An Investigation of Cultural Multifariousness and in V.S. Naipaul’s Half a Life

Abstract

This paper explores the reflections of cultural multifariousness in Naipaul’s Half a Life. Naipaul investigates many racial groups, social strata, colonies, and empires. A typical colonial character in Half a Life, Willie Chandran is perplexed by the plural but unequal society he was brought up in. to go away from the embarrassment his parents’ union had brought him. Willie considers making his getaway to a far-off place. A significant portion of the novel is with Willie’s journey to London and then, later, Africa in pursuit of a peaceful environment. With a hopeful note, the novel is concluded. Willie realises that he has spent his entire life running away from one location and culture to another. With the next half of his life, he hopes to begin a new life. The existential predicament of the hybrid subject, uprooted and deracinated but frantically looking for similarities to his own circumstances, is the subject of Half a Life. In the process, he confirms that he may find a place to rest in the journey of homelessness. The title of the novel refers to the novel’s overarching concern: persons stuck during unexplored migration pathways; caught amid history, ambition, and love; and caught in the flux of non-belonging and lack of self-knowledge. This is true of Willie’s in-between, half, and hybrid existence.