The Arrival Of Identity Seeking

As the winner of Nobel Prize in Literature, V.S. Naipaul becomes known all over the world. At the same time his works gradually call more and more attention. Naipaul is a postcolonial writer (1932-). With a background of Indian ancestor, he was born in Trinidad, and now he settles in Britain. His life experiences give Naipaul’s works extraordinary charming that attracts more readers and scholars. This thesis focuses on Naipaul’s multi-cultural life story and his famous work, The Enigma of Arrival, to interpret a way of identity seeking under hybrid background.Basing on Homi Bhanha’s postcolonial theory, this thesis will take the biography of Naipaul as an entry point to interpret the identity seeking journey of the postcolonial writer, V.S. Naipaul. The Enigma of Arrival is studied paralleled with life experiences of Naipaul, revealing the course of agreement of Naipaul’s hybrid identity. The Enigma of Arrival is a work with biographical character. On one hand, the writer tries to show the charming of spiritual arrival with the blueprint of his own life; on the other hand the creation of the novel also inspires Naipaul’s thinking about his own identity seeking, leading to his answer to identity quest in real sense.According to the study of this thesis,"arrival" in Naipaul’s sense does not just mean getting to the target or stopping wandering. It further means the spiritual comprehension and satisfaction, and it is an attitude of encountering the sense of adaption. In the background of postcolonial hybrid identity, bothering with the choice of belonging to a single root is in vain to settle the complex question of where a person should belong. The only way to discover the answer to the enigma of identity is to face the real life and to accept the multi-cultural background.