"The Mimic Men" (1967) presents and examines a newly independent country in the Caribbean, the island of Isabella, with a pessimistic view: the previous colony has now become independent but the formerly colonized people of the island are unable to establish order and govern their country. The colonial experience has caused the colonized to perceive themselves as inferior to the colonizer. Colonial education and cultural colonization have presented the English world, with its rich culture, as a world of order, discipline, success, and achievement. As a result, the natives consider their own culture, customs and traditions, religion, and race to be inferior to those of their master and try to identify themselves with the empire. Since they are far away from their original homeland, their own original traditions and religions have become meaningless to them, and thus, they cannot identify themselves with those remote rules and codes. However, as they are different from the master in cultural, traditional, racial, and religious backgrounds, they can never successfully associate themselves with the colonizer either. They suffer from dislocation, placelessness, fragmentation, and loss of identity. They become mimic men who imitate and reflect the colonizer's life style, values, and views. As these psychological problems cannot be solved after independence is achieved, independence itself becomes a word but not a real experience. Without the colonizer, the colonized see themselves as lost in their postcolonial society that fails to offer a sense of national unity and identity.
Ralph Singh, the narrator of "The Mimic Men", is a forty-year-old colonial
minister who lives in exile in London. By writing his memoirs, Singh tries
to impose order on his life, reconstruct his identity, and get rid of the
crippling sense of dislocation and displacement. In other words, Singh
is the representative of displaced and disillusioned colonial individuals,
and colonization is depicted as a process that takes away their identity,
culture, history, and sense of place. Thus, the novel considers
the relationship between the socio-political and the psychological
consequences of imperialism(Thieme 1987: 113). This means that to read
the novel just for its politics is to destroy its emphasis on the psychological
problems of colonial people (King 1993: 72).
In his room in a hotel in a London suburb Singh reevaluates his life in the hope of achieving order, as the place in which he is born is associated with chaos. As he says: “to be born on an island like Isabella, an obscure New World transplantation, second-hand and barbarous, was to be born to disorder" ("The Mimic Men", 118). Singh does not follow any chronological order in his writing but he constantly moves backwards and forwards, writes about his childhood and adulthood, his life in Isabella and in England, his political career and marriage, and his education to give shape to the past and his experiences, and to understand himself. Therefore, according to Richard Kelly, Singh is the centre of his small world, and his childhood, political carrier, and educational background.
By presenting different times, places, and situations, he tries to put
the parts together to complete the puzzle and rewrite his life. He considers
the notions of colonisation, decolonisation, history, culture, race, and
politics, to write his own story and to give meaning to his existence.
Hence, the novel presents Singh’s desire to learn “what it means to be
a colonial subject in a postcolonial society” (Cudjoe 1988: 99). The constant
shifts between the past, the present, and the future may also reflect Singh’s
internal chaos; as John Thieme has suggested, this technique is suitable
for presenting “social and psychological disturbances” (1987: 114). However,
the irony is that in his search for order, Singh is unable to follow a
chronological pattern to impose order on his writing.
