The Hybridity In Divisadero

Divisadero is the most poetic and fictional novel by Michael Ondaatje.The story,which is about personal experiences of four major characters,is set in California,Nevada,and France in the twentieth century.Divisadero is deeply implanted with the narrator's thought,Anna,Coop,Claire,and Lucien,are the embodiment of Ondaatje's post-colonial ideology.This thesis will be analyzed through Homi K.Bhabha's theory of hybridity which is reflected by the four main characters in Divisadero.The thesis is divided into five parts.Chapter one“The Concept of Hybridity" introduces the theoretical basis of this paper,including hybridity's relation with the post-colonial theory,the representative figures of hybridity,and the concept of "mimicry","cultural difference"and "the third space" in hybridity.The second chapter analyzes the hybridity of the protagonist Anna who is a self-explorer,including Anna's awakening of self-consciousness and her resistance against the dominant power.The third chapter analyzes the hybridity of Coop who is a marginalized adventurer,including Coop's reaction towards the dominant power and the influence of the recurring memory on him.The fourth chapter analyzes the hybridity of Claire who is an observant nomad,including her position in the family,her nomadic characteristics,as well as the change of the relationship with her father.Chapter five analyzes the hybridity of Lucien who is a vagrant writer,including his ambivalent relationship with his friend Marie-Neige and his construction of identity through tracing the experiences of other people.By portraying the main characters whose experiences mostly embodied the post-colonial feature of "hybridity",Michael Ondaatje presented his ambivalent psychological state as an immigrant writer in this novel.In Divisadero,hybridity is reflected in the confrontation between the dominant power and the marginalized group as well as the construction of a person's identity under the influence of the absent Other.By analyzing the hybridity of the four main characters,this thesis aims at demonstrating that cultural hybridity takes place everywhere in a globalized world and the approach to the construction of self-identity is both to divide oneself from the past and overlook the history from a distance.