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The Narrative Perspectives in Naipaul’s Fiction
(A Critical Study)
An Abstract:
V. S. Naipaul is a British novelist from a small island in
Trinidad in the Caribbean. He came from a family of Indian
Brahmin origin. He is thought of as a master of the English
prose of the twentieth century. This present study is mainly
interested in his narrative perspectives to find out the features
of his narrative technique. So, the research tackles the question,
does Naipaul have a special narrative style? In addition, it tries
to examine how he managed to express the issues of
postcolonialism in his novels. The study will explain the
importance of Naipaul as a theorist against Eurocentrism of the
21st century.
Key Words
V S Naipaul- narrative perspective – colonialism -
postcolonialism
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The Narrative Perspectives in Naipaul‟s Fiction
(A Critical Study) By
Aboudaif, Said Ahmed: PhD
English Literary Criticism
Faculty of Arts, Assiut University, Egypt
V. S. Naipaul is a British novelist from a small island in
Trinidad in the Caribbean. He came from a family of Indian
Brahmin origin. He is thought of as a master of the English
prose of the twentieth century. He is an important modernist
and theorist who represents the colonialism and the post-
colonialism periods in his novels and his critical essays.
Naipaul was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2001 and is
considered by critics and editors to be one of the greatest
British writers of modern age. In 2008, The Times ranked
Naipaul seventh on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers
since 1945" (Web). He married a Muslim Pakistani journalist
after the death of his English wife. He believes that Hinduism
is India„s only hope against the Muslim invasion. He has liberal
political views though he believes that writers should not have
political opinions that would affect their ideas and beliefs. In
awarding Naipaul the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, the
Swedish Academy committee commented on his works saying;
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“for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible
scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of
suppressed histories … Naipaul is a modern philosophe
carrying on the tradition... In a vigilant style, which has been
deservedly admired, he transforms rage into precision and
allows events to speak with their own inherent irony”. (qtd in
Ray 2004 xiii)
However, the present study is mainly interested in
Naipaul‟s narrative perspectives to find out the unique features
of his narrative technique. So, this research will tackle the
question, does Naipaul have a special narrative style? In
addition, it tries to examine how he managed to express the
issues of postcolonialism in his novels. Finally, the study will
explain the importance of Naipaul as a theorist against
Eurocentrism of the 21st century.
Some of Naipaul‟s novels and books are taken to be
severe attacks on the Third world people and on the Muslims
civilization. Amin Malak (2006 62) states:
Regrettably, Naipaul's fund of spirited irony and benign
cheer degenerated into a relentless series of books
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denigrating the hopes and aspirations of many third-world
countries. Being such an inveterate denouncer of the third
world, Naipaul has increasingly earned, at least in the eyes
of many postcolonial critics, the just title of being the
curmudgeon of contemporary literature in English.
In 1961, Naipaul wrote his masterpiece novel which
gained him fame as a writer who is trying to realize his past
and reach his origin. “In 1961 appeared A House for Mr
Biswas, often regarded as his masterpiece, which tells the
tragicomic story of the search for independence and identity
of a Brahmin Indian living in Trinidad.”(V. S. Naipaul Web)
Naipaul wrote non-fiction books about his travels to India,
South America, Africa, Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and USA.
He wrote The Middle Passage (1962) and India: A Wounded
Civilization (1977). Naipaul‟s books Among the Believers:
an Islamic Journey (1981) and Beyond Belief: Islamic
Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (1998) are about
Muslims where he presents a narrow vision of Islam and of
Muslims. In the resent years, Naipaul returned to his
homeland in India. He argues that he wants to stop
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identifying himself as an Indian but to be acknowledged as
Trinidadian which he considers to be self-identity search.
