Abstract
This paper examines the postcolonial themes of dislocation, placelessness, fragmentation, and loss of identity in V.S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men (1967). The novel presents the condition of a newly independent Caribbean country, the island of Isabella, and projects the condition of its people in the postcolonial era. Through the protagonist Ralph Singh, a forty-year-old colonial minister living in exile in London who writes his memoirs, Naipaul explores how colonization strips individuals of identity, culture, history, and sense of place. The paper analyzes the relationship between the socio-political and psychological consequences of imperialism, arguing that colonial education and cultural colonization create “mimic men” who can neither reconnect with their original homeland nor successfully identify with the metropolis.
Keywords: postcolonialism, mimicry, V.S. Naipaul, dislocation, identity, colonialism, Caribbean literature
Introduction
Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul’s wide range of literary activity — both fiction and non-fiction — have been a matter of continuous debate and discussion. The Mimic Men (1967) marks an important landmark in the literary career of Naipaul. The title of the novel signifies the condition of colonized men who imitate and reflect colonizers’ lifestyle and views. The novel presents the life of formerly colonized people of the island who are unable to establish order and govern their country. The colonial experience has caused the colonized to perceive themselves as inferior to the colonizer. As these psychological problems remain unsolved even after independence is achieved, independence itself becomes a word but not a real experience.
Ralph Singh: The Displaced Colonial Subject
Ralph Singh, the narrator, is a forty-year-old colonial minister who lives in exile in London. By writing his memoirs, Singh tries to impose order on his life, reconstruct his identity, and get rid of the crippling sense of dislocation and displacement. Singh is the representative of displaced and disillusioned colonial individuals, and colonization is depicted as a process that takes away their identity, culture, history, and sense of place.
As a child, Singh responds to his sense of abandonment by dreaming of India, the homeland, and of his origin. He reads books on Asiatic and Persian Aryans and dreams of horsemen who look for their leader. He creates an ideal and heroic past which is in conflict with the real-life condition in Isabella. Like other immigrated people to the Caribbean with their ancestral origin in some far-off country, Singh suffers from “genetic” dislocation which, according to Rob Nixon, refers to the condition of the East Indians in the Caribbean who crossed the kala pani, black water, and thus lost their Indianness.
The Politics of Mimicry
Being completely alienated in the island of Isabella and devoid of any coherent past to hold on to, Singh tries to become a politician to cater to his psychological need of identity and fulfillment. His political career is then potentially a means by which he can satisfy his ego. Singh’s obsession with politics also gives rise to his obsession with naming — naming roads, buildings, and government schemes — reinforcing the reality of his power and political career. However, the irony is that by changing his name from Ranjit Kirpalsingh, he has in fact changed the very identity for which he is searching so desperately.
Singh is very well aware of the fact that postcolonial politics and its activities cannot promise to bring peace and order to the island but can only create a dramatic illusion of order. When sent to England to negotiate the nationalization of the sugar estate, he is humiliated by English ministers and Lord Stockwell, who refuse to consider him as a political figure, pushing him to an inferior status and a sense of political dislocation and failure.
Colonial Education and the Mimic Man
Singh also suffers from dislocation and alienation because of his educational background. As a victim of the colonial education system, Singh has always been encouraged to imitate the empire and to become a “mimic man.” His colonial education has taught him that the mother country, England, is the symbol of order. He both recognizes and criticizes colonial mimicry, but he also knows that he cannot help being a mimic man as he is “a specific product of a particular socioeconomic formation called colonialism.” In London, Singh realizes that he can never be an Englishman in spite of his public school education, and that one can be English only if he is born in England.
Writing as Decolonisation
Although Singh cannot completely solve his psychological problems, he reaches a conclusion through writing his memoirs. He realizes that his experiences and his feeling of abandonment and displacement cannot be separated from his colonial backgrounds. Without a real and identifiable historical background, Singh has become desolate. His final detachment is an expression of a “distance from any clear-cut national identity or notion of home.” Hence, in The Mimic Men, “home” can never ultimately be more than the books he writes or, perhaps more precisely, the action of writing them.
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