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Title Naipaul's "Darkness": Africa
Full text https://www.freidok.uni-freiburg.de/dnb/download/1245; https://www.freidok.uni-freiburg.de/data/1245
Date 2002
Author(s) Neubauer, Jochen
Abstract The first chapter of this paper presents typical features of colonial discourse in order to provide a solid base of vocabulary and concepts used in the ensuing analysis. These features are mostly taken from Spurr's book The Rhetoric of Empire but they are frequently supplemented by ideas from other authors. The theoretical assumptions are accompanied by examples from books by two famous Victorian travel-writers: Henry Morton Stanley's "In Darkest Africa, Vol. I and II" and Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". The former author was chosen because he is a typical representative of this mode of colonialist writing, while Conrad has been selected because of the many similarities between his and Naipaul's work. The chapter entitled 'Resistance' at the end of this section shows how colonial rhetoric can be left behind and how something like a 'postcolonial perspective' can be established. The analysis of Naipaul's texts will start with an examination of 'In a Free State'. After a short introduction dealing with the several possible interpretations of the narrative's title, a comparison with Conrad's Heart of Darkness will serve as a first step toward the characterisation of the text's position in relation to colonial discourse. The ensuing examination will focus on the depiction of the African characters, white expatriates' attitudes towards them and Africa in general. Since the description of the members of this latter group seems to aim at exposing their prejudices and misconceptions, it will be discussed whether the negative characterisation of the African natives has to be considered an ironic play with the reader's expectations or whether this is due to the narrator's own involvement in the rhetoric of colonial discourse. To resolve this problem, the relation between the text's characters, its narrator and its author will be examined. The second main part of this paper is dedicated to the analysis of Naipaul's later texts on Africa. The examination of the two novels and three shorter narratives does not proceed chronologically but focuses on important topics. Therefore, the analysis does not aim at an interpretation of these texts as a whole but presents a selection of topics relating to the way in which Africa and Africans are presented. These include the special position occupied by the texts' hybrid narrators whose situation, aims and limitations will be discussed in the first chapter of part four. Themes like magic, rituals, sexuality and violence are central in Naipaul's depiction of African culture and will be discussed in the second chapter of this part. The analysis of the effects of racial mixing is given a separate chapter as it is an important issue in most of the texts, both in the sense of co-existence of different cultures at one place and on the level of personal relationships. The ensuing two chapters discuss problems in the educational sector and on the political arena in different post-colonial African societies, while the sixth chapter of this part is dedicated to the relation-ship of Europe and Africa. The final chapter in this section deals with the model of history promoted in A Bend in the River and locates the place it ascribes to Africa. The conclusion will try to determine whether Naipaul's attitude towards the 'Dark Continent' has changed between the publication of 'In a Free State' and that of Half a Life and expose some of the reasons for the persistent controversies around Naipaul's literary work.
Subject(s) Conrad, Joseph: Heart of darkness; Naipaul, Vidiadhar S.: A bend in the river; Online-Publikation
Language eng
Publisher Universität Freiburg
Relation https://www.freidok.uni-freiburg.de/data/1245
Type of publication master_thesis
Format pdf
Rights free
Identifier urn:nbn:de:bsz:25-opus-12459
Repository Freiburg - University of Freiburg
Added to C-A: 2015-09-08;09:06:31