The Identity Quest In A Hybrid Culture

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (1932-), the winner of the Nobel Prize inLiterature in2001, is one of the most influential writers in the literary world whoowns the written works ranging from novels to travel writing and essays. As a Britishwriter who was born in India and grew up in Trinidad, Naipaul, with his own colonialidentity, lived as an exile in the metropolis, which has made him a typicalpostcolonial writer. Almost all his writings are related to the countries of Third World.He is consistently concerned about the colonial or postcolonial issues such as culturaldisplacement, rootlessness, mimicry, and identity loss and quest.In the light of Said’s concept of Other and Homi Bhabha’s theory of hybridity,the analysis of the protagonist Willie’s process of the identity quest and thereconstruction of hybrid identity will help to reveal Naipaul’s great concern for themarginalized people’s spiritual condition in the post-colonial society and thenecessity of forming the hybrid identity in cultural conflicts.The thesis is composed of five parts. The introduction contains a shortbiography of Naipaul, a brief summary of Half a Life, literature review of Half a Life,the significance of the study and the structure of the thesis. Chapter one analyzesWillie’s identity loss due to the invasion of the Western imperial culture. ChapterTwo mainly reveals Willie’s identity search through mimicry in London. In theprecondition of identity loss, confronted with the difference in lifestyle, Willietries to search for his identity through mimicry of the Western culture in terms oflifestyle and literary creation to adapt to the English society. Chapter Three discussesWillie’s identity reconstruction in hybrid culture in Africa. Influenced by Indian andWestern culture, he has failed to find his cultural identity in London, which leads tohis identity quest in Africa. He lives as a colonizer because of his marriage with Anawho is one of the colonizers. However, he is sympathetic for the African people andmakes a criticism of imperialist culture’s domination of colonized people. Going through the identity loss and search, Willie re-examines the multicultural phenomenaand absorbs the different cultural elements to reconstruct his identity in the hybridculture. The last part draws a conclusion: Naipaul shows that the transmission of theWestern culture has brought great trouble and dilemma to the colonized people whoare in the colonial and post-colonial society. Facing the predicament of identity lossin cultural conflicts, people can neither blindly accept the foreign culture nor resist itcompletely. To solve the problem, they should respect the indigenous culture andabsorb the good elements of alien culture to realize the identity reconstruction.