A POSTCOLONIAL STUDY OF V.S. NAIPAUL’S HALF A LIFE

Abstract

An effort has been made in this research paper to make a post-colonial study of V. S. Naipaul novel Half a Life. In 2001, Naipaul published Half a Life in which he accentuates the issue of the chronically dispossessed, the characteristics of the permanent exile. We see in this novel that Naipaul still feels like an outsider, though the ending leaves a ray of hope for readers. Half a Life is a tour de force and can be regarded as the culmination of Naipaul’s career of more than four decades because the novel includes almost all of Naipaul’s thematic concerns; simultaneously, it is a melting pot which mixes Naipaul’s main concerns with key issues of the colonial and post-colonial worlds, especially the problems of man’s loss, placelessness, nationlessness, isolation, and alienation. This masterpiece delineates Willie Somerset Chandran’s search for self-development and self-knowledge. Naipaul masterfully manipulates the protagonist Willie Somerset Chandran’s colonial predicament, his anxiety and dislocation in this novel.