHTER SUN": JOURNEYING FROM BOY TO MAN
Samuel Selvon’s A Brighter Sun has been largely approached in terms of Selvon’s use of language and his social themes. In this paper, I start from the premise that approaching Selvon’s text from a gendered, masculinity studies perspective produces alternative insights into this text. I focus on protagonist Tiger’s journey from boyhood to manhood and argue that, through his depiction of Tiger’s engagement with his culture, Selvon constructs a central metaphor where the tenor is masculinity and the vehicle is prison. To examine Selvon’s representation of Tiger’s journey, I utilize Michel Foucault’s idea of the panoptic and Judith Butler’s notion of gender as performance, suggesting that Selvon develops a carceral conception of normative Indo masculinity, supervising and restricting Tiger.
The Novel since 1970 (in A History of Literature in the Caribbean)
A History of Literature in the Caribbean. Volume 2: English- and Dutch-Speaking Regions, ed. by A. James Arnold, 2001
Since 1970, Caribbean fiction in English has continued to evolve by producing more original talents and imposing itself on the international scene as one of the most innovative and diversified achievements to have emerged from the postcolonial world. Its originality lies partly in its impressively wide range of language forms from classical traditional prose to the highly metaphorical through a remarkable diversity of regional dialects and idiosyncratic blendings of voices and oral rhythms into literary prose. It lies also in the writers' vision of the West Indian experience in the Caribbean itself or in exile which, either in its regional multiracial and multicultural makeup or in a widespread displacement to North America and Britain, is representative of a largely universal condition. It must be noted, however, that whatever society they have chosen to live in, West Indian novelists have generally resisted the temptation of international postmodernism, no doubt stimulated by the need to envision a promising future for their people rather than adhere to the non-referential world view of "First" and "Second" World Western writers. In addition, the social and political unrest of the early seventies in the Caribbean was an incentive to many to investigate the sources of conflict and the possibilities of harmonious living in the islands and in Guyana: while exile remained a pervasive theme, much fiction from the seventies onward deals with the advisability of returning to the Caribbean in order to contribute to the building of a new society. Many contemporary West Indian writers, however, have been preoccupied with the creation, or the expression, of a Caribbean consciousness and of a specifically Caribbean aesthetics, even while they sometimes denied such a possibility, as is the case with the Naipaul brothers and their nephew Neil Bissoondath. Other writers, namely Earl Lovelace and Michael Anthony, have sought the essence of a genuine Caribbean culture in the folk tradition, especially carnival.
Indialogs: Spanish Journal of India Studies, 2022
This article argues that the novel A House for Mr. Biswas (1961), by Nobel-prize winner V.S. Naipaul reflects, through the metaphor of the house, characteristically Caribbean concerns regarding the meanings of home. Therefore, it is argued that the Indo-Caribbean community should be accounted for in theories of creolisation which, until recently, have ignored this community in favour of a unified Afro-creole identity that was to support the struggle for independence and other rights. The aim of this article is to understand creolisation by taking into account the interactions between the diverse diasporas that have created the contemporary Caribbean. As such, the novel unveils the conflicts that arise when there is a neglect of such negotiation. With its ending, even if not openly, A House for Mr. Biswas emphasises the immanence of lived experience in the perception of identity. The home in the novel eventually transitions into Avtar Brah's homing desire, a concept that challenges essentialism in the apprehension of diasporic identities. Reading the novel through this lens reconsiders the meanings of home in the context of the Caribbean in general and the Indo-Caribbean community in particular.
