Their Cultural Identity And Cultural Identity, From The Works Of Naipaul

V. S. Naipaul is an Indian English writer, whose works mainly concentrate on cultural phenomena in a region with different cultures.A House for Mr. Biswas is Naipaul's master piece. By describing the change of Indian immigrants Tulsis family's identity in this novel, Naipaul contributes to the theme that the loss of immigrants'previous identity is inevitable under a different cultural environment. In another postcolonial novel A Bend in the River, on the one hand the characters fail to develop western cultural identity, and on the other hand the former colony fails to adopt western countries'developing model, and the author condemns the cultural imperialism in this novel. And these themes both can be regarded as the author's perceptions on culture.Naipaul also writes three Indian travel notes. In the first one, through his comments on Indian culture, his misunderstanding of Indian culture is obvious. He describes India as the weird"other"in the orientalism. And in the next travel note, he criticizes Indian culture severely with his prejudice against it. But in his last travel note after many years, without his own comments, he presents conflicts and differences between cultures in an objective perspective, and he finally develops a rational perception of Indian culture.And in his family letters, he writes that he appreciates the benefits of living in London and the advanced English culture, but more often, he feels lonely, and his loneliness grows with time, because he can not adapt very well to the British society.Above all, we can get the conclusion: Naipaul's identity is mixed and uncertain, which is nurtured by both English culture and Indian culture. These two cultures mix and hybridize on him. Finally his cultural identity has developed as the mixing"mestizo"cultural identity.