LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 16:6 June 2016
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Expatriate as the Subaltern in V. S. Naipaul’s
A House for Mr. Biswas and A Bend in the River

N. Rajkumar, M.A., B.Ed., M.Phil.


Abstract

Expatriate means a person who is voluntarily absent from home town and the word ‘Subaltern’ is extracted from Latin word ‘subalterns’’. The word divides into two which are sub-‘next below’ and alternus - ‘every other’. Expatriate is a basic need for some people’s lives. Some reasons make people move from place to place; they may be jobs, business purposes and visiting tourist places. If one’s mind is disturbed, expatriation will be medicine for it. It helps to make a new way, find solution, relaxation and so on. Expatriation makes people glad while they move to new place. After reaching they feel lonely, not knowing the people, the culture, the weather, the food and so on which are all different. At first, a few difficulties have to be crossed and later on it becomes easier to mingle. Sometimes there are chances to be humiliated and blamed by others in the new area. Some people overcome them after long struggles and some want to go back to their homeland. In India, after independence, people’s expatriation becomes a factor.

The Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul begins to write of emigrants’ dilemma, problems and plights in a fast changing world. He has travelled to many countries with the help of a scholarship of the Trinidad government. A House for Mr. Biswas and A Bend in the River are notable novels of Naipaul. This paper deals with the picture of a man’s expatriation and its sufferings. Mr. Biswas and Salim are protagonists of those novels. Basically they belong to India. During the British period, their grandparents expatriated from India to Trinidad. Mr. Biswas is a third generation Indo-Trinidadian. He has moved from country side to town and one house to another house. He never gets a chance to live under a roof and live with his mother too, after his father’s death. He has been blamed by his relations. Salim, the other protagonist moves from outside to an interior place in the newly independent Africa. First he has been treated in a friendly manner, but later on he also is blamed by a servant. At the end of the novel he has been helpless. Both of them have to survive without their own family members.

Keywords: expatriation, isolation, homelessness, helplessness, immigrant’s dilemma

V. S. Naipaul

V. S. Naipaul is one of the most accomplished contemporary Diaspora writers. Vidiadha Surajprasad Naipaul known as V. S. Naipaul is one of the remarkable English speaking- writers of modern times. He is an Indo-Trinidadian. He was born at the small town Chaguanas in the Caribbean island of Trinidad on 17 August, 1932. He belongs to an orthodox Hindu Brahmin family of India. His grandparents had emigrated from India to Trinidad to work as indentured laborers in sugarcane fields. His father published Gurudeva and Other short stories in 1943. He wanted Naipaul to be a great writer. His brother Shiva Naipaul too has written a novel. It is entitled Fireflies. At the age of eighteen the first novel was written by Naipaul. Unfortunately it was rejected by the publisher. But he never lost his high ambition. He put his effects to fulfill his father’s dream.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

N. Rajkumar, M.A., B.Ed., M.Phil.
Assistant professor of English
Kalasalingam University
Krishnankovil - 626126
Srivilliputtur
Tamilnadu
India
rajsrnmc@gmail.com
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