Quest for Identity and Survival in V S Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas
Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipual was born on 17th August 1932 at Chaguanas, Trinidad. He is known for his comic novels set in Trinidad. Naipaul has published more than 30 books both of fiction and nonfiction. His best known works are A House for Mr. Biswas, In a Free State and A Bend in The River. He was awarded the Booker prize in 1971 and Nobel Prize in 2001. A House for Mr. Biswas tells the story of its protagonist; he experienced a new life at every step of his life. A House for Mr. Biswas (1961), Naipaul took inspiration from childhood memories of his father. Mr. Biswas seemed fated from his birth to be a victim of circumstances and misfortune. Poverty and despondence hang out his life throughout. But he refuses to give up his ambition of owning a house and so build another during the Port of Spain phase of his life. A House as a metaphor works throughout the novel. He is known as a cosmopolitan writer. He is unhappy about the cultural and spiritual life of Trinidad, he feels disgruntle from India and in England
The Value of Intertextuality in Selvon's The Lonely Londoners and Naipaul's The Mimic Men
Studies on comparative literature have been fragmentary concentrating on one or two aspects of the thematic concerns of novels without emphasizing the concepts of divergent and convergent intertextuality. This paper aims to revisit Selvon's The Lonely Londoners re-reading it in dialogue with Naipaul's novel The Mimic Men. The selected novels are controversial. Criticism deployed on all fronts conveys the pluralities and oppositions that are in fact the novels' hallmarks. Yet, the aspects criticized attest to, and confirm, the authors' taking of the less trodden track. The comparative analysis within the scope of this paper will show that Naipaul's and Selvon's fictional representations of creolized Trinidadian and English societies highlight specific cultural and linguistic aspects and that intertextuality is either convergent or divergent. For instance, the structure of Naipaul's text takes as much from Caribbean orature and the wake of Caribbean plantation culture. However, Selvon's novel takes the form of flashbacks. Naipaul innovates and transforms Selvon's structure to generate a Caribbean context, par excellence. Traces of Selvon's style are present in Naipaul's corrosive voice of representing Caribbean identity. Naipaul brings to an apotheosis the creative force already illustrated in the remarkable works of Selvon. This paper aims to track these traces and foreground the idea that texts can speak to each other. More significantly, this paper assesses the main characters' fates to re-question the status of creoles, a status deliberately put between parentheses, denying them the right to voice their hybrid identities. Above all, the close textual reading of Galahad's and Singh's stories is meant to value the trope of intertextuality.
African Research Review, 2011
The Colonization by Great European powers of the Caribbean accounted for the islands becoming pawns in the hands of warring nations. Hence, the Caribbean as a place is regarded as the "Great Wrong" of imperial atrocities perpetrated against formerly colonized nations. This act foistered and festered on the peoples sensibilities, inevitably leaving them with a fractured psyche. The consequence is palpable as they continuously seek for true identity on the islands. V. S. Naipauls' novels embody this quest that reveals the alienation that confronts them in every facet of existence which is a further demonstration of their chequered history. This paper examines the residual effects of colonialism within the Caribbean and the struggle to address this dislocation in order to assure a recognizable identity for the people that guarantee a self-empowered Caribbean future. Accordingly, Peter Nezareth (1977:148) in his study, "The Mimic Men as a study of corruption" acquiesces that: Such a society understandably has no inner values. It merely copies its way of life from western consumer society... it is dazzled by the glitter of luxuries. It admire only success Burrowing in on this therefore one could see how alienated and rootless the people are in their environment. An underlying philosophy that V. S. Naipaul brings to focus in A House for Mr. Biswas, The Mimic Men and Miguel Street, the three works this paper examines.
2021
Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British writer whose works combining magical realism with historical fiction, is primarily concerned with the many connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, with much of his fiction being set on the Indian subcontinent. On the other hand, V.S Naipaul is a Trinidadian writer of Indian descent known for his pessimistic novels set in developing countries. Postcolonial literature is a body of literary writings that reacts to the discourse of colonization. Post-colonial literature often involves writings that deal with issues of de-colonization or the political and cultural independence of people formerly subjugated to colonial rule. The present study attempts to apply a postcolonial approach to V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Both these novels draw the reader’s attention to various traits of Postcolonial literature such as appropriation of colonial languages, col...