Nearly most of Naipaul‟s novels develop his political
views and his colonial and postcolonial ideas. Helen Heyward
(2002 3) explains, “Naipaul‟s work invites meditation on the
nature of individual identity, and on its relation to self-
contradiction…He [Naipaul] has declared, „All my work is
really one. I‟m really writing one big book‟”. His novels The
Mimic Men (1967), In a Free State (1971), Guerrillas (1975),
A Bend in the River (1979), The Enigma of Arrival (1987) and
Half a Life (2001) are set in a postcolonial background. But as
a start, a definition of postcolonial literature must be presented
to act as guide to understand the works of Naipaul. Postcolonial
literature is taken to mean literature which is written by some
writers living in countries which were colonized by other
imperialistic nations. The postcolonial literature is literature
written by writers like Naipaul to explain the imperialistic
effects and the cultural change that happened during that
colonization period.
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In fact, a growing interest in postcolonialism started with
the appearance of The Writes Back: theory and practice in
Post-Colonial Literature by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and
Helen Tiffin in 1989. They emphasized the meaning that post-
colonial literature is related to that literature written about the
relationship between European imperialistic nations and the
societies which were colonized in the modern age. Some
scholars argue that the term is indefinite since it doesn‟t
differentiate between the literature which was written during
the colonization period or after the colonization period. In
addition, they added that the writers express their points of
view of the effects of colonization or the change happen
because of this period. Finally, some critics argue that
postcolonialism indicates that the periods of colonization are
not anymore affecting the people and their societies but the
actual life situations show that some of these nations are still
under the cultural, political and economic influence of the
European countries even after their independence.
The second college edition of The American Heritage
Dictionary defines it [postcolonial period] as "of, relating
to, or being the time following the establishment of
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independence in a colony." In practice, however, the term
is used much more loosely. While the denotative
definition suggests otherwise, it is not only the period
after the departure of the imperial powers that concerns
those in the field, but that before independence as well.
(Deepika Bahri Web)
Moreover, postcolonial studies represent a growing
interest of thinkers, writers and critics at the early 21st century
because of the importance of the issue of the nations‟ cultural
conflicts and the question of power relations. Bahri (Web)
added more reasons for the growing interest in post-colonial
studies, he says “The formation of empire, the impact of
colonization on postcolonial history, economy, science, and
culture, the cultural productions of colonized societies,
feminism and post-colonialism, agency for marginalized
people, and the state of the post-colony in contemporary
economic and cultural contexts are some broad topics in the
field”.
Naipaul in his novels represents a new kind of struggle
against imperialism. He is an Indian whose father is a laborer
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immigrated to Trinidad, and he is European by education and
culture. So, what kind of postcolonial struggle is presented in
his works and books? Paul Brians (Web) states, “V. S. Naipaul
is so fierce a critic of the postcolonial world despite his origins
as a descendant of Indian indentured laborers in Trinidad that
he is more often cited as an opponent than as an ally in the
postcolonial struggle”. Naipaul is the novelist-critic who is
searching for his lost identity and for his roots. He is looking
for another culture to realize his true inner feelings. In Reading
and Writing, Naipaul (2000 25) says
One day, deep in my almost fixed depression, I began to
see what my material might be: the city street from
whose mixed life we had held aloof, and the country life
before that, with the ways and manners of a remembered
India. It seemed easy and obvious when it had been
found; but it had taken me four years to see it. Almost at
the same time came the language, the tone, the voice for
that material. It was as if voice and matter and form were
part of one another.
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Naipaul did not only experiment in choosing his themes to
be from his memories about his Indian past or to speak about
the feelings of the people whom he had never seen but also he
experimented in his style of writing. He declared that his
characters suffer from the authority and the power of the
European culture over their own culture. He experimented in
writing to find out an escape from this Eurocentrism. Naipaul
tries new technical forms in his novels to suit his ideas and to
express his feelings in a special narrative style. His new style
of writing is a great achievement of the 20th century fiction.
These new technical forms are Naipaul‟s greatest
achievements. He (Naipaul 1999 12) literally says: "Literature,
like all living art, is always on the move. It is part of its life that
its dominant form should constantly change. "
The novels, the books and the essays of Naipaul express
the fact that he believes in the struggle between the colonizer
and the colonized. He aspires to explain how the colonized
peoples internalize which means “to make the prevailing
attitudes, ideas, norms a part of one‟s own patterns of thinking”
(Agnes 1999 746) and resist the colonizing culture. His novel
The Enigma of Arrival is a book of meditation. It presents some
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sort of autobiography of the narrator who is mediating the
landscape to reach some sort of intellectual peace. The
meditation of the narrator is mainly about his self migration
and its final arrival to search for its final destination of death.
