Abstract
My major purpose in studying Caryl Phillips’s widely acclaimed novel Crossing the River is to examine, through a close textual analysis, the severe identity crisis inflicted upon slaves under the three-century long slavery institution. I explore how slaves’ tragic rift of separation from their African homelands led to a disastrous loss of identity. I particularly call attention to the ways slavery profoundly ‘shattered’ such identity-shaping factors as home, family, belonging, memory and roots. Quite curiously, this identity destruction was not only undergone by African slaves who experienced The Middle Passage firsthand, but has been ‘transmitted’ to their descendants in the contemporary realities of the black diaspora. I, therefore, look into the historical and psychic continuum that binds the slaves’ experience of home loss with their descendants’ exilic identity and space impermanence. Central to this paper is also the exploration of how the slaves’ identity fracture is reflected at the level of the language, narrative forms, genre mixing, and the temporal and spatial fragmentation Phillips freely experiments with in his narrative. Keywords: Crossing the River , Caryl Phillips, slavery, identity, diaspora, narration
Highlights
SlaveryPhillips’s ongoing preoccupation with slavery and its lingering memory can be perceived in almost every single work of his entire oeuvre
My major purpose in studying Caryl Phillips’s widely acclaimed novel Crossing the River is to examine, through a close textual analysis, the severe identity crisis inflicted upon slaves under the three-century long slavery institution
Crossing the River depicts how the needs of this capitalist enterprise radically shaped the identity of slaves and still powerfully determines the lives and selfperceptions of their descendants scattered across Europe and the Americas
Summary
Phillips’s ongoing preoccupation with slavery and its lingering memory can be perceived in almost every single work of his entire oeuvre. If not all, of Phillips’s writings undertake mapping out the historical, cultural and psychological elements that have shaped Caribbean identity and how the latter is in constant dialogue with the remote history of slavery It is, no surprise that Phillips’s texts repeatedly revolve around the following subject matter: the Afro-Caribbean connections, the history of slavery, black-white encounters, the Middle Passage, the horrors of plantation life, the memory of slavery and colonialism, forced migration and the dispersal of the black diaspora and its lack of roots. No surprise that Phillips’s texts repeatedly revolve around the following subject matter: the Afro-Caribbean connections, the history of slavery, black-white encounters, the Middle Passage, the horrors of plantation life, the memory of slavery and colonialism, forced migration and the dispersal of the black diaspora and its lack of roots These traumatic experiences, under the pain of which generations of blacks suffered, have shaped Caribbean identity structure and marked Caribbean people’s consciousness for entire centuries. This is the bitter truth Travis has to adjust himself to as a Black American solider in Britain: “One Englishman is worth two Germans, four French, twenty Arabs, forty Italians, and any number of Indians (p. 164)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
