Naipauls The Mimic Men: Mimicking Decultivation

Naipauls The Mimic Men: Mimicking Decultivation Naipauls The Mimic Men: Mimicking Decultivation The Mimic Men sets the tone of Naipaulian malaise of the New World conditions and their deep impact on ones psyche. For it is important to remember that Ralph Ranjit Kripal Sing, the exiled ex-politician hero of The Mimic Men is an insider, one who has practiced the most dubious forms of colonial mimicry as a politician and dandy, as husband and businessman and sees through the charade of politics, the deep humiliation and self contempt that results from defeat and failure. Naipauls The Mimic Men is divided into three parts and surprisingly the author has kept the name of the protagonist a secret until the beginning of the second part. The action of the first part takes place in London in the protagonist Ralph Sings youth. He has come there as a student on a scholarship. He lived in the boarding house owned by one Mr. Shylock. The house-keeper is a Maltese woman known as Lieni. The narrator counts plenty of experience to save himself from extinction and the resulting dust to dust; rags to rags; fear to fear ( Mimic Men 48). In fact, the word extinction has been used in a number of times in the novel. The situation where the narrator finds himself is an existential nothingness and he says, The tragedy of power like mine is that there is no way down. There can be only extinction (Mimic Men 48). By the time the narrator looks back and begins to write his past, he is forty. Later when the narrator took to writing like his creator Naipaul himself, he says, that he did so in order to give expression to the restlessness, the deep disorderwhich this great upheaval has brought about. ( Mimic Men 38) Part II of the novel talks about the protagonists unhappy childhood, unenterprising boyhood and the pressures that exerted him to leave his native island Isabella. He hailed from a poor family background in his words, On Isabella when I was a child it was a disgrace to be poor (Mimic Men 101). He descended from generation of idlers and failures. That caused him deep, silent shame (Mimic Men 101). Though his father was a schoolteacher and poor, his mother was from a rich family. Her brother Cecil was at school with the protagonist. He used to imagine that his father had landed on the island after his ship had been wrecked and he had lost all hopes of going back. Part II also talks about his Aryan background in India and how he added another name to his original name of Ranjit Kripal Sing. Ralph Sing is the example of thoroughly, psychologically colonized man, one who knows both the hurts and the excitements of the short-lived euphoria of inconsequential empires of our times. The burd en of guilt and betrayal, the consciousness of a collective shipwreck which all imitative and third-rate mimic societies suffer, makes Ralph Sing the voice of a quiet acceptance of colonial complicity. Ralph is the mimic man raised through a thorough-bred colonial education. The vision of disorder that haunts Sing is not only political, though. He can see no link between action and its result, man and landscape, the perennial reminders of slavery and brutalization. So, in the end a kind of neurosis sets in to carry Sing to the limits of self- derision. In part III the narrator Ralph Sing shares the ups and downs of his eventful life in Isabella soon after his coming over to that island nation with Sandra his wife from London. His marriage and his entry into politics were aberrations, whimsical, arbitrary acts(Mimic Men 219). Sandra quietly left him on a shopping trip to Miami. She never returned. And he never heard about her after that. It was with the instigation of one of his friends Browne that he became a politician. Browne was a man of the people. He was editing a newspaper called Socialist and was regularly contributing articles in it. Like Browne, Ralph Sing was not a thorough politician. He did not want to make a quick buck. The prospect of power in Isabella fatigued him. He felt he had no hold with the earth. He had no positive vision and hope. He had only a vision of a disorder which it was beyond any one man to put it right (Mimic Men 248). After 4 long years Ralph Sing was in a dilemma whether to return to Isabella as a failed politician or to stay back in London. In order to get some respite from his terrible loneliness and to boost up his self-image, he went to a brothel. With her also he failed as a sexual partner. His partner, to quote his words, was in despair. The smile of hysteria was replaced by tears; she reproached her self for my failure (Mimic Men 283). Quite secretly he went back to Isabella. He had thrown away his power. Such a state psychologically decolonized him. The mimic mans emancipation is impossibility, knowing the degree to which he has betrayed and violated himself, killing all truth and native purities. The precariousness of colonial or post-colonial leader, highlighted in The Mimic Men, is his slavery to the West on the one hand and his unease with his portion of the world. The imported culture, economy, industry, institutions and education are the mark of societies that Sing or Browne hoped to retrieve from disorder. Sings