Still, at least, writing becomes an activity by means of which he can find the reasons for his failure. From what he writes we can learn, like him, how colonial experiences have affected and shaped his life and personality as what he says cannot be reduced to what is being said explicitly; like thought itself and behaviour, it bears the weight of the other, the other of which we are all unaware or which we half refuse (Lemaire 1977: 40). As he is born to disorder, Singh longs for a sense of control over his life and, therefore, he turns to writing which becomes a “means of releasing” from the “barren cycle of events” (White 1975: 180). As Kelly has pointed out, it is through the expression and presentation of the events that he can reduce the pain of being a displaced colonial man: the act of writing his memoirs provides him the final solution to his sense of dislocation, for through writing he is at last able to take control of the fragments of his past and shape them into a spiritual and psychological autobiography. (1989: 90)
As a child, Singh responds to his sense of abandonment by dreaming of
India, the homeland, and of his origin. He reads books on Asiatic and Persian
Aryans and dreams of horsemen who look for their leader ("The Mimic Men",
98). He creates an ideal and heroic past which is in conflict with the
real-life condition in Isabella. For example, he goes to the beach house
owned by his grandfather and one day he sees the death of three children
who are drowned in the sea while the fishermen do nothing to save them
("The Mimic Men", 108-109). At that point he realizes that Isabella cannot
be the ideal landscape he is searching for. As Thieme has observed, the
beach scene refers to the myth of Perseus who was saved from being drowned
in the sea by Dictys, a fisherman and a hero, who presents a contrast with
the passive and selfish Carib-African fishermen. Hence, Singh’s experience
on the beach makes him too aware of the distance between Isabella and his
true, pure world (1987: 117). Moreover, he is completely shocked when his
father sacrifices Tamango, the race horse, although he is aware of the
symbolic significance of such an act in Hindu tradition. As Donald A. Mackenzie
has explained, the aim of the sacrifice is to secure prosperity and fertility
(1985: 90-91). Although Singh idealizes his Hindu past and culture, he
is in fact unable to understand Hinduism and thus, as Thieme has observed,
when the horse is killed, the ideal past collapses and the concrete experience
shocks the child (1987: 133). In other words, this sacrifice causes Singh
to see an Indian world that is in contrast with the noble and ideal realm
of imagination (Hughes 1988: 74-75). Hindu rituals have lost their meaning
in Isabella as the people have lost their connection with India, its culture,
customs and traditions. Thus, as Bruce King has claimed, by leaving India
and going to the Caribbean islands, the Indians are doomed to isolation
and dislocation:
Hence, Singh suffers from “genetic” dislocation which, according
to Rob Nixon, refers to the condition of the East Indians in the Caribbean.
They crossed the kala pani, black water, and thus, they lost their Indianness
(1988: 4). Moreover, Singh, as a member of an ethnic minority on the island
also experiences “ethnic displacement” which refers to his status as an
Indian in Isabella (Nixon 1988: 6). By idealizing the past, Singh wants
to reconstruct history to establish his identity; however, he
realizes that such a task is impossible and, therefore, he becomes
disillusioned. Like Singh, his Chinese friend, Hok, reads books on his
own origin, China, and idealizes his past and is humiliated when it is
discovered that he has black ancestors. Browne, Singh’s black revolutionary
friend, also fantasizes his origin and his room is full of pictures of
black leaders. Thus, according to Dolly Zulakha Hassan, each boy is in
fact obsessed with his own racial origin and the ethnic group to which
he belongs and the novel, therefore, implies that the emotional security
and a real sense of identity are unachievable in heterogeneous societies
of the Caribbean (1989: 253).
As a result of his psychological need for identity and fulfilment, Singh
becomes a politician. He tries to achieve order, meaning, and success as
a political figure. In other words, Singh needs a real view of himself
and of the world around him so he participates in politics. Singh’s political
career is then potentially a means by which he can satisfy his ego. He
refers to his political activity as a “drama” and examines its effects
on himself but he does not concentrate on his people or on the shoe shops,
filling stations, and schools that are established on the island with his
help. Singh’s obsession with naming clearly shows his psychological need
for power and ownership:
By naming roads and buildings, Singh reinforces the reality of his power and political career, and by renaming himself, he redefines his own reality (Nightingale 1987: 100-101).
However, the irony is that by changing his name, Ranjit Kirpalsingh
in fact has changed the very identity for which he is searching so desperately.
