The Narrative Perspectives in Naipaul‟s Fiction Aboudaif: 2011(2002 3) explains, “Naipaul‟s...

The Narrative Perspectives in Naipaul‟s Fiction Aboudaif: 2011

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The Narrative Perspectives in Naipaul’s Fiction

(A Critical Study)

An Abstract:

V. S. Naipaul is a British novelist from a small island in

Trinidad in the Caribbean. He came from a family of Indian

Brahmin origin. He is thought of as a master of the English

prose of the twentieth century. This present study is mainly

interested in his narrative perspectives to find out the features

of his narrative technique. So, the research tackles the question,

does Naipaul have a special narrative style? In addition, it tries

to examine how he managed to express the issues of

postcolonialism in his novels. The study will explain the

importance of Naipaul as a theorist against Eurocentrism of the

21st century.

Key Words

V S Naipaul- narrative perspective – colonialism -

postcolonialism


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The Narrative Perspectives in Naipaul‟s Fiction

(A Critical Study) By

Aboudaif, Said Ahmed: PhD

English Literary Criticism

Faculty of Arts, Assiut University, Egypt

V. S. Naipaul is a British novelist from a small island in

Trinidad in the Caribbean. He came from a family of Indian

Brahmin origin. He is thought of as a master of the English

prose of the twentieth century. He is an important modernist

and theorist who represents the colonialism and the post-

colonialism periods in his novels and his critical essays.

Naipaul was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2001 and is

considered by critics and editors to be one of the greatest

British writers of modern age. In 2008, The Times ranked

Naipaul seventh on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers

since 1945" (Web). He married a Muslim Pakistani journalist

after the death of his English wife. He believes that Hinduism

is India„s only hope against the Muslim invasion. He has liberal

political views though he believes that writers should not have

political opinions that would affect their ideas and beliefs. In

awarding Naipaul the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, the

Swedish Academy committee commented on his works saying;


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“for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible

scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of

suppressed histories … Naipaul is a modern philosophe

carrying on the tradition... In a vigilant style, which has been

deservedly admired, he transforms rage into precision and

allows events to speak with their own inherent irony”. (qtd in

Ray 2004 xiii)

However, the present study is mainly interested in

Naipaul‟s narrative perspectives to find out the unique features

of his narrative technique. So, this research will tackle the

question, does Naipaul have a special narrative style? In

addition, it tries to examine how he managed to express the

issues of postcolonialism in his novels. Finally, the study will

explain the importance of Naipaul as a theorist against

Eurocentrism of the 21st century.

Some of Naipaul‟s novels and books are taken to be

severe attacks on the Third world people and on the Muslims

civilization. Amin Malak (2006 62) states:

Regrettably, Naipaul's fund of spirited irony and benign

cheer degenerated into a relentless series of books


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denigrating the hopes and aspirations of many third-world

countries. Being such an inveterate denouncer of the third

world, Naipaul has increasingly earned, at least in the eyes

of many postcolonial critics, the just title of being the

curmudgeon of contemporary literature in English.

In 1961, Naipaul wrote his masterpiece novel which

gained him fame as a writer who is trying to realize his past

and reach his origin. “In 1961 appeared A House for Mr

Biswas, often regarded as his masterpiece, which tells the

tragicomic story of the search for independence and identity

of a Brahmin Indian living in Trinidad.”(V. S. Naipaul Web)

Naipaul wrote non-fiction books about his travels to India,

South America, Africa, Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and USA.

He wrote The Middle Passage (1962) and India: A Wounded

Civilization (1977). Naipaul‟s books Among the Believers:

an Islamic Journey (1981) and Beyond Belief: Islamic

Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (1998) are about

Muslims where he presents a narrow vision of Islam and of

Muslims. In the resent years, Naipaul returned to his

homeland in India. He argues that he wants to stop


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identifying himself as an Indian but to be acknowledged as

Trinidadian which he considers to be self-identity search.

