Journeys To The Third Space

As a post-colonial writer, V.S.Naipaul has diverse cultural backgrounds. With his ancestral home in India, he lived in the island of Trinidad and received British colonial education. Under the influence of British culture, he has an identity confusion. The thesis , with the post-colonial and spatial theory, tries to analyze the Naipaul's autobiographic works of the enigma of arrival, and explores his quest for identity.The thesis is mainly divided into three parts including preface, body and conclusion. The preface mainly presents the relevant Naipaul research at home and abroad, the innovative points, research goals and methods of this thesis. The first chapter shows that Naipaul's diverse cultural backgrounds cause him involved in identity crisis, unable to identify with any kind of culture, being in the triple marginalized status.The second chapter analyzes"I"the spirit quest of the characters in the enigma of arrival. The narrator,"I", has always been eager for Britain life and went to study in Britain after winning a scholarship. Being a writer in Britain,"I"concealed my Indian identity, with person in identity and writer's identity separated. Afterwards,"I"had a reflection on my identity and was aware that it is necessary to face my own diverse cultural backgrounds.The third chapter mainly deals with Naipaul's reconstruction of identity. With the post-colonial perspective, it analyzes western culture has always been playing a leading role. Further more, Naipaul points out, to reconstruct a new identity, it is necessary to deconstructed the dualism between the first world culture and the third world culture, to accept"the other"in one's own identity, and to combine one's identity and writer's identity, arriving in the third space. The conclusion points out the social significance of Naipaul's works.