Quest for Identity in V.S. Naipaul’s Half a Life
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61841/22c2pr57Keywords:
Identity Crisis, Exile, Diaspora, Alienation, DisplacementAbstract
The present paper is an attempt to study V.S Naipaul’s Half a Life in the light of diasporic issues of exile and identity. V.S Naipaul’s characters are dispossessed immigrants eternally searching for roots and belongingness in a world of multiple cultures where in their very identity is threatened. His immigrants such as Mr. Biswas in A House for Mr. Biswas, Willie in Half a Life, Salim in A Bend in the River are chronically dispossessed expatriates. Their attempts to look for a fixed identity and home fall flat every time. V.S Naipaul’s world is a bleak one where there is no hope for any stability. He represents his own displacement from Trinidad to England, however, his ancestral roots lie in India.
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References
1. Naipaul, V. S. Half a Life. London: Penguin, 2001. Print.
2. ---. The Middle Passage. London: Andre Deutsch, 1962. Print.
3. Garebian, Keith. “V. S. Naipaul’s- Negative Sense of Place”, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 10.1(1975): 23.
4. Lau, Lisa. "Making the Difference: The Differing Presentations and Representations of South Asia in the Contemporary Fiction of Home and Diasporic South Asian Women Writers."Modern Asian Studies 39.1(2005): 237-256. Print.
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6. Naipaul, V.S. Interview by Rahul Singh. Times of India 19 Feb. N.P, 2002.Print.
7. Singh, ManjitInder. V.S. Naipaul. New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2002.Print.
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