Nearly most of Naipaul‟s novels develop his political

views and his colonial and postcolonial ideas. Helen Heyward

(2002 3) explains, “Naipaul‟s work invites meditation on the

nature of individual identity, and on its relation to self-

contradiction…He [Naipaul] has declared, „All my work is

really one. I‟m really writing one big book‟”. His novels The

Mimic Men (1967), In a Free State (1971), Guerrillas (1975),

A Bend in the River (1979), The Enigma of Arrival (1987) and

Half a Life (2001) are set in a postcolonial background. But as

a start, a definition of postcolonial literature must be presented

to act as guide to understand the works of Naipaul. Postcolonial

literature is taken to mean literature which is written by some

writers living in countries which were colonized by other

imperialistic nations. The postcolonial literature is literature

written by writers like Naipaul to explain the imperialistic

effects and the cultural change that happened during that

colonization period.


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In fact, a growing interest in postcolonialism started with

the appearance of The Writes Back: theory and practice in

Post-Colonial Literature by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and

Helen Tiffin in 1989. They emphasized the meaning that post-

colonial literature is related to that literature written about the

relationship between European imperialistic nations and the

societies which were colonized in the modern age. Some

scholars argue that the term is indefinite since it doesn‟t

differentiate between the literature which was written during

the colonization period or after the colonization period. In

addition, they added that the writers express their points of

view of the effects of colonization or the change happen

because of this period. Finally, some critics argue that

postcolonialism indicates that the periods of colonization are

not anymore affecting the people and their societies but the

actual life situations show that some of these nations are still

under the cultural, political and economic influence of the

European countries even after their independence.

The second college edition of The American Heritage

Dictionary defines it [postcolonial period] as "of, relating

to, or being the time following the establishment of


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independence in a colony." In practice, however, the term

is used much more loosely. While the denotative

definition suggests otherwise, it is not only the period

after the departure of the imperial powers that concerns

those in the field, but that before independence as well.

(Deepika Bahri Web)

Moreover, postcolonial studies represent a growing

interest of thinkers, writers and critics at the early 21st century

because of the importance of the issue of the nations‟ cultural

conflicts and the question of power relations. Bahri (Web)

added more reasons for the growing interest in post-colonial

studies, he says “The formation of empire, the impact of

colonization on postcolonial history, economy, science, and

culture, the cultural productions of colonized societies,

feminism and post-colonialism, agency for marginalized

people, and the state of the post-colony in contemporary

economic and cultural contexts are some broad topics in the

field”.

Naipaul in his novels represents a new kind of struggle

against imperialism. He is an Indian whose father is a laborer


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immigrated to Trinidad, and he is European by education and

culture. So, what kind of postcolonial struggle is presented in

his works and books? Paul Brians (Web) states, “V. S. Naipaul

is so fierce a critic of the postcolonial world despite his origins

as a descendant of Indian indentured laborers in Trinidad that

he is more often cited as an opponent than as an ally in the

postcolonial struggle”. Naipaul is the novelist-critic who is

searching for his lost identity and for his roots. He is looking

for another culture to realize his true inner feelings. In Reading

and Writing, Naipaul (2000 25) says

One day, deep in my almost fixed depression, I began to

see what my material might be: the city street from

whose mixed life we had held aloof, and the country life

before that, with the ways and manners of a remembered

India. It seemed easy and obvious when it had been

found; but it had taken me four years to see it. Almost at

the same time came the language, the tone, the voice for

that material. It was as if voice and matter and form were

part of one another.


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Naipaul did not only experiment in choosing his themes to

be from his memories about his Indian past or to speak about

the feelings of the people whom he had never seen but also he

experimented in his style of writing. He declared that his

characters suffer from the authority and the power of the

European culture over their own culture. He experimented in

writing to find out an escape from this Eurocentrism. Naipaul

tries new technical forms in his novels to suit his ideas and to

express his feelings in a special narrative style. His new style

of writing is a great achievement of the 20th century fiction.

