QUEST FOR IDENTITY IN V. S. NAIPAUL’S HALF A LIFE AND MAGIC SEEDS

This paper deals with V. S. Naipaul's Half a Life (2001) and its sequel Magic Seeds (2004) which depict the hybrid identity of Willie Somerset Chandran. Naipaul portrays the protagonist's constant exiled life from India, England, and Africa to rediscover and assert his self-identity. The events that come about to him are the mirror images of Naipaul's life. Willie's expatriate life and behavior have been shaped for the sake of the extensive effects of colonialism. This paper sheds more light on such a phenomenon which has made Willie an ambivalent, dependent person first in his homeland–India–and then disables him to see the miserable condition of his country as an intellectual person, drifts apart from whatever he possessed. Willie cannot settle down in one special place and is displaced from one place to the other ones. Finally, this paper shows how Willie's placelessness eliminates his identity and changes him to an ambivalent, mimic man