Class 11 English Unit 18: Critical Thinking Language Development Section

 

Critical Thinking

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBvE5KRADNU

a.      What kind of divided identity is depicted in the novel 'Half a Life'? How do characters in the novel try to create new identities for themselves? Explain.

According to the review of the novel 'Half A Life', three characters have mixed racial or divided identities. They are Willie, Ana and a big light-eyed man. Willie, the central character of the novel, has a divided identity because of his birth from a Brahmin father and a low-caste mother. Because of racial discrimination that prevails in India, Willie feels insecure and a loss of identity. He is unhappy in India, and to find his freedom and identity, he migrates to London.

Ana is another character with the same kind of divided identity. She belongs to a mixed African identity (part Portuguese and part African) similar to the identity of Willie. Willie and Ana like each other. Ana has also come to London in search of her identity, but later, after meeting Willie, she feels that she may have a high status in her Portuguese African country, even to be a second-rank Portuguese, rather than mimicking others' behaviour to hide her past. Willie also follows her to her home country in the hope of a complete acceptance there.

But he also feels there lack of identity. He sees the plight of an illegitimate man born out of an African mother and a Portuguese landowner father. Such people are abused by Portuguese people because of the same of their birth.

b.     Discuss the similarities between the author and the protagonist in the novel.

Surprisingly, there is a startling amount of parallelism between Willie Chandran and the Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul. Naipul is of Indian descent and was born in the country of Trinidad in 1932. He left his home country at the age of 18 to pursue a higher education and went to England on a scholarship grant in the year 1950.

Naipul studied at the University College of Oxford, and after four years, he realised he wanted to be an author. He took up the pen and paper and found himself, realising that his occupation would forever be as a writer. His prowess as a writer is incredible. In addition to Half a Life, Naipaul has written A House for Mr Biswas, A Bend in the River, Between Father and Son, A Way in the World, Beyond Belief, and many more, totalling more than 20 fiction and non-fiction books in his lifetime. As mentioned before, he is a Nobel Laureate and now lives his life in Wiltshire, England. The similarities of all these characteristics with Willie Chandran are so astounding that some would have guessed Naipaul was writing an autobiography. Willie is also of Indian descent and left his home country at the age of 18 to go study abroad; both of them were able to do this because of a scholarship.

Willie went to England to study at a university for four years as well. He took up writing and published a book while he was studying in London, and briefly pursued writing, which is Naipaul's occupation. They both eventually find themselves living in a foreign country other than the one in which they were born. V.S. Naipaul used aspects of his own life to craft and mould a protagonist and a story that would be compelling enough to keep readers glued to the page. 

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