VS ART OF CHARACTERIZATION
CHAPTER III
NAIPAUL’S CHARACTERS
Human destiny looms large in Naipaul’s works and is reflected largely in the primitive vitality of his art. Naipaul’s characters represent a world not moved by love but dominated by greed, conflict and futility. As a satirical artist, he aims to provide a kind of hurtful laughter that may offer catharsis but not redemption. Naipaul observes, “My world is more confused than that of the other writers; I’ve had to fit in as part of the background” (Drozdiak 17).
It is easy to recognize that the miseries and sufferings faced by
Naipaul’s protagonists have natural conformity with the experiences of people all over the world, living in an alien land dominated by a colonized society.
Their experience is different from the untold sufferings and thwarted desires imposed by a powerful Fate or Providence which one finds in Hardy’s novels.
Rather, Naipaul’s works show the natural process of a man’s life, which is the fusion of both happiness and sorrow, rough and sublime. Literary critic Manjit
Inder Singh has drawn attention to the fact that,
None of the [Novelist’s] figures are allowed authenticity or a place in the landscape he inhabits. Indeed, Naipaul sees a necessarily fleeting and absurd wish in them to cross barriers erected by the limitations of colonized culture that in the end can only lead to a falsity of purpose, supplemented or aggravated by a consciousness of unimportance.
(236)
The main element of Naipaul’s work is the colonial society of the West Indies built on slavery and exploitation and the crudest of materialism with no political or cultural identity. This particular theme extends from G. Ramsumair at Fuent Grove to Mohun Biswas at Greenvale and is even transposed to South
London where Mr. Stone holds up the image so that it stands for the common plight of the entire human state – loneliness and helplessness set against a sterile world.
Naipaul’s world is the world of the helpless nomadic migrants making an escape
NAIPAUL’S CHARACTERS
Human destiny looms large in Naipaul’s works and is reflected largely in the primitive vitality of his art. Naipaul’s characters represent a world not moved by love but dominated by greed, conflict and futility. As a satirical artist, he aims to provide a kind of hurtful laughter that may offer catharsis but not redemption. Naipaul observes, “My world is more confused than that of the other writers; I’ve had to fit in as part of the background” (Drozdiak 17).
It is easy to recognize that the miseries and sufferings faced by
Naipaul’s protagonists have natural conformity with the experiences of people all over the world, living in an alien land dominated by a colonized society.
Their experience is different from the untold sufferings and thwarted desires imposed by a powerful Fate or Providence which one finds in Hardy’s novels.
Rather, Naipaul’s works show the natural process of a man’s life, which is the fusion of both happiness and sorrow, rough and sublime. Literary critic Manjit
Inder Singh has drawn attention to the fact that,
None of the [Novelist’s] figures are allowed authenticity or a place in the landscape he inhabits. Indeed, Naipaul sees a necessarily fleeting and absurd wish in them to cross barriers erected by the limitations of colonized culture that in the end can only lead to a falsity of purpose, supplemented or aggravated by a consciousness of unimportance.
(236)
The main element of Naipaul’s work is the colonial society of the West Indies built on slavery and exploitation and the crudest of materialism with no political or cultural identity. This particular theme extends from G. Ramsumair at Fuent Grove to Mohun Biswas at Greenvale and is even transposed to South
London where Mr. Stone holds up the image so that it stands for the common plight of the entire human state – loneliness and helplessness set against a sterile world.
Naipaul’s world is the world of the helpless nomadic migrants making an escape