Naipaul's Constant Pursuit Of Self-Identity In The Enigma Of Arrival

Vidadhar Surajprasad Naipaul(1932-) ,one of the outstanding contemporary English writers, was awarded various international prizes during his more than forty years of writing, among which the most prominent one is the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature for"having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories."1. His works depict a dilemma of formerly colonized countries such as Trinidad, India and also some countries of Africa in the age of post-colonialism and enable readers to see the reality of the post-colonial society. Meanwhile, his works record the journey of a struggling soul with a multi-culture background seeking for his self-identity in the post-colonial world, going through the gradualness in the process from the negation of his colonial identity to the stage of negotiation among different aspects of his identity, which can be found in the especially heavily autobiographical novel The Enigma of Arrival.By drawing on the postcolonial theory, modern sociology and postmodern views of identity, the thesis here is tracing his pursuing journey in the novel, trying to detect the elements attributed to the formation of his unique perspective of observing the world, seeking for a key to the problem of identification in today's highly migrant world. The whole work consists of three chapters between introduction and conclusion. The Introduction provides a review of the writer's life and achievements in his literary career, together with the controversies coming from two opposite literature critical parties, which is the very indication of the writer's identity confusion.The first chapter mainly reviews the evolution of identity concept and identity crisis in the post-colonial world. The old Enlightenmental notion of identity as an isolated and self-sufficient entity is now replaced by the postmodern identity as a flexible and becoming process. Naipaul, an inherited Diaspora, is destined to experience the loss of identity as an exile and the struggle to locate his identity in one place or one culture. What's more, his denial against his former colonial identity also results in his self-imposed exile from margin to the center and the further confusion of locating his identity in one place and one culture.The second chapter follows Naipaul's recursive journeys recorded in the novel. He started his journey from margin to the center because of the disillusionment at the distorted West Indian colonial education and the influence of his father. However, again and again, he found he had to take more journeys since he discovered that he was stuck in the"Double Exteriority"situation, experienced the fragmentation of self, the split of man and writer, no matter what place and culture he was in.The third chapter observes that Naipaul has healed the old wound and achieved the synthesis of man and writer by stepping out of his own fantasy about England as an ex-colonial, thus leading himself to the acceptance of a positive hybrid identity. In The Enigma of Arrival, after experiencing years of exile experience, he changed his view about the"other", about the world. And from this fresh perspective, he found that his fantasy finally reconciled with the reality; in the meantime, through his self-reflection on different characters in this autobiographical novel, he reached the final reconcilement with different aspects of his identity and obtained a peaceful and tranquil mind after the long double journeys of both his life and writing.The concluding part briefly summarizes that Naipaul's special perspective of the past, colonization and the course of traveling and writing are of crucial importance throughout his pursuing journey of self-identity. It also asserts the idea that a close reading of Naipaul's work is of some help to bring rootless souls like Duckweed in the mundane world into temporary peace and calmness.