These new technical forms are Naipaul‟s greatest

achievements. He (Naipaul 1999 12) literally says: "Literature,

like all living art, is always on the move. It is part of its life that

its dominant form should constantly change. "

The novels, the books and the essays of Naipaul express

the fact that he believes in the struggle between the colonizer

and the colonized. He aspires to explain how the colonized

peoples internalize which means “to make the prevailing

attitudes, ideas, norms a part of one‟s own patterns of thinking”

(Agnes 1999 746) and resist the colonizing culture. His novel

The Enigma of Arrival is a book of meditation. It presents some


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sort of autobiography of the narrator who is mediating the

landscape to reach some sort of intellectual peace. The

meditation of the narrator is mainly about his self migration

and its final arrival to search for its final destination of death.

The protagonist narrates in the first person to convey ideas

hidden by Naipaul. The novel is full of „melancholy‟ and

hopelessness. Naipaul (1988 24) in his novel conforms, “this

melancholy penetrated my mind while I slept and then, when I

awakened... I was so poisoned by it”. So, the narration in this

novel intends to enlighten the reader about the life of the author

himself and the theme of his past memories.

The protagonist started with the memories of his

childhood and mentioned his migration as to say that his

migration from India to Trinidad is his real rebirth which he

recalls. Naipaul came back to England after a long journey

through the Third World. He came back to write his novel just

like his narrator who also came back from a long journey.

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (Web) clarifies “As he [the

protagonist] himself slowly takes form, we discover that he is

someone very like V. S. Naipaul, a native of Trinidad of East

Indian background who has come by way of Oxford to the


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countryside near Salisbury Plain to experience 'my second

childhood of seeing and learning, my second life, so far away

from my first.'” The protagonist started to examine the

surrounding environment and to comment on it. The young

Indian who comes back to the make his observations about the

English countryside noted the big change that had happened

because of modern progress. This is similar to what Naipaul

says when he first arrives to London. He says “I had come to

London as to a place I knew very well. I found a city that was

strange and unknown”. He adds “I lost a faculty that had been

part of me and precious to me for many years. I lost the gift of

fantasy, the dream of the future.” Amar Nath Prassad (2003 44)

confirms this meaning:

In The Enigma of arrival Naipaul visits the reality of

England like an anthropologist studying some hitherto

unexplored. Naipaul creates an unrelenting image of the

collapse of the age-old colonial ruling and the European

dominance. Caribbean and Indian traditions are blended

with the socio-cultural traditions encountered by the

author when he settled down in England.


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Naipaul has chosen a surrealist painting of Chirico's The

Enigma of Arrival to be a background of his semi

autobiographical novel. He stresses the fact that the narrative

technique in the novel is not a traditional one but a surrealist

that needs to be comprehended critically and differently from

the norms of his age. Readers still following the life stories of

his protagonists. His protagonist Ralph is searching for his

identity. He does not feel the importance of his native country,

Isabella, and he thinks that it has no history to write about. The

main character goes to London in a scholarship where he

realizes the inferiority of his colonized culture in comparison

with the colonizers. This creates a cultural conflict which is

constantly repeated in all his novels and his narrative technique

aims at emphasizing this conflict. In the novel Ralph says “But

now I no longer know what I was---and I found myself longing

for the certainties of my life on the island of Isabella” (Naipaul

1967 32). The semi autobiographical technique is obvious

through the resemblance between Ralph and Naipaul himself.

He refuses the colonizers‟ culture and decides to search for his

roots in India to reach self-satisfaction and self-identity. Ralph

is just like Naipaul, both are writers and both believe that

writing the history of their roots will give them satisfaction “It


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was my hope to give expression to the restlessness, the deep

disorder” (38). Thomas F. Halloran (2007 124 125) explains

the role of writing and how it gives details about the difference

between the two cultures of colonizers and colonized:

Examples of written text appear in Ralph's memory of

the island, these cases pointing towards an authority

that shapes this construction of Isabella as a second-

class society defined in relation to the centre…Writing

not only shapes Ralph's paralytic understanding of

history but it also affects his memory and ability to

imagine. It is important to understand the extent of the

written text's ability to shape colonial identity, a

powerful dynamic which forces the colonized to

understand their experience in relational terms to the

centre.

In addition, the narrative technique of his novel The

Mimic Men is surrealist too. It is semi autobiographical. R.

