The Concepts of Home and Exile in The Mimic Men, a Novel by V.S. Naipaul

Abstract

The aim of this research is to analyze the presence of the concepts of “Exile and Home” in raising the identity crisis in V. S. Naipaul’s novel The Mimic Men (1967). It examines Edward Said’s theoretic contention of exile’s influence in creating identity crisis and in the view of Naipaul’s writing as an attempt to resolve the dilemma of the protagonist Ralph Singh’s identity. The chapter shows Ralph’s responses in endeavoring to form an individual identity while struggling from the burdens of colonial heritage. It is an irony or quiet paradox to apply, as this dissertation does, postcolonial theory to the postcolonial novels, or those novels depicting ex-colonial subject resistance to colonial traditions while living in the very heart of the colonial center, i.e., London; nevertheless, such an application reveals the conflicting sides of the characters’ identity, which has grown in part from attempting to fit in: "The mimic is a contradictory figure who simultaneously reinforces colonial authority and disturbs it".