The protagonist narrates in the first person to convey ideas
hidden by Naipaul. The novel is full of „melancholy‟ and
hopelessness. Naipaul (1988 24) in his novel conforms, “this
melancholy penetrated my mind while I slept and then, when I
awakened... I was so poisoned by it”. So, the narration in this
novel intends to enlighten the reader about the life of the author
himself and the theme of his past memories.
The protagonist started with the memories of his
childhood and mentioned his migration as to say that his
migration from India to Trinidad is his real rebirth which he
recalls. Naipaul came back to England after a long journey
through the Third World. He came back to write his novel just
like his narrator who also came back from a long journey.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (Web) clarifies “As he [the
protagonist] himself slowly takes form, we discover that he is
someone very like V. S. Naipaul, a native of Trinidad of East
Indian background who has come by way of Oxford to the
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countryside near Salisbury Plain to experience 'my second
childhood of seeing and learning, my second life, so far away
from my first.'” The protagonist started to examine the
surrounding environment and to comment on it. The young
Indian who comes back to the make his observations about the
English countryside noted the big change that had happened
because of modern progress. This is similar to what Naipaul
says when he first arrives to London. He says “I had come to
London as to a place I knew very well. I found a city that was
strange and unknown”. He adds “I lost a faculty that had been
part of me and precious to me for many years. I lost the gift of
fantasy, the dream of the future.” Amar Nath Prassad (2003 44)
confirms this meaning:
In The Enigma of arrival Naipaul visits the reality of
England like an anthropologist studying some hitherto
unexplored. Naipaul creates an unrelenting image of the
collapse of the age-old colonial ruling and the European
dominance. Caribbean and Indian traditions are blended
with the socio-cultural traditions encountered by the
author when he settled down in England.
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Naipaul has chosen a surrealist painting of Chirico's The
Enigma of Arrival to be a background of his semi
autobiographical novel. He stresses the fact that the narrative
technique in the novel is not a traditional one but a surrealist
that needs to be comprehended critically and differently from
the norms of his age. Readers still following the life stories of
his protagonists. His protagonist Ralph is searching for his
identity. He does not feel the importance of his native country,
Isabella, and he thinks that it has no history to write about. The
main character goes to London in a scholarship where he
realizes the inferiority of his colonized culture in comparison
with the colonizers. This creates a cultural conflict which is
constantly repeated in all his novels and his narrative technique
aims at emphasizing this conflict. In the novel Ralph says “But
now I no longer know what I was---and I found myself longing
for the certainties of my life on the island of Isabella” (Naipaul
1967 32). The semi autobiographical technique is obvious
through the resemblance between Ralph and Naipaul himself.
He refuses the colonizers‟ culture and decides to search for his
roots in India to reach self-satisfaction and self-identity. Ralph
is just like Naipaul, both are writers and both believe that
writing the history of their roots will give them satisfaction “It
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was my hope to give expression to the restlessness, the deep
disorder” (38). Thomas F. Halloran (2007 124 125) explains
the role of writing and how it gives details about the difference
between the two cultures of colonizers and colonized:
Examples of written text appear in Ralph's memory of
the island, these cases pointing towards an authority
that shapes this construction of Isabella as a second-
class society defined in relation to the centre…Writing
not only shapes Ralph's paralytic understanding of
history but it also affects his memory and ability to
imagine. It is important to understand the extent of the
written text's ability to shape colonial identity, a
powerful dynamic which forces the colonized to
understand their experience in relational terms to the
centre.
In addition, the narrative technique of his novel The
Mimic Men is surrealist too. It is semi autobiographical. R.