escape, his stay-back in London after the delegation has gone back to Isabella follows a penultimate, short visit to Isabella. But his ultimate exile in England is the most fruitful for him, for he is once again, as he says, in well-organised country and he has no wish to go back to the cycle of events he has freed himself from. Ralph Sing, the mover between cultures and geographies, politics and exile, finally turns a complete colonial, waiting perhaps to work on a history of the British Empire. Sings trying to find a settled role in a society defined by the extremes of Negro proletariat on the one hand and the ex-colonial Creole aristocracy on the other, presents the difficulty to place himself and the world he has come to. The attitude of the reader to Sings renouncing of public life, rejecting its emotions as fraudulent and settling down to write a memoir, will naturally be confused. Naipauls tendency for engraving and supplanting one narrative over the other reaches a limit in The Mimic Men. V.S. Naipauls postcolonial citizen helplessly reveals doubleness of identity in his existence whether in his island Isabella or in his city of choice and dream, London. Along with doubleness, irony and black humour also go with it. In fact such are the popular devices of Naipaul in all his fictional works. Ralph Sings increasing tension and alienation wherever he is, is a result of this awareness. He is also not able to identify with the colonizer though he find himself in his own colonizers state and gets the colonizers education and speaks the colonizers own language. The case of Ralph Sing it is simply not possible for him to shake off disposition and disunity. He chose London because he thought that a glamorous city like London could help him beat his sense of alienation. But London fails because Ralph Sing does not have a distinctive cultural identity with one particular culture. What Shashi Kamra points out as the general characteristics of a Naipaulian protagonist quite aptly fits in Ralph Sing ofThe Mimic Men: Naipauls narrator, subverting the chronological and objective order he has created through subjective ordering of his protagonists life and by questioning that order in his tone of irony and satire, creates the terror of placelessness and timelessness as a void- a pit without bottom. (79) Works Cited Kamra, Shashi. The Novels of V.S. Naipaul: A Study in Theme and Form. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1990. Naipaul, V.S. The Mimic Men. Harmondasworth: Penguin, 1969. Should Guns be Permitted in Colleges? Should Guns be Permitted in Colleges? There are many debates over the question Should guns be permitted on college campuses. They should not be permitted because there are people with anger issues, violence , kills caused by alcohol, and committing suicide from depression/stress. Anger issues is one of many examples of why guns should not be permitted on college campuses. Having such an issue is already dangerous because people tend to take that anger out with yelling or fighting. People with that problem tend to snap quickly with just the wrong use of words. So theres no way of telling what might go through a persons mind having a gun on him. Would they take it out with shooting someone for a miss understanding? For example theres a class going on and everyone except one of the students is working, and the teacher tells one of the students to turn his phone in to her because he was on it instead of working. The teacher ask several times but the students decide to keep refusing to hand it to her. When the teacher decides to walk over and ask one last time he can easily take that as a threat because the teacher is in his personal space. When that goes on he decides to pull out his gun and shoots the teacher because of a problem so small. Not only is the teache r dead but the other people in the class are in danger as well. To prevent this from happening the option of weapons allowed shouldnt be allowed to the students. Another reason guns shouldnt be permitted is because of the use of alcohol. When being consumed with too much alcohol you dont think straight, which may cause you to make a bad decision, at the wrong time. There are many parties in colleges where students are introduced to huge amounts   of alcohol.   For example one of the most popular students on campus throws a huge party in one of the dorms where there is a lot of acholic beverages. After a couple of hours when everyone is drunk a guy gets a drink spilt on him. His reaction to the situation is going to be a lot different because of the fact that he is under the use of a high amount of alcohol. So when the drink is spilt on him he gets extremely mad so without thinking twice he pulls out a gun and shoots the person that spilt the drink on him. After this happens he starts freaking out because he realizes what he did so he gets scared and starts shooting all the witnesses there. From him carrying that gun caused him to put ever yones life at risk and because of him being highly influenced by the alcohol at the party. Theres already enough dangerous situations because of drunk driving at the campuses no need to put more dangerous situations. Another dangerous situation