The Collision And Reconciliation Between Ideality And Reality

The 2001 Nobel Prize winner V.S.Naipaul is recognized as one of the three giants of British immigrant literature for the vivid depiction of secular humanity and scathing critique of colonialism.Though his private life is quite controversial,his multi-cultural background and round-the-world tours have enriched the theme of his books.In addition,his experience of learning English literature in Oxford University has broaden his literary visions,adding into his works authenticity as well as a global view.Up to now,Naipaul has created twenty-seven literary works,among which some are travelogues and short stories about his experience in third world countries,the rest are semi-biographical non-fictions centering on such topics as displacement,diaspora,rootedlessness and identity-seeking.Deeply influenced by Conrad and Maugham,Naipaul seldom uses rhetorical language in his writing,instead,he is aimed at revealing the dark side of the society with incisive words.Naipaul gives birth to a series of marginalized people who are ordinary yet precious as salt,who live happily in the desperate world.Finished in 1986,The Enigma of Arrival is a representative semi-biographical fiction of Naipaul.In the story,much space is employed to describe the tranquil Wiltshire,expressing Naipaul's affection for the British countryside.Naipaul utilizes first-person narrative and makes use of “flashback” to give a detailed account of how the protagonist dreams of pastoral in his hometown Trinidad and Tobago,how he gets tired of life in cities when he pursuits further study in Oxford and how he regains a peaceful mind and his status as a writer during his stay in the countryside.The story sticks to his consistent motif of seeking for identity,but unexpectedly combines the personal sense of loss with that of nature,drawing closer the relationship between natural landscape and identity construction.At the same time,the uneasiness of the protagonist indicates that pastoral in modern days is different from the joyous and carefree shepherds in Golden Age,or simply being an escapist eremite,but to draw strength from nature in order to consummate both body and mind.From all above,the dissertation applies Terry Gifford's pastoral thoughts to analyze the text from three perspectives,pastoral imagination,anti-pastoral observation and post-pastoral introspection,which aims at exploring the relationship between Naipaul's post-colonial cultural identity and his pastoral idea.The content is as following:The first part is the introduction of the writer and the fiction,including Naipaul-based researches at home and abroad,especially those related to The Enigma of Arrival.The feasibility of applying pastoral theory to analyze the text is also explained.What's more,the development of pastoral literature is given so that the concepts will be accurately understood in the body part.At last,the framework is provided in order to make clear the arrangement of writing.The second part consists of three chapters.Chapter One describes that under the influence of global education and advertisement,British pastoral views of blue sky and white clouds,water meadows and milky cows are widespread in the colony,driving the colonized people to form an expectation horizon about pastoral England.Chapter Two unveils the alienation among people together with the persecution on the natural environment and the living creatures brought by British large-scale machine production in a constantly changing society.Chapter Three guides the readers to hold a post-pastoral view and pay attention to the destructive power of nature and the relationship between nature and culture to ponder how nature influences the survival of human beings in order to pursue a harmonious relationship.Finally,conclusion is drawn that the pastoral idea Naipaul holds is not a seclusive one.His purpose is to fully take into consideration the effective interaction and synergetic development between human and nature,instructing people to break the prejudice of racism and speciesism and realize the unity of inner nature and outer nature in a real sense.Naipaul's pastoral view is beneficial in building a “nearby nature”,which is able to provide a reliable refuge for others and for the non-human creatures.