Deodat (1979 84) explains the surrealist nature of the novel,
“This book, therefore, more than any other work of Naipaul,
offers a compact, panoramic view of a displaced New world
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inhabitant, shown through his eyes, but often allowing an
insight far deeper than his own. The non-linear, disjointed
narrative structure of the novel significantly reflects the
narrator‟s inability to connect logically the various episodes of
his life.” The likeness in this novel matches Naipaul‟s idea of
mimicry; both of them (the author and the protagonist) have
ideas about imperialism and colonialism, and about the people
of the „Third World‟.
Naipaul uses his novels and his protagonists as
mouthpieces to criticize the behaviors of the people of the
Third World who, from his point of view, are the cause of
inferiority and reason of conflict between the colonizer and the
colonized. Ray (2004 156) says “Once again his subject is the
Third World societies---The emptiness and hollowness of
colonial set up compel people to pose as the mimic men”. In
his novel, The Mimic Men, Naipaul (1967 146) confirms this
idea through the words of his protagonist Ralph. “We
pretended to be real, to be learning, to be preparing ourselves
for life, we mimic men of the New World, one unknown corner
of it, with all its reminders of the corruption that came so
quickly to the new.” Thus, Homi Bhabha (1987 317) describes
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the idea of mimicry, “The figure of mimicry is locatable within
what Anderson describes as “the inner incompatibility of
empire and nation” It problematizes the signs of racial and
cultural priority, so that the “national‟ is no longer
naturalizable.”
However, in his novel In a Free State (1975) Naipaul uses
a different narrative technique similar to his technique of
mimicry. His characters are like actors in a play. They are real
persons discussing and arguing but they are playing roles of
others like in a drama. Linda A Anderson (1978 511) says
about the protagonists of the novel:
„In a Free State‟, Bobby and Linda are like „actors in a
play, neither really listening to the other‟ (P120). They
adapt their faces to fit the situation, they listen to
themselves talking. Here the characters are seen as self-
consciously portraying a part but Naipaul also uses the
„dramaturgical principle‟ in order to define scenes
where his characters are unable to assume a part.
In this novel, it is not only the narrative technique which
represent the theme of postcolonialism but also the journey of
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the characters (Bobby and Linda) to find a safe place where
they can escape the humiliation, despair, and anger of their
colonizers‟ countries to arrive to a dream place where there is
peace. The narrative technique in this novel is deliberately
forgrounded for the sake of the theme. The novel is like short
stories from a travel dairy. The travelers are concerned with
their ideas about the „Third world‟. The theme of the novel is
set in an imaginary place in Africa where there is a civil war.
Throughout the narration we move to the world of Africa as a
Third World and in the background there is a feeling of
violence and threats. By the end of the novel, the travelers fail
to arrive to their imaginary place as to say that this place of
peace does not exist and the struggle of cultures will continue
as long as there are nations of colonizers and another week
nations of colonized. The open discussion in the novel causes a
lot of trouble to Naipaul who is interested in the smallest
details and even the likeness among Africans and the way they
smell. He says “smell of Africa… It is a smell of rotting
vegetation and Africans. One is very much like the other.” This
openness allowed others to call him a racist. Hence, Dr. Prasad
Amar Nath (2003 vii) in his introduction about Naipaul
explains:
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V.S. Naipaul is a strong champion of „Art for the
sake of life‟. He strongly believes that literature is an
expression of society. His fictional world in [sic]
concerned with the realistic portrayal of individuals,
societies and cultures. The protagonists of his novels
are always in constant search for identity of their
own in an entirely cold and indifferent atmosphere.
Moreover, Naipaul‟s narrative technique in his novel Half
A Life is also a semi autobiographical one about his own life
and reflects his personal views. He uses multi narrators to
finish this journey of his life. In the novel, Willie the
protagonist, his father, and the author are narrating parts of the
story. “The story of Half A Life is told by three narrators. The
first part is told to the hero, Willie Chandran, by his father ---
the omniscient author intervenes to narrate the next part („the
first chapter‟) of the story. He is both role and person; he both
needs company and is conscious of his estrangement.” (Amar
Nath 2003 45) Naipaul (2000 28) in his book, Reading and
Writing acknowledges the fact that he needed a different
narrative technique to deal with his wide experiences and to
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deal with the political issues discussed in his novels. Naipaul
states:
Fiction had taken me as far as it could go. There were
certain things it couldn‟t deal with. It couldn‟t deal
with my years in England; there was no social depth
to the experience; it seemed more a matter for
autobiography. And it couldn‟t deal with my growing
knowledge of the wider world.
