| Miguel Street,a collection of short stories written by V.S.Naipaul,is set in the former British colony Trinidad,depicting the daily trivialities of the colonized people living on a street called Miguel.Facing the oppression of the colonists and the invasion of colonial culture,these people are under tremendous pressure both materially and spiritually.The plight of survival and the impoverishment of their thought make them confused and anxious about their identity.Therefore,the residents on the street are eager to seek and reconstruct their identity,and the relatively stable gender provides them an opportunity to reintegrate their broken selves.The male characters in Naipaul’s Miguel Street always try to prove their masculinity by virtue of violence,crime and other behaviors that break the moral bottom line in order to alleviate emotional anxiety caused by changes in ethnicity and class.As a matter of fact,how to understand masculinity is a problem that every man must face when he seeks his own identity.However,the male characters’ understanding of masculinity in Miguel Street is alienated and extreme,which to some extent reflects local men’s anxiety about their own identity and the crisis in the attempt to construct their own identities.Taking the male characters’ pursuit of their own masculinity in Miguel Street as a perspective,the thesis analyzes three stages they have gone through when they seek their identity.The first stage is the loss of their self-identity.The colonized men living on Miguel Street regard the hegemonic masculinity advocated in western world as the standard of being a real man.However,the oppression and exploitation of colonists make these marginalized men far away from this standard,which leads to their crisis of masculinity and their pressure to lose themselves.The second stage is manifested in their pursuit of self-identity.In Miguel Street,the colonized men try to imitate the “rigid” male image created by western hegemonic masculinity so as to establish self-identity and obtain a sense of self-belonging.However,the superficial and blind imitation only brings about the distortion and alienation of the colonized men’s personality.The third stage shows that the colonized men embark on a new journey to search for their identity.The departure of Edward,Toni and the narrator “I” from Miguel Street which is the symbol of alienated masculinity,shows that the colonized men refuse to step into the trap of the male colonists who emphasize their privilege.They do not lose their defense of independence and dignity,meaning that the road to rebuilding the colonized men’s identity is full of hope.In the process of their pursuit for identity,the colonized men experience initial confusion,then mechanical imitation,and finally renewed hope,which shows that the form of masculinity is not single and rigid.Actually,masculinity differs by race,ethnicity or country,etc.,and it also changes with social and cultural variations.Therefore,blind imitation of western ideal masculinity could not solve the identity crisis of the colonized men completely.In fact,their pursuit of self-identity is not to maintain the integrity of gender,but to adjust themselves in a more positive attitude when facing the differences of various forms of masculinity,and open up a new space for constructing their own identity. |
