Dislocation And Reconciliation

The Enigma of Arrival is an autobiographical novel of Trinidad-born Nobel Prize-winning British writer V. S. Naipaul. This first-person narrative mixes features of narrative fiction with Naipaul’s memoir of his immigrant life and literary pursuit. Coming from colonial Trinidad, the author-narrator of this novel embarks on a journey to England at a young age in the hope of becoming a great writer of the "English Tradition". However, misunderstanding about his origins constantly gives rise to a troubled sense of geographical and cultural dislocation. The feelings of cultural inferiority gets in the way of his writing and makes him a mimic writer, who fails to find the proper materials and subjects. Even after years of sojourn in Britain, he is still an alienated and dislocated immigrant seeking roots and identity.The Enigma of Arrival is not only Naipaul’s retrospection on his own past, but also his quest for self-definition. Through the act of writing, the author-narrator recognizes the psychological tension between his ambition of becoming English and remembrance of his non-English ethnic identity. In writing his memoir in the form of fiction, Naipaul reveals the psychological as cultural, hence, historical. The three underpinnings of his identity-India, Trinidad, and Britain are examined and evaluated in a new light.Drawing on theories of identity in postcolonial criticism, this paper analyzes how Naipaul, in his constant journeys and arrivals as represented in the book, bridges the gap between an ethnic identity relating to Indian-Caribbean colonial history and his present identity as an English writer writing about his memoir of the diaspora. In writing this autobiographical novel, Naipaul redefines himself as man and writer and transcends such an identity as conditioned by colonial history in transcultural migration.