Abstract:
“The Mimic Men” deals with Naipaul’s favourite theme, issues of identity and problems of “Third world”. He successfully locates the third world and its problems in the novel. Ralph Singh, the protagonist and the narrator writes his experiences to achieve the stability and order in his life.
He is living in London as an exile politician from Isabella. Ralph visualizes an image of shipwreck and he has a dream of his Aryan ancestors. He thinks that there are many people on the Island living as a shipwreck including his father. But Now Ralph feels that he has completed one cycle of events and four fold division of life. He was a student, a house holder, a man of affair and recluse, according to Aryan people.
Key Words: Identity, Third world, Expatriate, Immigrants, Culture, Home
Naipaul’s fifth novel “The Mimic Men” published in 1967, marks the situations and problems of ‘Third world’. The novel is an account of the experiences of its protagonist Ralph Singh, whose real name is Ranjit Kripal Singh.
Naipaul states in his “Nobel Lecture” about this book:
The new fiction was called about colonial shame and fantasy, a book, in fact, about how the powerless lie about themselves, since it is their only resource. The book was called ‘The Mimic Men’. And it was not about mimics. It was about colonial men mimicking the condition of manhood, men who had grown to distrust everything about themselves.(Naipaul 13)
The narrator of the novel writes about his ‘hope’ as:
It was my hope to give expression to the restlessness, the deep disorder, which the great explorations, the overthrow in three continents of established social organizations, the unnatural bringing together of peoples... But this work will not now be written by me; I am too much a victim of that restlessness which was to have been my subject. And it must also be confessed that in that dream of writing. I was attracted less by the act and the labor than by the calm and the order which the act would have implied. (MM-32).
Ralph, from his childhood, is the witness of his society and their problems. Ralph articulates his experiences in hope to bring order in his confused and chaotic life. N. Rama Devi rightly observes:
He sets out to write down his experiences in the hope of fashioning an order out of the various unrelated adventures and encounters through which he had been. He struggles like and artist to create something to discover some meaning in the muddled state of affairs, which his life has been.(Devi 31)
Ralph recollects his past and translate it into words. Ralph as a native of the Isabella, is familiar with the Isabella society and the way of life of the people of society. He is not satisfied with Isabella society and he rejects it as he writes:
... to be born on Island like Isabella, an obscure New world transplantation, second hand and barbarous, was to be born to disorder. (MM-118).
However, the Isabella Island is creation of Naipaul, Isabella Island is formed as one of the Caribbean Island recently free from the colonial power.
Even after getting independence, the native people are unable to digest their freedom. These people are unable to establish themselves as an independent entity. The colonial power has ingrained its influence so deep in the minds of these people that they believed that their culture, tradition and lifestyle are in inferior to colonial counterpart. They blindly followed the ways of their colonizers.
Ralph states:
We becomes what we see of ourselves in the eyes of others. (MM-20).
The people of this specific communities forget their origins and learnt the value of specific space. But in reality such people are only mimicking colonial people knowingly or unknowingly and become “mimic men”.
However, there is no colonial power ruling on them but they are unable to come out from their mental set. They are conditioned in such a way that they cannot change immediately. The colonial power still rules them.
After independence, being an independent entity, these people are unable to cope up with their contemporary condition. Ralph Singh belongs to such society. Ralph, himself, is also impressed by the life of his colonial masters and life of London. At the beginning of the novel Ralph writes:
I paid Mr. Shylock three guineas a weak for a tall, multi mirrored, book shaped room with a coffin-like wardrobe. And for Mr. Shylock, the recipient each week of fifteen times three guineas, the possessor of a mistress and of suits made of cloth so fine I felt I could it, I had nothing but admiration... I thought Mr. Shylock looked distinguished, like a lawyer or businessman or politician. He had the habit of stroking the lobe of his ear inclining his head to listen. I thought the gesture was attractive, I copied it. I knew of recent events in Europe; they tormented me; and although I was trying to live on seven pounds a silent compassion. (MM-3)
By changing his name Ralph makes his original identity private. The real name of Ralph is Ranjit Kripal Singh. But Ralph gives himself modern name. In his private life he is Ranjit Singh and in public life he is Ralph Singh. He uses mask of name for hiding his identity.
Now Ralph is conscious about his past. He is able to justify his past. He is aware of his life being mimicry. Ralph is representative figure of the entire community of the ‘mimic men’ as he writes.
We pretended to be real, to be learning, to be preparing ourselves for life, we mimic men of the New world, one unknown corner of it, with all its remainders of the corruption that came so quickly to the new. (MM-147).
