A Postcolonial Study of the Identity Crisis in V S Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas

摘要

The spiritual state of the colonial people was always an important subject matter in the third-world literature This MA thesis is centered upon Mr Biswas the novel's protagonist whose life is a broken colonial subject filled with instances of postcolonial identities His house is given as a symbol of his independent life Along with fear and humiliation Mr Biswas and his family suffers colonization alienation futility identity crisis ambivalence of authority and social mimicry His final success in the house is highly dependent on his strong will Using Homi Bhabha's theory of mimicry and cultural ambivalence and Ng?g? wa Thiong'o's theory of language and self-definition this MA thesis aims to analyze the themes in the novel: "the hope of independence" "alienation" "futility" "identity" "ambivalence" and "mimicry" There are over a hundred scenes in the novel each based on the rhetorical and imagery parts of the action The novel underlines the assertion that location brings identity; that the representation of themes will be focused on the items about his dwelling his thoughts and feelings on the houses that he stayed Naipaul's treatment of the colonial life is a harsh journey of existence In this thesis themes are discussed in order to gain a clearer view on the subjectivity of the colonial spiritual condition in the identity crisis

獎項日期	2015 6月 9
原文	English
監督員	Che-ming Yang (Supervisor)