Creole Identity In Samuel Selvon's Identity

CREOLE IDENTITY IN SAMUEL SELVON’S FICTION: A POSTCOLONIAL STUDY

THE THESIS

SUBMITTED TO

THE UNIVERSITY OF MYSORE FOR OF THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

IN

ENGLISH

BY

GURUPRASAD S Y

Under the Supervision of

Dr. K.T. SUNITHA

Professor of English

DEPARTMENT OF STUDIES IN ENGLISH

UNIVERSITY OF MYSORE

MANASAGANGOTRI

MYSORE-570006

JUNE 2015

DEPARTMENT OF STUDIES IN ENGLISH

UNIVERSITY OF MYSORE

MANASAGANGOTHRI, MYSORE-570 006

DECLARATION

I, GURUPRASAD S Y, declare that this thesis entitled Creole Identity in Samuel

Selvon’s Fiction: A Postcolonial Study is the result of research work done by me in the

Department of Studies in English, University of Mysore, Mysore, under the supervision of Dr. K.T. SUNITHA, Professor of English.

Factors such as ‘trans-cultural/cross-cultural contact,’ ‘psychological aspect,’

‘globalization,’ ‘hybridization’ and ‘acculturation’ are entailed in the process of creolization. Selvon’s peasant novels– A Brighter Sun, Turn Again Tiger and Those

Who Eat the Cascadura– are stories of the East Indian experience in the Caribbean which has been one of an acculturation process, where the indentured labourers who came to work on the West Indian sugar plantations, and Africans, who came as slaves, have become one ‘creole melting pot.’ However, the process of creolization has become familiar in the works of Naipaul and Selvon, the most significant Caribbean

East Indian Writers. Selvon’s immigrant novels– The Lonely Londoners, Moses

Ascending and Moses Migrating– provide a glimpse of the immigrant society’s social identity in London. These novels depict a strong sense of social and cultural identity.

Moreover, the characters became aware of themselves as ‘West Indian’ or

‘black/creole.’

Samuel Selvon’s fiction unfolds the diversity of cultures and he does not compel people to assimilate blindly, but at the same time, he considers all the follow citizens as equal. Selvon portrays all the characters in a humanistic way. Migration

(Caribbean Literature in English, 1)

Many of the Caribbean nations gained independence from Europe in the 1960s although some of the territories of the Francophone Caribbean, such as Guadeloupe,

Martinique and Guyana (French Guyana), still remain colonies of France. In the

Anglophone Caribbean especially, independence was followed by a wave of migration to the British motherland in the hope of partaking in an economic prosperity that was lacking at home. The first generation of the Caribbean emigrants, which came to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, is known as ‘Windrush Generation’ after the name of the first boat, the SS Empire Windrush that took the Jamaicans to

London in 1948. Today there are also large diaspora communities in the UK, the USA and Canada.

CHAPTER I: Introduction: Caribbean History and Postcolonial Phenomena

9

The region has been partly defined by historic accident, and has gone under various names in its history. ‘West Indies’ was a notorious mistake, made in 1492, when Columbus reached San Salvador. He believed that he had found the Indies off

Cathay, and called the folk he met ‘Indians’. The term ‘West Indies’ was used