Deodat (1979 84) explains the surrealist nature of the novel,

“This book, therefore, more than any other work of Naipaul,

offers a compact, panoramic view of a displaced New world


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inhabitant, shown through his eyes, but often allowing an

insight far deeper than his own. The non-linear, disjointed

narrative structure of the novel significantly reflects the

narrator‟s inability to connect logically the various episodes of

his life.” The likeness in this novel matches Naipaul‟s idea of

mimicry; both of them (the author and the protagonist) have

ideas about imperialism and colonialism, and about the people

of the „Third World‟.

Naipaul uses his novels and his protagonists as

mouthpieces to criticize the behaviors of the people of the

Third World who, from his point of view, are the cause of

inferiority and reason of conflict between the colonizer and the

colonized. Ray (2004 156) says “Once again his subject is the

Third World societies---The emptiness and hollowness of

colonial set up compel people to pose as the mimic men”. In

his novel, The Mimic Men, Naipaul (1967 146) confirms this

idea through the words of his protagonist Ralph. “We

pretended to be real, to be learning, to be preparing ourselves

for life, we mimic men of the New World, one unknown corner

of it, with all its reminders of the corruption that came so

quickly to the new.” Thus, Homi Bhabha (1987 317) describes


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the idea of mimicry, “The figure of mimicry is locatable within

what Anderson describes as “the inner incompatibility of

empire and nation” It problematizes the signs of racial and

cultural priority, so that the “national‟ is no longer

naturalizable.”

However, in his novel In a Free State (1975) Naipaul uses

a different narrative technique similar to his technique of

mimicry. His characters are like actors in a play. They are real

persons discussing and arguing but they are playing roles of

others like in a drama. Linda A Anderson (1978 511) says

about the protagonists of the novel:

„In a Free State‟, Bobby and Linda are like „actors in a

play, neither really listening to the other‟ (P120). They

adapt their faces to fit the situation, they listen to

themselves talking. Here the characters are seen as self-

consciously portraying a part but Naipaul also uses the

„dramaturgical principle‟ in order to define scenes

where his characters are unable to assume a part.

In this novel, it is not only the narrative technique which

represent the theme of postcolonialism but also the journey of


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the characters (Bobby and Linda) to find a safe place where

they can escape the humiliation, despair, and anger of their

colonizers‟ countries to arrive to a dream place where there is

peace. The narrative technique in this novel is deliberately

forgrounded for the sake of the theme. The novel is like short

stories from a travel dairy. The travelers are concerned with

their ideas about the „Third world‟. The theme of the novel is

set in an imaginary place in Africa where there is a civil war.

Throughout the narration we move to the world of Africa as a

Third World and in the background there is a feeling of

violence and threats. By the end of the novel, the travelers fail

to arrive to their imaginary place as to say that this place of

peace does not exist and the struggle of cultures will continue

as long as there are nations of colonizers and another week

nations of colonized. The open discussion in the novel causes a

lot of trouble to Naipaul who is interested in the smallest

details and even the likeness among Africans and the way they

smell. He says “smell of Africa… It is a smell of rotting

vegetation and Africans. One is very much like the other.” This

openness allowed others to call him a racist. Hence, Dr. Prasad

Amar Nath (2003 vii) in his introduction about Naipaul

explains:


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V.S. Naipaul is a strong champion of „Art for the

sake of life‟. He strongly believes that literature is an

expression of society. His fictional world in [sic]

concerned with the realistic portrayal of individuals,

societies and cultures. The protagonists of his novels

are always in constant search for identity of their

own in an entirely cold and indifferent atmosphere.

Moreover, Naipaul‟s narrative technique in his novel Half

A Life is also a semi autobiographical one about his own life

and reflects his personal views. He uses multi narrators to

finish this journey of his life. In the novel, Willie the

protagonist, his father, and the author are narrating parts of the

story. “The story of Half A Life is told by three narrators. The

first part is told to the hero, Willie Chandran, by his father ---

the omniscient author intervenes to narrate the next part („the

first chapter‟) of the story. He is both role and person; he both

needs company and is conscious of his estrangement.” (Amar

Nath 2003 45) Naipaul (2000 28) in his book, Reading and

Writing acknowledges the fact that he needed a different

narrative technique to deal with his wide experiences and to


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deal with the political issues discussed in his novels. Naipaul

states:

Fiction had taken me as far as it could go. There were

certain things it couldn‟t deal with. It couldn‟t deal

with my years in England; there was no social depth

to the experience; it seemed more a matter for

autobiography. And it couldn‟t deal with my growing

knowledge of the wider world.