Ralph tells about Hok once refused to talk with his mother because of his race:
One boy said, ‘Sir, Hok went past his mother just now and he didn’t say anything at all to her. The teacher, revealing unexpected depths, was applied. “Is this true, Hok ? Your mother, boy ? .... She was indeed a surprise, a Negro woman of the people, short and rather fat, quite unremarkable. She waddled away, indifferent herself to the son she had just brushed past, a red felt hat on her head.... ‘Hok !’ the teacher said, ‘Go and talk to your mother’.... (MM-103).
Teacher forces on Hok:
Hok, run ! Do you hear me ? Run !’ And the teacher himself ran after Hok, threatening him with his tamarind rod. Hok shot off, running in his awkward girl’s way... The poor boy was crying. (MM-103-104).
Ralph then reveals the cause of crying of Hok.
It was for this betrayal into ordinariness that I knew he was crying. It was at this betrayal that the brave among us were tittering. It wasn’t only that the mother was black and of the people, though that was a black and of the people, though that was a paint; It was that he had been expelled from that private hemisphere of fantasy where lay his true life. (MM-104).
Ralph tells that people are not ready to accept even themselves as they are. They try to escape from reality. The escaping of these people implies in the each factor of society. Ralph writes for him:
I cherished my mother’s family and their Bella Bella bottling works. But in my secret life I was the son of my father, and a Singh. (MM-104).
Ralph behaves as if he is an actor and act his role. Sometime he does not do what he has to do but he follows what he should do. He makes ‘drama’ everywhere. Veena Singh rightly observes:
He dramatizes his relationship with his father his friend and his women. he identifies himself with Brown. Who lives in a world of bad movies, with Hok – the Chinese boy in whom Naipul discovers the racial wounds, with Cecil-his cousin and with Deschapsneufs who are the makers of the slave colony. (Singh 158-159)
Ralph’s father works in education department. Later he leaves his job and becomes ‘Guru’ Ralph feels constantly that he and his father are in ‘shipwrecked’ condition however Ralph’s father later becomes free from all wordly bond. Alka S. Nathrekar remarks:
Ralph’s father overcomes this feeling of place ness by escaping into mysticism and in the life of a hermit. Ralph prefers escapism and take flight from one place to another.(Natharkar 141)
Ralph Singh considers his married life as an ‘episode’ and it ends with the divorce. Regarding Sandra’s individual nature, Ralph observes:
She had no community, no group, and had rejected her family. She saw herself alone in the world and was determined to fight her way up. She hated the common.. To the end she had a cruel eye for the common. (MM-46)
From the business of the estate Singh earns lot of money and becomes rich. But Singh’s married life comes to an end as N. Rama Devi remarks:
Sandra loses her interest in the island. Both of them drift away from one another finding cheap and amorous pleasure in various affairs with others. Even the enthusiasm with which they have begun to build the Roman House vanishes just as it is still under construction. However, it is completed and the house warming ceremony which follows it provides the symbol for the approaching disaster of Singh’s marital life.(Devi 34)
Once when Singh goes to beach house of his grandfathers he sees death of three children. Who have drowned in the sea and fishermen did nothing to save them. He is disillusioned regarding the people around him.
Ralph wants to bring the change in the society, he lives in. Naipaul presents Isabella as ex-colony. He writes.
It was happened in twenty countries....We were a colony, a benevolently administered dependency. (MM-207)
Ralph joins ‘The socialist’ and starts to write the articles in it and later for his country he joins politics with the Brown. He concentrates on his party progress instead of his business and hobby.
I let Crippleville run itself: I gave up the study of Latin. I applied myself to the socialist and our party organization. (MM-209).
The novel is not only about the politics. However, politics is an important part of the novel. The novel is about Ralph and politics is a part of Ralph’s life so there is obvious space for politics in the novel. The novel is representation of entire third-world community. As Veena Singh points out:
The Mimic Men is not about politics or about a particular race or society but about the dissociation of sensibility, about the displacement, isolation and identity crisis.(Singh 165)
Through the Ralph Naipaul comments on politics and politician;
The politician deals in abstractions even when he deals with himself. He is a man lifted out of himself and separate from his personality. (MM-209).
Ralph does not concentrate on the people’s progress. He is unable to provide them primary establishments. Singh’s action of naming shows his liking of power and ownership. As he writes.
So I went on, naming, naming; and, later, I required everything every government building, every road, every agricultural scheme to be labelled. It suggested drama, activity. It reinforced reality. It reinforced that sense of ownership which overcome me whenever I returned to the island after a trip abroad.. (MM-235).
