Autobiographical Theory and Discourse on Naipaul’s Half a Life

Autobiography has only recently been recognized as an important form of literary creation. Autobiographical theory is paired well with theories such as structuralism and post structuralism because autobiography is a fertile ground for considering the divide between fact and fiction, challenging the possibility of presenting a life objectively, and examining how the shaping force of language prohibited any simple attempts at truth and reference. Autobiography as a genre of literature is a metaphor of the self and it’s a journey on the part of the autobiographer from the known to the unknown. It can be taken as an attempt to find an objectivecorrelative for the self. The present paper enumerates some of the basic tenets of Autobiographical theory, viz: Emotional Memory Probe, Positive Autobiographical Memories, Negative Autobiographical Memories, Depression, Cultural Identity, Dislocation, Relocation, Exile, Ethnic Assertion, Colonization, and Multiculturalism to analyze V. S. Naipaul’s Half a Life as an autobiographical treatise.

The major theme running through the novel is “exiles living a half- life”as like the author himself. It juxtaposes the emotional memory probe of Willie Chandran with the sweeping backdrops of lands held in the grip of imperialism. Born to an upper caste father and lower caste mother, Willie Somerset Chandran travels all around; from London to Africa, in search of his cultural identity repressed within his psyche. He moves to London in the hopes of escaping the social and family conflict he witnessed in home in India. Every possible view and corner of race, social class, empire, colonization, education and sexual practices explored through Willie Chandran’s life. The father of Willie has taken refuse in melancholic depression and his eventful career as a bogus holy man represents Naipaul’s own story of his father’s ambition and failure.