In Half A Life, Naipaul uses the semi-biography technique

because his protagonist is, like him, from an Indian origin. He

went to London and couldn‟t live with the cultural differences

between his real identity and his social reality. The novelist

uses a beautiful narrative moving around the world (Asia,

Africa and Europe) to determine his roots and to compare it to

his assumed identity. Naipaul confirms throughout his

narrative technique that he is rejecting his social assumed

identity. In his novel, the marriage of the protagonist‟s father to

a low-caste woman got a birth of a boy named Willie Somerset

Chandran. The father turned his back to his Brahmin origin and

married a low-caste woman. The boy is called Willie which is


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half name of William and used the middle name of the English

novelist Somerset. Willie Somerset Chandran who is brought

up in a Brahmin culture and later went to London searching for

love and fame. Willie the son has a new identity and tries to

become a writer. He asks his father, 'Why is my middle name

Somerset?' (Naipaul 2001 1) Dr. Asha Choubey (Web)

clarifies, “The answer to this question brings into light the

irony of Willie's existence and at the same time prepares the

background of his half-life in half-made societies with people

who are themselves leading a life which is half-discovered,

half-realised and half-lived.” The use of the name of the

famous novelist Somerset Maugham is significant because it

indicates his half identity which is European more than Indian.

Naipaul carefully uses his narrative technique to differentiate

between the life of the father and the life of the son who is

different now because of his double identities. Now the

implication of the novel‟s title is clear. The protagonist lives

half a life. This means either that both the father and the son are

continuation of each other or that Naipaul means that his main

character has half a life and lost the other half searching for his

identity. Throughout this beautiful struggle Naipaul discusses

the themes of alienation and dislocation, which represent his


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main postcolonial theme. The dialogue between the father and

the son shows the great difference between them:

I used to think that you were me and I was worried at

what I had done to you. But now I know that you are not

me. What is in my head is not in yours. You are somebody

else, somebody I don't know, and I worry for you because

you are launched on a journey I know nothing of.

(Naipaul 2001 49)

The novelist moves with his protagonist from London to Africa

to take part in a kind of struggle against the colonization of

Africa from the Portuguese. Through his narrative description,

Naipaul states the facts of the relationship between the

colonizer and the colonized. Choubey (Web) confirms this fact:

Loss of identity is then, an inevitable evil of colonisation

which afflicts both sides -- the coloniser as well as the

colonised. Willie comes to see this plain truth in time and

decides to call it a day. For years he has allowed himself

to become easy victim to slippery substances but on a

rainy day when he slips after having spent eighteen years

in Africa, he comes to realise that at forty-one, its high


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time to stop making a fool of himself. He wants to emerge

out of the shadow of the image of 'Ana's London man',

which was thrust on him without his knowing.

The novelist also describes the protagonist first experience

of love in London. He wants to reach the achievement of love.

He married Ana, who will lead him to Africa. He wants to see

the days of colonization. Thus, Naipaul ends his novel by

another travel of Willie to Berlin to his sister Sarojini. The

novel‟s narrative technique delineates the relationship between

the father and the son in India, London and Africa to find out

answers to their questions about their lost identities.

Naipaul continues his marvelous narration in his last

novel, Magic Seeds. He foregrounds his traditional semi

biographical technique to write a new novel to continue the

journey of the protagonist Willie Chandran to Berline. He is

using the style of storytelling. He is the narrator himself not his

protagonist. In his previous novels (The Mimic Men, A Bend in

the River) he uses the first person narrator, but in Magic Seeds

he uses third person narrator. Now he is old and his sister

encourages him to join the underground movement in India.