Singh knows that this is only ‘drama’ and by it they cannot change Isabella society.
Economy problems create social and racial unrest in the Isabella Island. For solving such problems the government decides to nationalization sugar estate, owned by an Englishman, This prescribing the event Ralph says:
We lack order, above all we lack power and we do not understand that we lack power. (MM-6)
And later he writes:
On power and consolidation of power, we wasted our energies until the bigger truth came: that in a society like ours... there was no true internal source of power and that no power was real which did not come from the out-side, such was the controlled chaos we had, with such enthusiasm, brought upon ourselves. (MM-206).
Ralph is sent to London for the solution of their problems. But the authority refused Singh’s proposal. Singh narrates it:
The talk with the officials ended in failure. I insisted on seeing the minister: It was the only thing left for me to do. My request was twice refused... Two days later I was told that the minister would meet me, but without my delegation. It was better than nothing. (MM-244).
Singh meets the minister but failed. They do not agree with Singh’s proposal and this shows their nature of being professional. As Singh describes it:
His manner indicated clearly that our game had gone on long enough and he had other things to do than to assist the public relations of colonial politicians.... Then I spoke the sentence which tormented me almost as soon as I had said it. It was this which no doubt made the interview so painful in recollection. I said, ‘How can I take this message back to my people ? ‘My people’: for that I deserved all I got. He said: ‘You can take back to your people any message you like’. And that was the end. (MM-245)
Singh fails to solve the problem of his country. Singh feels ‘private loss’ as he is unable to do anything without the master’s approval. He writes:
My sense of drama failed. This to me was the true loss. For four years drama had supported me; now, abruptly, drama failed. It was a private loss. (MM-241).
These politicians of ex-colony remained only absurd characters and constantly suffer from insignificance and displacement. They have not real power and identity. Island is controlled and exploited by the empire in this condition politics and politicians have no meaning and value of their own.
Ralph, who writes his experiences from the London is victim of such system. Ralph has satisfaction at last that he has lived four fold division of life according to Aryan people, Ralph’s awareness of himself and his society is his ultimate victory. As N. Rama Devi observes:
.... in Ralph Singh’s awareness of his defects lies his truimph over his disorderly and chaotic experiences.(Devi 44)
Ralph goes to London in search of order. But he does not find it there too. He prefers his Aryan ancestors. But however Ralph’s way of searching order is not proper as Alka S. Nathrekar observes:
Ralph fails because he tries to find out external solutions for the internal problems, solutions to the problems of the real world into the world of fantasy.(Natharkar 140)
In the novel “The Mimic Men”, Naipaul mingles the social, education, political, individual, racial, economical, spiritual problems of post – colonial society or ‘Third World’ and he puts Ranjit Kripal Singh, Ralph Singh, an Indian origin, in the centre.
Ralph becomes representative figure of entire third world community and their displacement, and homelessness. To take recourse to Alka S. Nathrekar again:
.... Naipaul’s Ralph in ‘The Mimic Men’ does not remain only Ralph of the Third world but this West Indian hero becomes universal. The social analysis that Ralph has done has universal implications. Ralph becomes ‘an archetypal modern man’ who has become cynical and self destructive because of his sensitiveness. He may be called the prototype of the colonial man.(Natharkar 142)
References:
All the references to the text “The Mimic Men” is referred to by the acronym: MM
- Devi, N. Rama “Naipaul’s “The Mimic Men : Order and form Through Art” V. S. Naipaul Critical Essays Vol. 2, Ed. Mohit K. Ray, Atlantic Publisher and Distributors, New Delhi. 2002.
- Naipaul , V. S. “The Mimic Men”, Picador India, ISBN-0-330-48710-8, 2002.
- Naipaul, V. S. Two Worlds : Nobel Lecturer. V. S. Naipaul Critical Essays Vol. 1, Ed. Mohit K. Ray, Atlantic Publisher and Distributors New Delhi.
- Natharkar, Alka “Naipaul’s The Mimic Men and Third World Politics”. Indian Readings in Commonwealth Literature, Eds. G. S. Amur, V.R.N. Prasad, B. V. Nemade and N. K. Nihalani. Sterling Publication, New Delhi, 1985.
- Singh, Veena “A Journey of Rejection : V. S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men” V. S. Naipaul Critical Essays Vol. 3, Ed. Mohit K. Ray, Atlantic Publisher and Distributors, New Delhi. 2005.