Universal Solicitude From Caribbean

Naipaul (1932- ) is"one of the finest living novelists writing in English",and he is regarded as the most representative writer in Caribbean. Swedish Academy rewarded Naipaul"for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories". Naipaul won the 2001 Nobel Prize in literature. The Indian lineage, Trinidadian and Caribbean growing experience, England study and British citizenship, and exile in the postcolonial countries help Naipaul to shape his complex cultural identity. With the complex cultural identity, Naipaul perceives the cultural differences between the East and West; he also has a conflicting complex to the colonial and postcolonial society. Now Naipaul has became one of the typical and controversial postcolonial writers in the contemporary literature.Based on the textual analysis of Naipaul's virgin work Miguel Street and masterpiece A Bend in the River, this thesis explores the reality and dilemma of the newly independent countries. Miguel Street depicts the miserable and tragic life of a dozen of underclass Trinidadians in Caribbean. These people suffer physically and spiritually in the postcolonial society. By the protagonist Salim's point of view, A Bend in the River exposes a chaotic and blood shedding postcolonial society under the guise of stability and prosperity. The colonized people still live with a strenuous life. Naipaul invariably sets the background of the two works in the postcolonial societies, and demonstrates two challenging problems of the newly independent countries, which are mimicry and marginalization. Though the colonialists have left, the system for colonizing, which is now depended and used by the colony, still exists. After a long suppressed and exploited history, the native culture is meager and the people become confused. In order to gain the recognizable identity, the colonized people mimic the West blindly. The process of mimicry makes the colonized lose their self-conception and ethnic culture. So they play a passive role with inferior identity to the West.Said says in Orientalism that the Orient signifies a system of representations framed by political forces that brought the Orient into Western thinking, Western learning and Western Empire. With the tendency of economic globalization, the former colonies won their independence, but the Western hegemonism and colonialism permeate into the underdeveloping countries. Though nationalism plays an active role for independence, a rather narrow view of nationalism will lead to racism. Under the background of globalization, A Bend in the River puts forward that the newly independent countries are on a sticky wicket in dealing with their tradition and the Western modernity. On one hand, The Third World countries should respect and inherit their own excellent culture; on the other hand, they must draw upon another's strong points in culture and technology. Otherwise the Third World countries will fail to keep pace with others. Naipaul holds a pessimistic view on the African future, but it implies Naipaul's boundless meditation about the development of the Third World.Naipaul is oppressed and marginalized as a colonized; he also has the Western ideology as a colonist. However he can not find his"home"in the West. So he criticizes Trinidad, Caribbean, India, Africa, and Britain with the dual perspectives. Naipaul always considers the West Indies as a"half-made"society, Africa as a"bush"under the Big Man's politics, India as"an area of darkness", even"the sun never set"Britain is at the"dusk of the imperial civilization". With the dual perspectives, Naipaul penetrates the clashing and commingling cultural differences between the East and West.In pursuing the"Universal Civilization", Naipaul expresses his universal solicitude to the human being with his"world citizen"identity. Under the tendency of globalization, this thesis discusses Naipaul's postcolonial consciousness and explores the problematic world problems, which are relationships between tradition and modernity, native and foreign culture. This thesis is expected to offer a new angle and a comprehensive understanding for Naipaul.