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After years of struggle, Willie discovers that the Indian

Revolution did not change the situation in India. The novel‟s

narrative technique is similar to a fairy tale, where the magic

seeds are the real solution to the protagonist dilemma of

searching a lost identity. The novelist in Half A Life and the

Magic Seeds uses a round character who is capable of surprise

and change. It is a fact that all Naipaul‟s protagonists are like

him. They are all from an Indian origin. They suffer loss of

identity and they search for solutions of imperialism and

colonialism. They all are writers like him, who try to

accomplish their ideas through their books. Those characters

create some sort of unification that Naipaul wants to achieve.

He wants readers to feel that his books are one big story of his

life. Jesus Varela-Zapata (2003 11) clarifies:

It is not surprising that Indian characters living as

expatriates cover a large section in Naipaul‟s production:

Ralph Singh, in The Mimic Men; Randolph, in “A

Christmas Story,” written in 1962 --- Santosh in “One

out of Many” and the unnamed protagonist in “Tell Me

Who to Kill” (both stories included in In a Free State,);


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Salim, in A Bend in the River; the unnamed protagonist

of The Enigma of Arrival.

However, Naipaul‟s narrative technique in his last two

novels is not considered an achievement of fiction but it is

taken to be more an identification of his identity and an

accomplishment of his fighting against imperialism. In his last

novel Magic Seeds, he is reaching conclusions about his life

and his identity. His main character is familiar with facts that

he denied before. In the novel Naipaul speaks for Willie to the

reader‟ “You might think that something big is happening,

something that is going to change South Africa, but a lot of the

struggle he is describing is personal and religious, and if you

step back just a little you will see that Mahatma‟s time in South

Africa was a complete failure.” (Naipaul 2004 24) Walcott, the

Caribbean novelist critic announces his opinion of Naipaul‟s

last two novels. He says in his poem, “I have been bitten. I

must avoid infection/Or else I‟ll be as dead as Naipaul‟s

fiction.” The poem launches a savagely humorous demolition

of Naipaul‟s later novels Half a Life and Magic Seeds: “The

plots are forced, the prose sedate and silly/The anti-hero is a

prick named Willie.” Further on, Walcott expresses disbelief


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that this latter-day Naipaul can be the same author as the one

who wrote the masterpiece A House for Mr Biswas.” (Daniel

Trilling 2008 19)

Nevertheless, the study of Naipaul‟s fiction presents us

with clear ideas about his political views and about his personal

interpretation of the concepts of colonialism and

postcolonialism. This paper only suggests some implications

about the topics that can be dealt with in case of further

investigation of Naipaul‟s vision of postcolonialism as a

modern critical phenomenon. The study attempted to place

some emphasis on his narrative technique and on his special

style of using a continuous story of the same protagonists all

over his books. In this respect, Naipaul has been very

influential on stressing some political issues related to the third

world and to its relationship with the European countries.

However, there should be some critical responses to his

political views specially his attacks on the Middle East

countries and Muslims behavior depicted as undeveloped.

These views need to be scrutinized but his achievements as a

novelist of the early 20th century should not be ignored. His

influence as a novelist representing the colonialism and


153

postcolonialism serves his purpose to advocate for his

fundamental political views that gained him an international

popularity and prizes. The fact that he places himself as an

investigator of the role of imperialism in The Third world takes

him too far in relation to the narrative perspective that is

considered as a tradition of the European novelists. It is the

narrative perspective of Naipaul‟s protagonist that allows us to

understand the political and moral problems of the people in

these countries. Naipaul is a liberal writer who is greatly

concerned with his lost identity. He thinks that the people of

the third world have no identity because of the long

imperialistic periods which denied their voices and led to their

loss of identity. Naipaul uses his characters to narrate their own

stories and to have their own perspectives. This form of

narration allows the author to be in a position above the events

to comment and to convey his own political views. This level

of perspective is done through the resemblance between the

author‟s own life problems and his narrators. The interaction

between the writer and his characters allows Naipaul a big

chance to determine his place in this world. The extensive

political and moral vision which is presented in the novels of


154

Naipaul is complex and challenging. This vision urges critics to

give much attention to this great modern British novelist.

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