In Half A Life, Naipaul uses the semi-biography technique
because his protagonist is, like him, from an Indian origin. He
went to London and couldn‟t live with the cultural differences
between his real identity and his social reality. The novelist
uses a beautiful narrative moving around the world (Asia,
Africa and Europe) to determine his roots and to compare it to
his assumed identity. Naipaul confirms throughout his
narrative technique that he is rejecting his social assumed
identity. In his novel, the marriage of the protagonist‟s father to
a low-caste woman got a birth of a boy named Willie Somerset
Chandran. The father turned his back to his Brahmin origin and
married a low-caste woman. The boy is called Willie which is
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half name of William and used the middle name of the English
novelist Somerset. Willie Somerset Chandran who is brought
up in a Brahmin culture and later went to London searching for
love and fame. Willie the son has a new identity and tries to
become a writer. He asks his father, 'Why is my middle name
Somerset?' (Naipaul 2001 1) Dr. Asha Choubey (Web)
clarifies, “The answer to this question brings into light the
irony of Willie's existence and at the same time prepares the
background of his half-life in half-made societies with people
who are themselves leading a life which is half-discovered,
half-realised and half-lived.” The use of the name of the
famous novelist Somerset Maugham is significant because it
indicates his half identity which is European more than Indian.
Naipaul carefully uses his narrative technique to differentiate
between the life of the father and the life of the son who is
different now because of his double identities. Now the
implication of the novel‟s title is clear. The protagonist lives
half a life. This means either that both the father and the son are
continuation of each other or that Naipaul means that his main
character has half a life and lost the other half searching for his
identity. Throughout this beautiful struggle Naipaul discusses
the themes of alienation and dislocation, which represent his
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main postcolonial theme. The dialogue between the father and
the son shows the great difference between them:
I used to think that you were me and I was worried at
what I had done to you. But now I know that you are not
me. What is in my head is not in yours. You are somebody
else, somebody I don't know, and I worry for you because
you are launched on a journey I know nothing of.
(Naipaul 2001 49)
The novelist moves with his protagonist from London to Africa
to take part in a kind of struggle against the colonization of
Africa from the Portuguese. Through his narrative description,
Naipaul states the facts of the relationship between the
colonizer and the colonized. Choubey (Web) confirms this fact:
Loss of identity is then, an inevitable evil of colonisation
which afflicts both sides -- the coloniser as well as the
colonised. Willie comes to see this plain truth in time and
decides to call it a day. For years he has allowed himself
to become easy victim to slippery substances but on a
rainy day when he slips after having spent eighteen years
in Africa, he comes to realise that at forty-one, its high
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time to stop making a fool of himself. He wants to emerge
out of the shadow of the image of 'Ana's London man',
which was thrust on him without his knowing.
The novelist also describes the protagonist first experience
of love in London. He wants to reach the achievement of love.
He married Ana, who will lead him to Africa. He wants to see
the days of colonization. Thus, Naipaul ends his novel by
another travel of Willie to Berlin to his sister Sarojini. The
novel‟s narrative technique delineates the relationship between
the father and the son in India, London and Africa to find out
answers to their questions about their lost identities.
Naipaul continues his marvelous narration in his last
novel, Magic Seeds. He foregrounds his traditional semi
biographical technique to write a new novel to continue the
journey of the protagonist Willie Chandran to Berline. He is
using the style of storytelling. He is the narrator himself not his
protagonist. In his previous novels (The Mimic Men, A Bend in
the River) he uses the first person narrator, but in Magic Seeds
he uses third person narrator. Now he is old and his sister
encourages him to join the underground movement in India.
