Arts Studies and Criticism

V. S. Naipaul, a Nobel Prize winner, portrays Willie Somerset Chandran, his protagonist in Half a Life, as a man who escapes from his homeland and searches his identity across three continents for half a life. Inversely, in the end of the story, Willie values his Indian passport and his family tie, which leads me to probe into his sharp transformed attitude. Borrowing from Stuart Hall the idea that the process of identification is “not the so-called return to roots but a coming-to-terms-with our ‘routes’”, this study argues that Willie’s change from trying to get rid of his original identity, even by making up a new identity, to accepting his Indian identity, is not simply a process of returning to his Indian root but a compromise with his journey, which is interweaved with his changing attitude to his father. What this study develops from Hall’s opinion is that though one’s identification is shaped by “route”, his or her action may not follow cognition for various reasons.