Abstract

This research considers displacement in Naipaul’s The Mimic Men as a traumatic experience. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the subject of my study, it explores the historical and psychological dimensions of the displacement in the novel, as well as its literary representations. In the first step, I depicted the displacement as a traumatic experience for the protagonist by the illness which displacement causes Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In the second step, I suggested two ways the protagonist goes through to remember their trauma. These ways are two different kinds of memory, namely, “acting out” and “working through”. I take “acting out” and “working through” as different but not opposite processes. “Acting out” and “working through” may never be totally separated from each other, and the two may always mark or be implicated in each other. In the third step, I also looked at the impacts of trauma of displacement on the structural and formal components of The Mimic Men.

Highlights

  • I depicted the displacement as a traumatic experience for the protagonist by the illness which displacement causes Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

  • This study considers displacement as a traumatic experience for the protagonist in Naipaul’s The Mimic Men by the illness that displacement causes, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)

  • As discussed in previous sections, displacement is traumatic for Ralph Singh, the protagonist of The Mimic Men

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Summary

Introduction

The distinctive combination of circumstances, which relates him to the three societies, certainly plays a predominant part in shaping his sensibility and determining his writing career. He said, “when I speak about being an exile or a refugee, I am not just using a metaphor” (Rowe-Evans 62). V.S. Naipaul is obsessed with displacements in his works. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the subject of my study, it explores the historical and psychological dimensions of the displacement experience, as well as its literary representations. Based on the theoretical work of trauma theorists such as Cathy Caruth, Dominick LaCapra, this study attempts to investigate the effects of trauma of displacement in The Mimic Men

The Mimic Men
Theoretical Framework
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Acting Out
Trauma and Literature
Non-linearity
Intertextuality
Conclusion

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