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After years of struggle, Willie discovers that the Indian
Revolution did not change the situation in India. The novel‟s
narrative technique is similar to a fairy tale, where the magic
seeds are the real solution to the protagonist dilemma of
searching a lost identity. The novelist in Half A Life and the
Magic Seeds uses a round character who is capable of surprise
and change. It is a fact that all Naipaul‟s protagonists are like
him. They are all from an Indian origin. They suffer loss of
identity and they search for solutions of imperialism and
colonialism. They all are writers like him, who try to
accomplish their ideas through their books. Those characters
create some sort of unification that Naipaul wants to achieve.
He wants readers to feel that his books are one big story of his
life. Jesus Varela-Zapata (2003 11) clarifies:
It is not surprising that Indian characters living as
expatriates cover a large section in Naipaul‟s production:
Ralph Singh, in The Mimic Men; Randolph, in “A
Christmas Story,” written in 1962 --- Santosh in “One
out of Many” and the unnamed protagonist in “Tell Me
Who to Kill” (both stories included in In a Free State,);
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Salim, in A Bend in the River; the unnamed protagonist
of The Enigma of Arrival.
However, Naipaul‟s narrative technique in his last two
novels is not considered an achievement of fiction but it is
taken to be more an identification of his identity and an
accomplishment of his fighting against imperialism. In his last
novel Magic Seeds, he is reaching conclusions about his life
and his identity. His main character is familiar with facts that
he denied before. In the novel Naipaul speaks for Willie to the
reader‟ “You might think that something big is happening,
something that is going to change South Africa, but a lot of the
struggle he is describing is personal and religious, and if you
step back just a little you will see that Mahatma‟s time in South
Africa was a complete failure.” (Naipaul 2004 24) Walcott, the
Caribbean novelist critic announces his opinion of Naipaul‟s
last two novels. He says in his poem, “I have been bitten. I
must avoid infection/Or else I‟ll be as dead as Naipaul‟s
fiction.” The poem launches a savagely humorous demolition
of Naipaul‟s later novels Half a Life and Magic Seeds: “The
plots are forced, the prose sedate and silly/The anti-hero is a
prick named Willie.” Further on, Walcott expresses disbelief
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that this latter-day Naipaul can be the same author as the one
who wrote the masterpiece A House for Mr Biswas.” (Daniel
Trilling 2008 19)
Nevertheless, the study of Naipaul‟s fiction presents us
with clear ideas about his political views and about his personal
interpretation of the concepts of colonialism and
postcolonialism. This paper only suggests some implications
about the topics that can be dealt with in case of further
investigation of Naipaul‟s vision of postcolonialism as a
modern critical phenomenon. The study attempted to place
some emphasis on his narrative technique and on his special
style of using a continuous story of the same protagonists all
over his books. In this respect, Naipaul has been very
influential on stressing some political issues related to the third
world and to its relationship with the European countries.
However, there should be some critical responses to his
political views specially his attacks on the Middle East
countries and Muslims behavior depicted as undeveloped.
These views need to be scrutinized but his achievements as a
novelist of the early 20th century should not be ignored. His
influence as a novelist representing the colonialism and
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153
postcolonialism serves his purpose to advocate for his
fundamental political views that gained him an international
popularity and prizes. The fact that he places himself as an
investigator of the role of imperialism in The Third world takes
him too far in relation to the narrative perspective that is
considered as a tradition of the European novelists. It is the
narrative perspective of Naipaul‟s protagonist that allows us to
understand the political and moral problems of the people in
these countries. Naipaul is a liberal writer who is greatly
concerned with his lost identity. He thinks that the people of
the third world have no identity because of the long
imperialistic periods which denied their voices and led to their
loss of identity. Naipaul uses his characters to narrate their own
stories and to have their own perspectives. This form of
narration allows the author to be in a position above the events
to comment and to convey his own political views. This level
of perspective is done through the resemblance between the
author‟s own life problems and his narrators. The interaction
between the writer and his characters allows Naipaul a big
chance to determine his place in this world. The extensive
political and moral vision which is presented in the novels of
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154
Naipaul is complex and challenging. This vision urges critics to
give much attention to this great modern British novelist.
Works Cited
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