Migration as a Form of Rebirth in V.S. Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival

Abstract

Diasporic intellectuals are doomed to construct home in the new land, as migration into new region results in their separation from the homeland. V.S. Naipaul, a nomadic intellectual, in his writing projects the trauma of displaced people. A displaced person always fails to identify himself/herself with others as he/she does not carry culture with him/her, which bears the individual's identity. When he/she cannot identify his/her own culture and try to mime others' then there lies the real crisis. Through the novel The Enigma of Arrival Naipaul tries to portray the lives of migrated people, the inevitability of home for them and frustration of being alienated, exiled and hybrid. To overcome these frustrations such diasporic people try to take rebirth in the form of characters in their writings and become successful to come out of the problem of being a nowhere man.