Ignorance and Hope: A Study of Selvon's The Lonely Londoners

Blissful Ignorance Traveling to another country can be a very exciting experience. Taking a big step to move forward from where you are, to where you want to be. Why it is that individuals leave their country, their home to go elsewhere with no true evidence of a better life? When they do move, do these individuals bring something from home to remind themselves of where they came? And when they have reached their destination and did all they were told, do they end up with the happy life they had imagined they would live? In Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners, Blissful Ignorance is all too common amongst new comers. Selvon tells many stories through the voice and Conscious mind of a man named Moses. Along the way, each character learns

Henry had no luggage and no rum, he brought himself and a toothbrush. “What luggage? I ain’t have any. I figure is no sense to load-up myself with a set of things. When I start work I will buy some things” these words left Moses wondering what exactly was going through the man’s mind. He had seen a lot of behaviors from a lot of different people, but this was completely new to him. When they reached Moses room, they had dinner and the next morning Henry refused Moses’s help to find a job. He wanted to show that he could do things like this on his own “Don’t worry with old man, he will take care of things”, and was instantly mislead. Many find themselves in a rut. Asking for help can be hard for some which can lead to an even bigger struggle to settle down in their new home. Those seeking the path to independence and a clear understanding of the reality of their new home must first learn the ropes in order to

The presence of a darker complexion in London made it hard to find jobs and a place to stay. The fact of the matter is some individuals would lie about their identity if they could pass as anything else other than Caribbean “Bart have light skin...when he first hit Brit’n, like a lot of other brown skin fellars who frighten for the lash, he go around telling everybody that he is a Latin-American, that he come from South America.”. Bart longed to marry a sweet young lady of Caucasian descent and her father refused because of his skin tone. Galahad wondered why it is that people of Caribbean descent had to suffer so much and eventually looked at his hand and started to critique his own color. “Colour, is you causing all this, you know… you know is you that cause a lot of misery in the world” Generally speaking, moving away from your home to begin life in a new country, is not as easy as it may seem. Many come with the idea that a better life will be handed to them. That everything is going to be easy. Not realizing the extra effort needed to make things “ok” not “perfect” but “ok. Some people find a way to bring a little bit of home along on their journey to a new place and others try desperately to lose