that can be caused is if there are people with violent behavior. Violent behavior can be defined as the use of physical force with the intent of physical force. An example would be if there was a class going on and one of the students in there is one of the violent students that dont like being told what to do. The teacher is giving the class because he was being loud and all the students were paying attention to him instead of the teacher. When the teacher decides to get on to him he tells him that no one tells him what to do that he doesnt care who it is and who ever disrespects him like that will pay the price. The teacher replys by saying that is his class and he talks to anyone however he wants. The arguing continues until the student finally gets tired of him he decides to reach in his bag and shoot the teacher. He just killed someone in front of a whole bunch of witnesses. So now he could either put his gun down and surrender or turn even more viole nt because there are witnesses around. Another option he could do is keep them hostages and keep them there until the authorities meet his commands. Everyones lives are at risk now because the opportunity was given to him to bring a lethal weapon. One of the biggest and most dangerous situations come from   depression and   stress. Most of the schools shootings that happened the year of 2015 were because of depression. There are plenty amount of shooting cases happen because of the amount of bulling going on in the schools from elementary schools to colleges. A great example is if theres a student being bullied throughout the whole school year just because he has no friends and always tries to fit in with the rest of the kids. He gets bullied because the way he dresses and because his parents arent financially   stable. Hes been holding all that anger of getting bullied ever since he was little because he knows in a fist fight he wont win against the other guys. In college he gets messed with too but even though it isnt as bad as it was in high school the other students still play pranks on him. Ever since the bullying started he would write down the names of the kids bulling just so he could remember who they were and the pain and embarrassment the would make him go through. One day in the middle of the year of his sophomore year of college he just had enough he was going through depression beca use he had no friends and he was going through a lot of stress because he was trying to keep his grades up but the other students would throw paper balls at him or just   laugh at his clothes theyd do anything to keep him from learning. The day he had enough though he started planning on what he was going to do to stop the problem. He would go to pawn shops and buy guns to help him go forward with his plan and since the college had permitted the students to carry concealed weapons,   he would have no problem getting in the college with the gun. After he buys his ammunition and guns now he just waits for the day of the plan to come and to finally get his revenge on all the students that made him go through depression and that would bully him into lots of stress. Next thing you know the day of the plan comes and he prepares everything he puts the small guns in his pockets and the bigger ones in his back pack. He pulls up to the college and goes to class like if it was any other regular day of school and as the class starts the students that always mess with him start throwing paper balls and spit balls at him. He gets up and turns to look at the group of guys. He reaches in his pocket and pulls the first weapon out and starts shooting one by one the students go down dead. Then he starts walking around the campus looking for the rest of the students on the list. After hes finished killing as many of the students as he can, he may commit suicide because he doesnt want to accept the consequences and hes juts tired of being bulli ed and stressed and just believes that its the only way out. The option of weapons allowed in   colleges shouldnt even be in mind. There are a lot of cases where there are people killed because of fire arm accidents and why put peoples lives even more at risk when theres no need to. Work Cited A Bullet for Teacher: Violence in Schools. Economist 24 July 1993: A26. General OneFile. Web. 8 Feb. 2017. Fear Factors The Three F Words. Officer.com Feb. 2017: n. pag. General OneFile. Web. 10 Feb. 2017. OMeara, Kelly Patricia. Antidepressants May Trigger School Shootings. School Shootings. Ed. Susan Hunnicutt. Detroit: Greenhaven, 2006. N. pag. At Issue. Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 10 Feb. 2017. OMeara, Kelly Patricia. Antidepressants May Trigger School Shootings. School Shootings. Ed. Susan Hunnicutt. Detroit: Greenhaven, 2006. N. pag. At Issue. Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 10 Feb. 2017. Students, Administrators Share Thoughts, Questions on Proposed Conceal Carry. Janesville Gazette [Janesville, WI] 15 Oct. 2015: n. pag. General OneFile. Web. 6 Feb. 2017. Three Wounded in Shooting at Texas College; Not Designed to Bring Us Together; GOP: Obama Wants Era of Liberalism; Reports: Two. Situation Room [CNN] 22 Jan. 2013: n. pag. General OneFile. Web. 6 Feb. 2017