In his attempt to define himself through his political activities, Singh
realizes that he has become separated from his people and has to play a
role to preserve his position. He feels incomplete because he is aware
of the meaninglessness of his role as a colonial politician. To him, politicians
in Isabella seek power and order without knowing the real meaning of those
concepts:
Singh is very well aware of the fact that the “drama” has not brought
peace and order to the island but only created a dramatic illusion of order,
and that island society still suffers from social and racial unrest and
from economic problems. Under such conditions the government decides that
the nationalization of the sugar estate, owned by an upper class Englishman
called Lord Stockwell, is the only way of solving the economic problems
and uniting people. Consequently, Singh is sent to England to carry out
the negotiations. However, he fails to persuade the English to help his
government and is also humiliated by one of the English ministers in the
meeting:
Moreover, Lord Stockwell refuses to talk seriously about labour problems
and sugar estate; instead he treats Singh like a child and says that he
has got nice hair. Both the minister and Lord Stockwell, the representatives
of the imperial power, impose their superiority on Singh who is reduced
to a child. Hence, by refusing to consider Singh as a political figure
or acknowledge the importance of his task, they in fact, push Singh to
an inferior status, and finally to a sense of political dislocation and
failure. Without any help from the English, Singh is unable to find any
solution to his country’s problems, and thus, nationalization becomes a
word and finally Singh faces his “private loss” as he cannot act without
the master’s approval or help:
Isabella’s lack of a political awareness makes its politicians absurd characters who suffer from their own insignificance and displacement. With no political reality there is no real sense of identity and without that the island politicians suffer from non-existence as politics does not have any real meaning on the island that has been controlled, ruled, and exploited by the empire. Therefore, without a real political history of their own, colonial politicians are used as political stooges by the super-powers.
Singh also suffers from dislocation and alienation because of his educational
background. As a victim of the colonial education system and curriculum,
Singh has always been encouraged to imitate the empire and to become a
"mimic man":
Moreover, Singh’s colonial education has taught him that the mother
country, England, is the symbol of order. When he studies English culture
and history, he feels that his own culture, if there is any, is inferior
to that of the colonizer. Hence, Singh’s colonial education has caused
him to become a homeless man with no self-image. Singh keeps asking himself
whether he is the product of his colonial education. He both recognizes
and criticizes colonial mimicry, but he also knows that he cannot help
being a mimic man as he is “a specific product of a particular socioeconomic
formation called colonialism” (Cudjoe 1988: 100). In his attempt to find
his identity and the ideal landscape, Singh goes to London only to realize
that the city does not promise anything to an East Indian colonial subject
as he can never identify himself with it. In London, Singh realizes that
he can never be an Englishman in spite of his public school education,
and that one can be English only if he is born in England. Thus, Louis
Simpson has pointed out that the West Indians can only face dislocation
in the metropolis:
Singh does not find a complete solution to his psychological problems. Hence, his writing reflects moods of displacement, disillusionment, and sadness. Alienated from his own society, Singh travels to different places to overcome his feeling of isolation but he is aware of his "imminent homelessness" ("The Mimic Men", 249).
Although Singh cannot completely solve his psychological problems, he reaches a conclusion through writing his memoirs. He realizes that his experiences and his feeling of abandonment and displacement cannot be separated from his colonial backgrounds ("The Mimic Men", 50). Without a real and identifiable historical background, Singh has become desolate and that is why he constantly tries to impose order on his past, present, and future. To Robert Morris, Singh’s final state is a real "final emptiness”as he has lost everything at the age of forty (1975: 66-67). However, to Hena Maes-Jelinek, the very emptiness refers to his detachment from the events and proves that he is now ready to start a new life (1967: 513). In other words, he is now aware of how and why he finds himself in the condition of a homeless citizen of the world, and concludes that he has achieved a new perception of himself.
In conclusion, Singh examines and analyses the colonial and postcolonial
periods, historical, cultural, and political backgrounds, economic problems
and psychological conflicts and finally concludes that writing can be decolonisation
itself. He realizes that colonial societies like Isabella suffer from lack
of cultural, historical, and racial homogeneity. Although he fails to reconnect
himself to India, the homeland, or to connect himself to London, the metropolis,
by writing his memoirs, Singh finally takes control of his sense of dislocation
as he realizes that there is no ideal place with which he can identify
himself. His final detachment is an expression of a “distance from any
clear-cut national identity or notion of home” (Nixon 1988: 3). Hence,
in "The Mimic Men", “home” can never ultimately be more than the books
he writes or, perhaps more precisely, the action of writing them” (Gottfried
1984: 443).
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